by Nikita42
Previous Session Reports:January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October, the chill of autumn can be felt. Last month’s discoveries still weigh heavily on the minds of each member of the CDC team. What will be in store for us this month?
We begin as always with a briefing. We need to find Patient Zero. The only place he can be found is in City Zero which is Baghdad. This will be difficult, it’s basically only one search at a time, unless we can find the Baghdad card early.
This month we are starting with zero Funded Events. Last month we made some mistakes, so our funding has been taken away for this month. Additionally, during set up, we get a new starting Military Base on the first card, which this game is Algiers.
The objectives this month are Discover the Cure for the 3 Normal Diseases, Quarantine 7 Faded Cities, Sabotage 2 Military Bases and Find Patient Zero. We discuss which team we want to put into play this month, there are thoughts we need to get the Virologist out into the field as right now, she’s the only one who can remove Faded from the board, but we aren’t sure if she’s ready yet.
The Team:
Nikki (me), the Scientist, Marie Stopes
Rob (my husband), the Soldier, Bryce North
Chris (friend), the Medic, David Bleak
Elijah (friend), the Dispatcher, Morimoto Noriaki
We also have a win bonus from last month, and decide to add the Binoculars Equipment sticker to the Jakarta player card. We could have moved the Patient Zero search up one, but figure a sticker that does the same but better and can be used again, would be the better choice.
Rob, our Soldier is our first player. Our plan is to have him head out to the Faded Zone and work on Quarantines, Roadblocks and Searching in Baghdad as much as possible. He can’t remove the Faded figures, but at least he doesn’t get a scar if he starts his turn in a city with a Faded figure.
I’m next and take my turn which at the end of, I draw for my second player card an Epidemic. These early Epidemics are the worst. Hopefully, this doesn’t hurt us too much. We do survive it unscathed and move on with the game.
The rest of the team works on treating the diseases and adding Equipment stickers to our player cards when we can. We’ve been adding Grenades, hoping we can use them to keep the Faded in check.
Elijah ends his turn on Lima and draws two yellow cards from the player deck. He already had two in his hand, which is perfect, I have Lima. On my turn, I can join up with Elijah and he can Cure it.
Chris was lucky earlier, and had drawn Baghdad, plus he had Jakarta which has the Binoculars, so he heads out to search, making sure to get out of Baghdad before the end of his turn. He doesn’t want to find a Faded next to him before his next turn causing him to get a scar.
On Elijah’s turn, we Cure Yellow, plus on his turn, he treats one of the Yellow cubes. There’s only one Yellow cube left, so we decide to have Rob play Grassroots Program and discards a yellow player card to get rid of it. Yellow is Eradicated! We are definitely adding a Positive Mutation to it at the end of the game.
The game moves on, and it’s Rob’s turn. At the end of it, he draws our second Epidemic. The bottom card from the Infection deck is Kolkata, which causes an outbreak and it collapses. It also outbreaks Chennai, but at least it has long since Fallen and we don’t have to add another sticker to it. Drawing the two cards from the Infection deck we also reveal Essen which outbreaks.
It’s not long before our third Epidemic is revealed, but we survive it.
On my next turn, I’m in a city with Faded, however, I have a Hazmat Suit on a black card so I discard it. Bryce is my Rival, so he discards a red and blue card to pick it up. I then discard a black and a yellow card to pick up the red card. The Soldier then discards two more cards to pick up another black card. Trading cards around like that was actually pretty fun! Plus, the Soldier is now set up to do some major Searching in Baghdad. And I need only one more Red Card to cure it, plus, finishing up my turn, I meet up Chris in London to get my forth Blue card allowing me to cure it.
Unfortunately, the board is too full of Faded and in the next Infect step we suffer another outbreak at Chennai that chain reacts to Kolkata and causes it to Fall as well. This also loses us the game, as we had far too many outbreaks.
The next Stop card at game end is just a Win Bonus, if we can happen to succeed next try, we will get to reveal its contents. And we had already decided on the one Game End Upgrade—adding Efficient to Sequence to our Yellow Disease. We also add a few more permanent Roadblocks from Delhi to each of Kolkata, Chennai and Tehran.
And we have learned fast, that losing the Colonel really sucks. Damn him for being a traitor.
We set up the second game. Adding the funded events, Local Initiative and Resilient Population. This time around, we decide yes, the Virologist needs to be in play. We need more options in removing Faded figures.
The team:
Nikki (me), the Scientist, Marie Stopes
Rob (my husband), the Virologist, Eloise Kapoor, turns out, she’s a co-worker with Marie Stopes
Elijah (friend), the Soldier, Bryce North
Chris (friend), the Medic, David Bleak
The plan is still to search as much as we can with the Soldier, plus getting the cards we need over to me to find the Cures.
This game, we had it work out that Elijah could uses his ability to take Cairo out of the discard deck. It has an equipment sticker on it. He then uses it to search, then picks it up and searches with it again. That takes all his actions, so he just hangs out in Baghdad doing this every turn.
On our second Epidemic card, Karachi outbreaks and collapses. Then Essen outbreaks, which hurts. I’m actually sitting in Essen. Marie becomes Indecisive—she can no longer do the road block action.
On my turn, I do use long distance Share Knowledge with my Co-worker Eloise. I take the Essen and Ho Chi Min cards from her. I’m in Essen, and she was waiting in Ho Chi Min.
The game continues, we are at three Epidemics revealed, and seven total outbreaks. It’s going to be a close game.
On my turn, I’m able to complete the last search we need to find Patient Zero. He has the DNA of C0Da that we need. Plus we get to open package 7.
The vaccine is working! This means we now destroy the objective Quarantine 7 Faded Cities. We can now also build Vaccine Factories. We can move between them and Research Stations. Plus they will generate Vaccine Doses after each Draw phase. Those doses can be used to Vaccinate the Faded city. Using them first removes one Faded for an action, and for an action if there are no Faded on the city, it gets a vaccinated sticker, meaning Faded can no longer appear on that city. Nice! However, when we try to vaccinate cities in a region with a Military Base, each Base makes it more difficult. Two more objectives are added to our options. Have 3 Vaccine Factories on the Board and Vaccinate 6 Faded Cities.
We resume the game, however, finding Patient Zero has come too late, another Epidemic card is revealed which we do not survive.
For our game end upgrades we add Formidable to Eloise. She will now be able to use an adjacent city card when building structures. We want to get as many Vaccine Factories built as we can next game and then hopefully make some of them permanent.
For the second upgrade, we decide it’s finally time to go for the Nuclear option. Karachi is a Fallen city, it doesn’t currently have a sticker on its player card, so we add the Nuclear Strike. That way, if we do decide to nuke it, the Karachi player card will remove the Karachi Infection card and since the city is already Fallen, we won’t have to worry about making it Fallen and it will remove all the Faded from it.
Next Session Reports:
Coming soon!