Author Topic: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free  (Read 6369 times)

Offline dirk2112

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Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« on: May 30, 2016, 06:01:30 PM »
My wife wanted Pandemic Legacy for her birthday.  Upon opening it, she was eager to play it.  I got her the blue version which has something scientifically wrong on the cover, but is otherwise exactly the same as the red version.  The blue version is regularly $5 cheaper because of this...  ::)

I'll try to keep these session reports spoiler free, which will be more challenging than the game itself.

January - VICTORY  :))

Player characters - Medic, Dispatcher, Researcher, and Scientist

An epidemic card came up pretty early and Khartoum had an outbreak before we could get anyone there to treat it.  After that the yellow disease didn't cause us much trouble for the rest of the game.  Most of our trouble was in the middle east and Asia.  The medic kept the red disease at bay while the other 3 characters worked to collect the necessary cards to cure the diseases.  The yellow disease was cured quite quickly and the red soon after.  The Medic actually eliminated the red disease entirely.  This is a really good thing to do as it gives you more options before the next month starts.  The black plague was in full effect and even though we tried our best, 2 epidemic cards came up close together and Karachi had an outbreak.  The dispatcher and the medic worked tirelessly to beat it back while the other 2 characters were able to cure the blue disease.  After that it was everything went our way and the mission was accomplished.

Outbreak cities - Khartoum and Karachi
Worst disease - Black plague
Cards left in player deck - 5

Lesson learned - Have the dispatcher go before the medic. 

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2761.0

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #1 on: May 30, 2016, 06:12:36 PM »
I have read that 30% of players lose their first game in January.  We bit the big one in February. 

February - FAILURE  :-\

Player characters - Medic, Generalist, and Scientist

We kept all of the diseases in check most of the game.  The only outbreak was in Madrid and it was quickly cleaned up by Generalist and Scientist.  The Medic was able to cure and eliminate the red disease really early on, so we thought this would be a slam dunk.  The problem we had was we didn't have the Researcher, so passing cards back and forth became a huge problem.  We were able to cure the blue disease, but the others were still around when we ran out of player cards.  If you have never played Pandemic, losing by running out of player cards is the lamest way to go.  The good news is that losing in Pandemic Legacy allows you to get some upgrades for the next play.  This along with the fact that we eliminated the red disease again will allow easier wins in future months. 

Outbreak cities - Madrid
Worst disease - Blue

Lesson learned - The generalist wasn't particularly useful.  We will try this month again with the Researcher.  It is possible the generalist becomes useful later on, but I'm not sure.
« Last Edit: May 31, 2016, 03:02:39 AM by dirk2112 »

Offline Whaleyland

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #2 on: May 30, 2016, 11:55:57 PM »
I have read that 30% of players lose their first game in January.  We bit the big one in February.
We lost our first game in January but haven't lost another once since, and we're playing one month per real month, so so far the rest of the year has been pretty slow. Still, I feel the end coming soon. We haven't had mission cards in our deck since March except for the couple bonuses we've stuck to some of the Player Cards.

I'll try to keep these session reports spoiler free, which will be more challenging than the game itself.Outbreak cities - Khartoum and Karachi

Cards left in player deck - 5
I can tell you right now, with your current format, you won't be able to keep these spoiler free. But we'll see how creative you get in future games. How did you end up with 5 cards left in your deck? It should always be an even number, IIRC.
« Last Edit: May 30, 2016, 11:58:18 PM by whaleyland »

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #3 on: May 31, 2016, 03:01:04 AM »
I can tell you right now, with your current format, you won't be able to keep these spoiler free. But we'll see how creative you get in future games. How did you end up with 5 cards left in your deck? It should always be an even number,

I have 48 city cards and 5 epidemic cards.   That is 53 which is an odd number.  How do you have an even number?

Offline Whaleyland

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2016, 03:34:02 AM »
I can tell you right now, with your current format, you won't be able to keep these spoiler free. But we'll see how creative you get in future games. How did you end up with 5 cards left in your deck? It should always be an even number,

I have 48 city cards and 5 epidemic cards.   That is 53 which is an odd number.  How do you have an even number?
Ah, I forgot about the Epidemic cards. Still, I was actually told off by somebody online who said that the game always had an even number of Player Cards, which is why the handicap is shifted in pairs of Event Cards. Looks like somebody was wrong. I feel vindicated.

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #5 on: May 31, 2016, 04:25:01 AM »
In the regular Pandemic game, you can play with 4, 5, or 6 Epidemic cards.  So if you play on easy or hard, you will get an even number.

As for Legacy, I am not sure if an even number is possible.  Since we are only on February, we don't know, but there may be other reasons to add or remove a card.  I am kinda worried about having to nuke Essen before the board game convention.   >:D

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #6 on: November 21, 2017, 09:53:22 AM »
Wow I have left this go a long time.   

February attempt 2 - Victory

We tried February again in August of last year.  With the extra funding, we got through this one pretty much unscathed.

Player characters - Medic, Dispatcher, Researcher, and someone new

Outbreak cities - Seoul
Worst disease - None really

Lesson learned - The dispatcher used the Medic as a human vacuum to clean up the red and blue diseases.  We used that to get 1 bonus for each disease which paid off later. 

March - Victory*  <-- big asterisk here

We did March around November last year.  It went a little too well.  In fact afterward I double checked the rules and we made a BIG MISTAKE.  I hope I am not being spoilery here, but March gives you 2 new objectives (I won't say what they are).  We thought they replaced the main objective, but they do not.  You need to do the main objective and one of the other 2 optional ones.  After I made the mistake known an argument ensued as to whether or not we should replay March.  There was no way we would have cleaned up all 3 diseases, but then again had we known we would have played differently.  Needless to say it left a bad taste in our mouths and we didn't play this game for an entire year!

Player characters - Same as February

Outbreak cities - None
Worst disease - None

Lesson learned - The ever changing rules for this game are confusing.  BGG has a nice FAQ that answers a lot of the questions, but we missed this one. 
« Last Edit: November 21, 2017, 10:11:36 AM by dirk2112 »

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #7 on: November 21, 2017, 10:09:58 AM »
April - VICTORY

We were humming along nicely and then the game adds something that made us go  :o.  Luckily the new addition didn't seem to make much of a difference.  The cards were in our favor and we beat April easily. 

Player characters - Medic, Researcher, and 2 others

Outbreak cities - Lagos and Sao Paulo
Worst disease - Yellow

Lesson learned - We cured yellow so we got a bonus for that disease.  I am not sure if the disease bonuses are the best, but that is how we are playing it.   

May - VICTORY

Ohhhh No!  Things went sideways this month.  The thing that wasn't that important last month made this month get out of hand fast.  Things were blowing up left and right, but a bit of luck landed 4 yellow cards in a row to one player and the Scientist was able to get the red disease cured right after Osaka and Tokyo exploded.  The Medic was able to eradicate red, so now we have 3 bonuses for that disease.  While the scientist and Medic were working on the regular game elements, the other 2 spent all of their turns trying to keep black in check and it wasn't easy.  We somehow completed the objectives just in the nick of time.  The next card turned over would have been Riyadh and it would have seen another Outbreak and ended our game.  Also lucky for us, the outbreaks occurred in 7 cities where one hasn't occurred before.  Unlucky for us, a player was in LA when it had an outbreak. 

Player characters - Scientist, Medic, someone old, and someone new

Outbreak cities - Osaka, Tokyo, Mumbai, Riyadh, Cairo, Los Angeles, and Montreal
Worst disease - Black

Lesson learned - The someone new was absolutely terrible or perhaps we didn't use him/her correctly.  Needless to say, we will be changing the team for next month. 

« Last Edit: November 21, 2017, 10:14:27 AM by dirk2112 »

Offline Xanderx12

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #8 on: November 21, 2017, 03:25:51 PM »
The worst months are Auguts and September ;_; good luck! (still waiting for the translation to spanish for the season 2)

Pro-tip: the generalist is underrated :p

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #9 on: November 21, 2017, 06:22:51 PM »
Pro-tip: the generalist is underrated :p

The only time we used her, we lost.   :-[


June - Victory

The player deck was out of cards when the MVP player of this game cured yellow (finishing objective 1) and used her special ability to finish objective 2 in the same turn.  We got out of there by the skin of our teeth.  We eradicated the Red disease again and added the final bonus for that disease.  It should be a cake walk curing red from now on. 

Player characters - Medic, Scientist, 1 newbie, and the MVP

Outbreak cities - Bogota, Buenos Aires, Miami, and Mexico City
Worst disease - Yellow

Lesson learned - make sure your read the end of round cards before acquiring upgrades and bonuses.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2017, 07:50:47 PM by dirk2112 »

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #10 on: November 23, 2017, 10:32:59 AM »
July - LOSS  :-[

We had 7 cities outbreak this game, but we were able to achieve a one time objective.  Unfortunately the yellow cards didn't come out in any kind of way that we could cure the disease before the player deck ran out.  I am not going to list the characters we use anymore since there are too many surprises. 

Outbreak cities - Tehran (twice), Karachi, Baghdad (twice), Miami, and Bagota
Worst disease - Black

July attempt 2 - VICTORY  :))

We had 5 outbreaks and that resulted in 4 rioting cities.  Yet again yellow was the hardest to get cards for, but the additional funding gave us a card that saved the day.   

Outbreak cities - London (twice), Madrid, Buenos Aires, and Osaka
Worst disease - Blue

August - Victory  :))

We had 3 cities outbreak this game, but none of them had done so before, so it wasn't a big deal.  We had 5 objectives this month and we only had to accomplish 3 of them.  We inadvertently completed them all in what was our biggest and best win yet.  We eradicated both blue and red diseases and upgraded blue for the 3rd time.

Outbreak cities - Santiago, Sydney, Manilla
Worst disease - Yellow

The MVP this game was the dispatcher.  We haven't used him in quite a while, but he cured 2 of the 3 diseases and eradicated blue. 
« Last Edit: November 23, 2017, 06:37:17 PM by dirk2112 »

Offline dirk2112

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Re: Pandemic Legacy - Spoiler Free
« Reply #11 on: December 01, 2017, 06:03:42 AM »
September - Victory

A surprisingly easy win.  The cards were in our favor. 

October  >:(  :(n)

So we completed 3 objectives and won this month.  Unfortunately we didn't complete a particular objective that totally ruined our end of game.  This optional objective SHOULD have been mandatory IMHO.  Nothing warns you that you won't be able to attempt it in November.  Similar objectives before it can be done in later months.   It really left a bad taste in our mouth.  Had we known better or read spoilers, we would have lost the month of October on purpose to get another chance at that objective.  Also, there was NO way to achieve that objective as the city we needed to be in was one of the first 3 cities we infected and the card for it was on the bottom of the player deck.  There were previous end of game upgrades that could have helped us, but we didn't choose those because we didn't know what was coming.  I suppose thematically this works because after all nothing goes to plan during a Pandemic, but I feel this was a bad decision in an otherwise amazing game. 

November - Victory

South America and East  Asia started to get out of control, but Europe and the Middle East were surprisingly quiet.  We lost track of what cities blew up during this game as it was late and we passed out afterwards.

December - Loss  :(

There were 2 objectives this month and early on we knew we could only complete one of them.  So we hammered that out knowing we wouldn't have to worry about it on attempt 2.  Unfortunately London and Madrid are gone.  These were our first and last fallen cities.  Hopefully Dan and Decar made it ok to Essen. 

December attempt 2 - A win and It's OVER!

So we only had to fulfill one objective this month, so you'd think it would be a cake walk.  It is not a cake walk.  Even with all of the most useful upgrades and the best team members, this objective is all luck of the draw.  The fate of the world comes down to how things were shuffled.   At a certain point we needed 2 black cards and we were flying to cities we didn't need to go to just to pass specific cards back and forth.  It was annoying to say the least.  Luckily we made it through and we got to the end.  At the end, the game basically tells you how you did.  Sure we lost London and Madrid, but the rest of the world was in pretty good shape.  We should have the best ending right?  Nope, we should have lost October on purpose. 

Final thoughts
This was a fantastic game.  When I first heard of Legacy games, I didn't like that they limited themselves to 12 total plays.  After playing this though, I am 100% down with the idea.  I have owned regular games for years that I haven't played 12 times in total.  I also like that I can throw this away now and make room for something else.  The components can be reused for other purposes as well.  Maybe a Carcassonne fan expansion? 

My 3 complaints for an otherwise flawless game.
#1 October to November nonsense
#2 Some of the rules are confusing.  Early on we messed a lot of them up.  After we found the FAQ on BGG, we played flawlessly.   
#3 There is a mechanic that appears in the game that just isn't fun.  It lends itself to players sitting in a city and playing set collection with cards as opposed to treating diseases.  I like when the medic is in Asia, the Dispatcher is in the US, and the researcher is in Europe.  When everyone is in the same city for most of a month, it is just plain boring. 

Because of that, I give the game a 9 out of 10. 
« Last Edit: December 01, 2017, 08:42:57 AM by dirk2112 »


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