Board Games: Pandemic Legacy (non-spoilery post)
Dan and I have been playing the original Pandemic game for a while. It's one of our favourite board games. Photos here. I like it because it's cooperative and it's suspenseful and interesting but not overly complex. We've played it with my brother and also our friends Sam and Monique on different occasions and everyone seems to enjoy it. It gets harder with multiple players but with two players it's relatively straightforward - although Dan always argues that that's because we play on easy mode and we really should try to challenge ourselves more.
Anyway, Dan got mega-excited with the release of Pandemic Legacy. At first I didn't get what the big deal was because at the start of the game, it's very similar to basic Pandemic, in which your team of disease-fighting specialists races against the clock to travel around the world, treating disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.
What makes it interesting is that unlike Pandemic, it's a non-replayable game with an overarching story-arc.
It has a lot more elements in it than normal Pandemic and the decisions you make in the game affect future games. Season 1 (which we are playing right now) is comprised of about 12-24 games depending on how well the group does each go. What that means is that whoever you start playing with, you have to stay with so it meant that we had to find some people were going to be committed enough to want to play up to 24 games (potentially 12 weeks in a row! :) with us.
Chen and Tony were up to the challenge. We have what is likely to be our final game tomorrow night so tonight seemed like a good time to do a quick non-spoilery blurb about it. I'll post the spoilery version tomorrow after our game.
In terms of game play, during your turn, as with standard Pandemic, you have four actions available so you can travel around in the world using various means, build structures like research stations, treat diseases (removing one cube from the board; if all cubes of a colour have been removed, the disease has been eradicated), trade cards with other players, or find a cure for a disease (requiring five cards of the same colour to be discarded while at a research station). Each player has a unique role with special abilities to help them at these actions. Pandemic Legacy has more roles than standard Pandemic although I'm very wedded to the role of the Medic so always take that character :D
After a player has taken their actions, they draw two cards. These cards can include epidemic cards, which will place new disease cubes on the board, and can lead to an outbreak, spreading disease cubes even further. One difference to standard Pandemic is that outbreaks can increase the panic level of a city, making that city harder to travel to e.g. you can't drive in, you have to fly in by discarding a card.
With the Legacy game, each month in the game, you have two chances to achieve that month's objectives. If you succeed, you win and immediately move on to the next month. If you fail, you have a second chance, with more funding for beneficial event cards. There are a series of secret files and boxes that get opened as the game unfolds. We lost four games in a row one time so had to open box 8.
As the games progress, brand new rules and components get introduced. These sometimes require you to permanently alter the components of the game. This includes writing on cards, ripping up cards, placing permanent stickers on components!!! Chen and I were very horrified at the idea of ripping up cards. Characters can gain new skills or have detrimental things happen to them. It's even possible for a character to be lost entirely.
What this means is that it definitely ups the stakes for the games. Typically we'd be able to play two games a session. At the end of each game, you do the updates to the game in readiness for the next game - which might be that night or not for another week or two. Sometimes it got quite tense when there were decisions to be made which character to pick, what action to take … There was one time there were even tears and an argument because of things that happened in the game!!! :D
Dan's been given grief because he likes to test out new characters, take risks and explore different elements of the game play even if it means a few losses. Chen and Tony are much more competitive and goal-focused so winning is important! :D
It's a pretty exciting game and some of the stuff that happens gives it a very cinematic feel. This was our board at the end of our games last Saturday evening. I've been careful to make sure you can't see anything spoilery in the photograph!
As I am not going to delve too deeply into spoilers right now, our games nights with Chen and Tony are particularly fun because they love pampering us and always insist on cooking delicious food for us. We'll bring snacks and we'll often bring Dodge and Jerry with us. Elbie and Hoover can be left loose in the house but for a variety of reasons, Jerry and Dodge have to be crated and we hate the thought of crating them for so long so we bring them with us and they watch us play and they get let out to run around at regular intervals.
Anyway, in lieu of photos of the Pandemic Legacy board, here are some photos of what game night usually entails :)
