by AJEddy
So my family and I played June last night. A landslide win, even with out SIXTH turn 1 Epidemic. 6 of 9 games now have seen us draw an Epidemic turn 1. However, given our [o]bounty of supply cubes[/o] and our great initial infection (8 cities hit), we were never in any sort of panic, like we were in games past. Only one plague cube showed up, and that only because we made the decision to end the game in 2 turns, rather than prevent that single hit.Partially because of getting the good side of the variance - but equally due to having the great feedback from this post in the forefront of my mind as we setup and played - we were able to have more fun with this game than we have had with any game before it.
1. We set as our own Objective to [o]thin the deck, through Inoculation, for at least 9 cards. We planned which cards we would target, and why. We got 7 thinned out.[/o]
2. Instead of letting our son take his favorite character, we waited until the player cards came out to decide who would play which character. Turned out my son scored 3 blue cards in his opening hand, so he was able to take his preferred character.
3. Set out to burn 1-2 Produce Supply cards. Unfortunately we only got multiple use cards, with multiple uses left on them, and couldn't actually burn the cards and thin the deck. But we definitely didn't fret over their use and used them liberally.
All that said, we were able to get back to "puzzling" our way to a convincing victory primarily because of great luck:
1. The initial infection was as good as could be. 8 different cities meant we had 0 cities empty after that initial infection.
2. My son drawing 3 blue cards allowed him to use his ability on his first turn.
3. 3 of the 4 Rationed Events we put into the deck were drawn from the first 3rd of the player deck and were an important part of puzzling out the victory.
4. My wife chose to play the recon character (can recon with 1 less card) because she started with 2 unique yellow. After her 3rd turn, she had enough yellow to recon. Huge good fortune.
I am getting that we need to be proactive in our battle against variance. I feel we can battle the variance a little at this point in the campaign. And I am more hopeful than I have been that the remainder of this campaign can, and will, be an enjoyable puzzle. However, variance is still a fickle beast in this game, and I think the design could have been a little tighter to prevent variance being such a factor in both the wins and losses. Even as late as a June game and variance is still very significant. Too much so, I continue to submit.
