Late April was a quick and easy win. It's amazing how much more straightforward this game is when you're not actively trying to do a recon in addition to the other two optionals AND all 3 supply centres.
Also, how much difference a tiny bit of funding can make to the endgame.
We started with our dream team of upgraded characters again, having supplied the grid to the point of being safe from the initial draw, and adding the few extra supplies we had to our most outlying locations - Bogota, Moscow - and to our places with most cards remaining in the deck, Cairo and Istanbul.
We mostly managed this one pretty straightforwardly, with our Labourer/Architect building two of the supply centres in fairly random locations, and out final one being finished off by building a radio tower and passing the cards. We also got a little lucky with our initial draw, getting one of our Well Stocked locations and 4 places we really wanted to clear the cards from - as a result by the second turn we had cleared all of North America apart from DC and NYC, and we got DC by the end of the game. So for now(...) we don't have to worry about North America except for New York which is easy to supply, and we've cleared a lot of South America too.
We were also able to connect and (thanks to Broker) Search Johannesburg, which we were pretty sure was lab Jade, giving us much less harsh epidemics, and the Scientist, Sophia, as well as a couple of other searches that didn't do a vast amount (Bogota and San Francisco).
And by the end of the game thanks to judicious use of the plague-removing Rationed Event and the Broker recycling Lima, we'd entirely cleared the board of plague!
With our 7 points of upgrades we decided that it might be time to retire the Farmer in favour of Esteban the Immunologist, who we upgraded with Courier, we also put our first permanent radio tower in Cairo, and made one of our cards a Broken Link.
Final game state, and after upgrades:
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This game was definitely faster than the others, but we also got a lot luckier. Tripoli never even GOT any Plague, and we drew and were able to inoculate all but one of the 1-infection card cities that we were hoping for. Next turn will be tougher as we managed to add three city cards, taking us over the epidemic limit, and forget to remove any to compensate, meaning we're RIGHT at the bottom of the 8-epidemic point, which will be unfun. And we've got a recon we're planning on doing.
Also, how much difference a tiny bit of funding can make to the endgame.
We started with our dream team of upgraded characters again, having supplied the grid to the point of being safe from the initial draw, and adding the few extra supplies we had to our most outlying locations - Bogota, Moscow - and to our places with most cards remaining in the deck, Cairo and Istanbul.
We mostly managed this one pretty straightforwardly, with our Labourer/Architect building two of the supply centres in fairly random locations, and out final one being finished off by building a radio tower and passing the cards. We also got a little lucky with our initial draw, getting one of our Well Stocked locations and 4 places we really wanted to clear the cards from - as a result by the second turn we had cleared all of North America apart from DC and NYC, and we got DC by the end of the game. So for now(...) we don't have to worry about North America except for New York which is easy to supply, and we've cleared a lot of South America too.
We were also able to connect and (thanks to Broker) Search Johannesburg, which we were pretty sure was lab Jade, giving us much less harsh epidemics, and the Scientist, Sophia, as well as a couple of other searches that didn't do a vast amount (Bogota and San Francisco).
And by the end of the game thanks to judicious use of the plague-removing Rationed Event and the Broker recycling Lima, we'd entirely cleared the board of plague!
With our 7 points of upgrades we decided that it might be time to retire the Farmer in favour of Esteban the Immunologist, who we upgraded with Courier, we also put our first permanent radio tower in Cairo, and made one of our cards a Broken Link.
Final game state, and after upgrades:
This game was definitely faster than the others, but we also got a lot luckier. Tripoli never even GOT any Plague, and we drew and were able to inoculate all but one of the 1-infection card cities that we were hoping for. Next turn will be tougher as we managed to add three city cards, taking us over the epidemic limit, and forget to remove any to compensate, meaning we're RIGHT at the bottom of the 8-epidemic point, which will be unfun. And we've got a recon we're planning on doing.