by KogarashiKaze
As fans of
Pandemic and
Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, my husband and I heard good things about Pandemic: Legacy, and wanted to give it a go. We picked up a copy, talked a pair of friends of ours into it, and have set out on experiencing this story over the course of several game sessions. Three months in, so far so good, and I thought I'd keep something of a game journal and share our session reports.
This account contains spoilers. Read on at your own risk.First Session: JanuaryCharacters:Jamari Williams
(Medic), Alex Fleming
(Researcher), Kenji Kokan
(Dispatcher), Mari Yamamoto
(Generalist)After drawing our first Epidemic on
the first turn of the game, we managed to turn things around for a win. Black quickly turned into a problem disease, followed by blue, as black gave us our first outbreak (and all subsequent ones) and unstable city. Two Epidemics in, the black disease mutated to be drug-resistant and incurable, being dubbed COdA-403a (probably the closest Death Pox is ever going to get to a proper name now), acting as our major stumbling block of the session. We managed to cure the red disease fairly early on thanks to only drawing one red infection card while stocking up on red player cards early, meaning we also eradicated it when we cured it, dubbing it Crimsonitis. Our next step was to save up enough yellow to cure that disease while trying to keep COdA from overrunning everything (made more difficult by the need to spend two actions for every Treat Disease).
Placing our very first sticker on the board.This left us with only the blue to cure, with things quickly spiraling out of control as cities became more infected (read: we had another Epidemic that left many cities on the brink of outbreak), and Kolkata reached Rioting status.
Kolkata is in trouble already.With a lucky draw of three blue cards for our Generalist and a lineup of three more in blue in an easy row with an Event to build a research station as needed, we were able to keep just ahead of potential outbreak and cure the blue disease. Our thanks? The government cut our funding.
Our chosen upgrades were to give the Medic the ability to Treat Disease in adjacent cities, and make the red disease easier to cure in the future by allowing us to cure it without a research station.
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Second Session: February
Characters:Alex Fleming
(Researcher), Cassandra Black
(Scientist), Kenji Kokan
(Dispatcher), Anjie Donovan
(Quarantine Specialist)With our funding cut, things were looking trickier. We opted to take the Government Grant and Forecaster events, though during the course of the game only the Grant came into use (placing a research station). We also uncovered a new ally, the Quarantine Specialist, and gained the ability to enact quarantines when needed, which was important as COdA mutated into its 403b variant which was untreatable (meaning we couldn't remove the cubes from the board).
It begins....We decided to take the Scientist—Alex Fleming's coworker Cassandra Black—and the Quarantine Specialist—Kenji Kokan's cousin Anjie Donovan—in our team. We opened easily enough with a first-round cure of blue, which was eradicated not long after (naming it Sapphire Fever). Crimsonitis also saw a cure come into effect, followed by eradication, while Dr. Donovan worked valiantly to keep COdA-403b from overwhelming the world. While a few outbreaks occurred, increasing instability in a few cities, we didn't have the same problems with rioting like we had in Kolkata in January.
The Americas in trouble.Finally, the month rounded out with a cure for our yellow disease, still unnamed, and a fairly low-key victory for February was achieved. Unfortunately this meant another cut in our funding due to being just too efficient, leaving us on our own.
Our two favorite events. Thanks to funding cuts, we don't get to play with them now.Our chosen upgrades were to make Crimsonitis easier to cure by allowing us to cure it without spending an action, and to make our research station in Hong Kong permanent.
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Third Session: MarchCharacters:
Jamari Williams
(Medic), Alex Fleming
(Researcher), Cassandra Black
(Scientist), Anjie Donovan
(Quarantine Specialist)This month introduced us to the paramilitary involvement in our disease control efforts. We met a new ally, the Operations Expert, who we didn't take with us on this run, as well as the mechanic of building military bases, and were given additional optional objectives to aim for (eradicate one disease, or place a military base in each of the six world regions). We also had no funding whatsoever, thanks to the government's overwhelming confidence in our abilities. We opened again with a first turn epidemic, but were able to recover from that in order to continue our push to combat the diseases. Though Crimsonitis should have been easy to cure, the research just wasn't coming up, while Sapphire Fever was surprisingly easy to deal with. Strategic placement of quarantines throughout COdA's region kept it remarkably in check for most of the early game, allowing Dr. Black to assemble the necessary information with Dr. Fleming's assistance to clear out Sapphire Fever.
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Meanwhile Crimsonitis started becoming a threat, constantly returning despite diligent efforts to treat it in the hopes of an easy eradication. Not long after curing Sapphire Fever, Dr. Fleming was able to get the necessary information to Dr. Williams for a cure for our unnamed yellow disease, which we dealt with shortly after, followed by finally curing Crimsonitis. That left crowd control on outbreak-risk cities until Dr. Williams was able to finish eradicating Sapphire Fever for our second objective of the month, and we suffered only two outbreaks due to the gamble of not placing quarantines in favor of disease clearing. Despite the government cutting our funding, we were still able to pull off the victory, and aside from Kolkata (still rioting at panic level 2), we have nothing worse than a few unstable cities on the board.
I'm sure things are only going to go downhill from here.
Making use of our nearly useless Kolkata card.Our chosen upgrades were to remove the need for a research station to cure Sapphire Fever, and to place an unfunded event (the ability to discard cards to remove matching-color disease cubes) on our nearly-useless Kolkata city card.
At the end of March, our diseases looked something like this:
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Unfortunately, at this point I discovered that we'd been playing the Quarantine Specialist a little overpowered, misreading one of her abilities. We'll discuss next time how to remedy this, and will proceed forward playing it correctly (and reading abilities and rules more thoroughly, to be sure).
