May in December

by Loofish

Not much chance for gaming. Sorting out new house doesn't leave me much energy for soloing games in the evening but Friday night/Saturday morning combo with my old room mates did mean a Mandalorian season and finale and there were at least some games played.

[BGCOLOR=#33CC99] 9 [/BGCOLOR]  Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 x3 (8 all-time)

And it was all about our ongoing Pandemic Legacy season 1 game. When last we met, we had had a breezy first 4 months, handling the curves on the evolving system without any issue. Then May happened and oh my did that ever change things up for us.

But one thing we did that game was change our line up, replacing the medic for a newly revealed character. Perhaps that was hasty. I mean, the game was very very mean to us, but some of the problems we had were quite solvable by having a medic to keep on top of outbreaks. So for the Late May game, we reassembled the dream team from April again and this game went rather smoothly. Nothing got out of hand, the random draws from the bottom were all ok. We had this game figured out.

So we went right into Early June. A little foreshadowing there, as you only have an Early June if there is going to be a Late June. But yes, things did not go quite as smoothly here. Firstly there was a concentration of color of disease (and veterans of this game will know what I mean). And our luck... A prime example was Moscow. It got a random cube on it but not a big problem...until the Epidemic pulled up a Moscow card from the bottom. And that very next infection phase? Yep Moscow again. 2 outbreaks in a few seconds, just from there and it kept going too. We nearly lost because we had no more cubes of that color...but we lost on outbreaks instead, not to mention long term damage to the stability of the Middle East and India, not to mention Southeast Asia. And most of the rest of the world was hardly touched.

Well, we were hasty before but now it really did seem like time to lose the medic, who had just had a VERY traumatic time in Baghdad (another bottom of deck draw there), so perhaps it was for the best.

We brought in a new character (I am not spoiling anything but I do wonder if there is anyone left to spoil things to?) and they were immensely useful in dealing with the growing threats. It helped that we got much nicer draws - because of special reasons, my scientist was able to cure red on her first turn and eradicating red from the board was incredibly key to staying ahead of things this game. Some of the new toys they have given us were pretty sweet too. Though a hint of how things are going to get worse as the damage from previous games means it is difficult to travel in or out of the Middle East and the sub-continent...and it might get harder soon.

But for now, a victory, every month won at the halfway stage.

My initial reaction to Pandemic was more of an appreciation (like the cities going back on top of the infection deck was very clever) than a love, partly because my wife really dislikes co-ops. Living with these guys, I have grown to like the co-ops more (Tim really loves them) and the developing Pandemic world, meaning here both the Legacy campaign, but also the tweaks that variants like Iberia or Fall of Rome throw in, are proving to have a good bit to offer me.

But there will be a bit of a gap for the holidays. So something different coming soon. Plus, inevitably, there will be Artichokes.