by nightwalker
MarchAs I have desribed in previous session reports our team had done good work for the CDC. We did have one panic level in Cairo which was a stupid mistake, as that was the location for one of our two research stations, but overall the board seemed pretty secure this time around.
There were some new developments however, as we received some new objectives, a new type of building as well as some additional scars. Now it wasn’t enough to cure the regular viruses to win, we also got two new complementary objectives. The regular “cure” objective is mandatory, and is probably gonna stay around for a pretty long while. The other two objectives were “have one military base in each region” or “eradicate a virus”. So a paramilitary group offered a complementary way to battle the viruses. As it stood in March however, we only needed to complete two objectives.
As for the military bases, the only information we got at the moment was that personel with the “dog tags” icon could move between military bases. As for now that did only include our quarantine specialist, therefore we did not think that we would focus that much on military bases.
The players were:
Me - Gwendoline Ripley - Quarantine Specialist (Rival with Donna)
Emil - Super Hans - Dispatcher (Forecaster)
Josefine - Emmie 1 Brown (Researcher)
Viktor - Don(na) T Panic - Scientist (Rival with Gwen)
The actual game
Hysteria Mandelia was named as such because yellow virus was the first disease we eradicated in the game, due to it only having taken place in Johannesburg. It was named as such because we figured there were undue hysteria reporting this virus strain as a global threat. Our view of the virus changed severely this game, as the yellow virus made a very aggresive attack into South America. Blue Moon also made some advances, but thankfully COdA was silent at the beginning.
We made an early mistake I think, since we were somewhat paranoid about Cairo, since we foolishy had allowed a panic sticker (level 1) to be placed there last game. Therefore we placed our bonus quarantine token in Cairo, even though it wasn’t among the original drawn cards in the infection deck.
We sent Josefine early on to make a push for keeping the yellow virus in check, and overall spread out the team to handle the different parts of the world. All viruses except black seemed pretty active so it felt like putting out many fires at once. However, every time we pushed down yellow, several new strains of “Hysteria Mandelia” popped up.
I tried to thwart both blue and yellow through the Q specialist’s fantastic ability, but yellow pushed back too hard, and before long we had several outbreaks in South America. We desperately tried to hang on in the game, and as it stood we managed to have cures for all the regular strains in sight. However, a bit too many areas in the world started to have 3 cubes on them, and towards the end of the game we constantly had to worry at drawing one of maybe three cards that could cause an outbreak.
As it developed, several of us managed to cure viruses and towards the end we actually had all the viruses cured. We had completely skipped building military bases, but no virus was that easy to eradicate. Also, now when we were facing the end (No matter how this game would end) the COdA virus also started becoming more active, and we really didn’t have enough actions to combat COdA as well as win the game. Another bad development that happened during the final phases of this game, was that Donna and Hans both received a scar, since they were in Santiago at the time of its outbreak. Hans received “insomniac” and Donna received “Panicky”. In one of the last few turns of the game, we managed to construct a research station in Manila, starting to think about the phases past the current game.
We were two outbreaks away from losing and could maybe eradicate the red virus in a couple of turns, but there were two COdA groupings of black cubes next to each other, meaning that one simple card with black cubes would mean game over. This is indeed what happened, resulting in a dramatic turn for the worse, as the entire region of South America had gone higher in panic level, with only Buenos Aires keeping its cool. Parts of Europe and Asia had started to show signs of panic as well.
Post Game Steps
Overall the group thought this was a really fun game, as we had been a litte bit worried that this version of Pandemic would be too easy. However, we started processing what had happened and thinking out ways to combat our new mission factors, while we opened the new packages we were instructed to.
We received a construction specialist that could build structures easily as well as move easily from spaces with structues. We also got some new upgrades. Josefine had a very important observation about the previous game, in that the medic would have really helped combat the massive virus spread, and she also felt the researcher did not add that much anymore. After some discussion we agreed, so we decided to make the newly constructed research station in Manila permanent, as well as giving Super Hans the upgrade “Pilot”.
It was pretty hard to decide on what upgrades to pick, and what characters to have in the next game. We would have prefered to actually have an eradicated virus, because the positive mutations and the constructions seems like the best upgrades overall. Overall though, we felt the researcher started to become weaker as the viruses became easier to treat, and it would have helped us tremendously if we could have removed large chunks of cubes during the last game. We also thought about making people becoming more synergistic with the military bases, because we did realize that eventually we will want to have military bases around the world so that we won’t have to build new military bases each game to satisfy that objective. However, we figured that we could construct 1-2 military bases each game in a decent pace without the construction specialist.
March - Game 2
Now the CDC realized we needed some help so they increased our funding by 2. We did still pick “One silent night” and “resilient population” because we still think they are too good. Also this time we drew Manila as one of the infection cards, so we could justify using our win bonus from last month to place a quarantine token there.
We got really lucky in the beginning, as Emil drew two blue cards and Viktor drew two red, so we were on a very good path towards curing them both. Also red virus was pretty inactive, making it a very tantalizing target for eradication. COdA was more active early on in this game, so I was on COdA watchduty while also placing far away areas under quarantine. The Quarantine Specialist’s ability to continously shield areas was used to great effect in the middle east during this game.
Things started to heat up towards the end of the game, especiall as London increased in panic level to 2, meaning we could never fly there nor build any space stations in that city. However, Josefine’s decision to field the medic proved extremely effective, as we managed to cure blue virus early on and the dispatcher could then move the medic to remove a whopping 10 cubes in 4 actions.
We managed to shield ourselves from red with the use of the event cards and Victor could quite easily eradicate the red virus. Before the game ended Josefine managed to establish a military base in Tokyo. Although we had some outbreaks, we did eventually win the game without too much of a sweat, although this game was significantly harder than our first two.
Post game phase
After much discussion we named the red virus “Conterproductive, Cleptophobic Clownomania” or it’s more commonly used denomination: C3. AS for upgrades, we made the military base in Tokyo permanent and also positively mutated blue moon one further step, so that it now requires no action to cure.
Overall we seem to be in decent shape, although we wonder what ramifications the panic in London will have. Still, we look forward to our next game of Pandemic Legacy, and like how the struggle of saving the world from a viral outbreak will continue.
Note
I might have gotten the order of some openings of packs wrong when writing this session report, but the overall strategizing and upgrading should be correct.