by Tonesta78
AronFJenks wrote:
[o]Well. Perhaps I should post a game report and get some opinions. I'm sure exactly what the "wrong" team would be. We used the team that got us through November with a nearly flawless game, in position to score in the highest category if we had just been able to win December. Maybe we could have gained a slight advantage by swapping out a character, but I think the game should not be insurmountable with the "main" unit that did so well until that point. Also, by the time we realized how difficult December was going to be, well, we had already started December and it was too late to use a different team.
When you say "The second time around." Do you mean the second try at December? Or do you mean a second play through of the entire game? Obviously the game can be won fairly easily on a second entire play through, so I assume you mean the second attempt in December.
Whatever chance we had was in the first month of December. We went all-out to win. We used our last checkbox on at least 2 of the production cards. We used our remaining two unrationed events. And we didn't waste time doing any remaining searches (there were only 2 left that hadn't been done, (plus utopia), but one of them certainly would have been useful.). We didn't waste time trying to build supply centers that we could have made permanent to give us an easy game in the second half of December.
In hindsight, we could have just lost December on purpose to set up an easy win for the second half - but that's not the spirit of the game. You play to win, and we didn't think it was reasonable for us to be in position where we had to lose December on purpose just to win the overall game.
So, at the start of our second game in December, we had ZERO unrationed events (having used and wasted the crucial card that moves 4 utopia cards to the game end area, and having used and wasted the crucial card that gives 8 supply cubes from the reserve). We had 2 fewer production cards, and we were minus our best character for the carrier task (The character that had the upgrade to swap a card for any other card). We didn't have any permanent Supply centers in Red and we didn't have one in Johannesberg. Almost Zero chance to win unless we got lucky with card draws.
It didn't help that we got very unlucky both times in December, but still. We invest all that time and energy over a course of several weeks, and it comes down to the luck of the draw? And yes, we did have both red card upgrades (the ones that turn two non red cards into red cards).
There just didn't seem to be anything we could do to stop 8 plague cubes from being placed. It makes me wonder if I'm missing something. If a city has no supply cubes, there's nothing whatsoever to prevent one from being placed and moving the incident marker up one, right? Unless we missed something, there isn't a character, an upgrade, a companion, or a lab bonus or anything that can prevent a plague cube from being placed when an infection card is drawn and that city has no supply cubes on it. We can remove them using certain cards, but that doesn't back up the incident counter. It was really annoying to watch helplessly as we drew one card after another that put a plague cube on the board whenever we needed it to be a Hollow Man, and vice versa.
So, maybe it was just bad luck. Maybe we had some strategic errors. But through 11 months, we didn't really need to rely on luck. We played well and put ourselves in position to defend against bad luck, bad draws, and worse case scenarios. Its frustrating to realize that in hindsight, we should have just lost a couple more times in the later part of the campaign - gaining extra upgrades and getting some more rationed event cards into play. Instead, we ran the table from April onward, never having any rationed events and gaining only on month's worth of upgrade points each time, only to get screwed in December.
AAAAAARGH.
[/o]
[o]Happy to discuss, because we lost December the first time through as well - but in doing so, were able to optimize things in such a way that the second attempt was a cakewalk; I believe we had only two incidents, and that was despite the other three players wasting multiple moves to do a couple of additional pointless searches for completion's sake and travelling to Johannesburg at the end so they could be there to greet the Carrier! Also, one of those incidents was during set up, because I completely forgot to put any cubes on London.
I think there's several parts to it to avoid luck seriously having to come into play:
1) The carrier needs to have the ability to pick up a red card from the discard pile. Getting three (or four in our case - we had already built a sea route from Manila to Hong Kong, so the most direct route was blocked) of those is almost certain to be the toughest step. But if he/she can reuse one multiple times, it eliminates much of the luck of the draw (you only need to find one).
I believe the only two abilities that work (unless you've saved searches for Lookout - we hadn't) are either the Sanitation Worker job or the Investigator upgrade. We had neither in our first attempt, and got unlucky with the card draw. We equipped Investigator for the second attempt and luck became less of an issue
2) Topaz for the win. There's nothing you can do to stop a plague cube appearing in a city with no supply cubes, but you can stop a city from dropping from 1 to 0 by chucking out a card of that colour. And with only 7/8 cards total being needed for the journey, there should be plenty of spare cards going around in every colour but red. I suspect we used that ability 10-12 times in our winning run (having forgotten about it completely in our failed first December attempt) to stop a whole heap of cities becoming 'at risk'.
Of course if you never went to Wellington, then this is not an option.
3) Well positioned permanent radio towers in every colour for other players to transmit when needed
4) Shelters on route to prevent the carrier taking additional exposure
5) Permanent supply center in Johannesburg. When you search it, the card explicitly tells you that you're going to need a supply center there. So the game did provide a clue that that was going to come up
My view is that there was undoubtedly luck involved the first time through December - it's impossible to plan for something when you don't know what that something is! - but there's fewer excuses the second time once you know what's needed. And you'll of course have an additional 8 VPs between the two games to help you prepare.[/o]