Pandemic Legacy
I did it, you guys. I'm a crazy motherfucker. I bought Pandemic Legacy and I played it by myself FOUR TIMES. I am half-way through March! The game has turned off into a direction that I frankly didn't expect. Anyway, SPOILERS.
We all know the deal with Pandemic, right? There are four diseases ravaging the world, and there are only two to four people who can deal with the problem. You have to collect sets of cards to cure the disease, while also trying to slow the spread of the disease from city to city. If things get too far out of control in some regions, or if you are way too slow in curing the disease, you lose. But once all the cures are solved, it's only a matter of time.
Well, the Legacy game spans a year, in which the CDC has to deal with some a few diseases, which seems fine and dandy, until you are halfway through the first game, when it turns out ONE of the diseases is something we have never goddamn seen before, and it is impossible to cure. This I did not see coming; that the game would forgo its basic game objective right from the beginning and instead have you try to handle a few small epidemics while trying to just CONTROL a deadly pathogen that is tearing an entire region of the world apart. It can't be cured, it can't be treated, the only option is to quarantine and hope things don't fall apart. And they probably will.
I played four games, because I have no self-control, and kept trading wins with loses. First game was easy enough, even with the curveball, but the uncurable disease just started raging in the Pacific Rim in my second game and caused several outbreaks that I just could not control. The third game gave me a break in that region so I was able to recover, but the fourth game I actually got floored by the yellow disease, which I wasn't paying attention to and ending up outbreaking to disaster.
The game also has a lot of good continual upgrades based on what happens in a given game. Every time an outbreak happens in a city, it deteriorates, which makes it hard to get into the city. For me, Ho Chi Minh City is already on the verge of collapsing, as it unlucky keeps getting infected every game, and because I can't actually do anything about the disease there, it keeps outbreaking. I'm lucky that it's not a crucial junction point, but that is going to make movement in the area just rough as heck going forward. I should really convert the Ho Chi Minh city card into an Event, because it is goddamn useless at this point.
But you also get upgrades and new resources every month, including new workers and various little bonuses, like characters with relationships to each other, that allow them to synchronize their actions (which is super helpful in some cases), and scars if a character is unfortunately trapped in a city that outbreaks. The fact that a given city MIGHT outbreak has stopped me from moving a character a couple of times. I did get screwed in the last game when my generalist got stuck in Mexico City, but I gave her an upgrade to counterbalance it. I was really worried about the lost character mechanic (if a character sees too many outbreaks, you tear up their card), but as I've gotten two more characters right away, I'm less worried.
So yeah! I'll probably play a bit more this weekend, but the anticipation of putting stickers on board games is just too exciting. Legacy games are a really fun and good idea. I understand you can only play the game 12-18 times, but...compared to how many times I've played Pandemic in my life? That's actually a huge return of value ratio! To December!
I did it, you guys. I'm a crazy motherfucker. I bought Pandemic Legacy and I played it by myself FOUR TIMES. I am half-way through March! The game has turned off into a direction that I frankly didn't expect. Anyway, SPOILERS.
We all know the deal with Pandemic, right? There are four diseases ravaging the world, and there are only two to four people who can deal with the problem. You have to collect sets of cards to cure the disease, while also trying to slow the spread of the disease from city to city. If things get too far out of control in some regions, or if you are way too slow in curing the disease, you lose. But once all the cures are solved, it's only a matter of time.
Well, the Legacy game spans a year, in which the CDC has to deal with some a few diseases, which seems fine and dandy, until you are halfway through the first game, when it turns out ONE of the diseases is something we have never goddamn seen before, and it is impossible to cure. This I did not see coming; that the game would forgo its basic game objective right from the beginning and instead have you try to handle a few small epidemics while trying to just CONTROL a deadly pathogen that is tearing an entire region of the world apart. It can't be cured, it can't be treated, the only option is to quarantine and hope things don't fall apart. And they probably will.
I played four games, because I have no self-control, and kept trading wins with loses. First game was easy enough, even with the curveball, but the uncurable disease just started raging in the Pacific Rim in my second game and caused several outbreaks that I just could not control. The third game gave me a break in that region so I was able to recover, but the fourth game I actually got floored by the yellow disease, which I wasn't paying attention to and ending up outbreaking to disaster.
The game also has a lot of good continual upgrades based on what happens in a given game. Every time an outbreak happens in a city, it deteriorates, which makes it hard to get into the city. For me, Ho Chi Minh City is already on the verge of collapsing, as it unlucky keeps getting infected every game, and because I can't actually do anything about the disease there, it keeps outbreaking. I'm lucky that it's not a crucial junction point, but that is going to make movement in the area just rough as heck going forward. I should really convert the Ho Chi Minh city card into an Event, because it is goddamn useless at this point.
But you also get upgrades and new resources every month, including new workers and various little bonuses, like characters with relationships to each other, that allow them to synchronize their actions (which is super helpful in some cases), and scars if a character is unfortunately trapped in a city that outbreaks. The fact that a given city MIGHT outbreak has stopped me from moving a character a couple of times. I did get screwed in the last game when my generalist got stuck in Mexico City, but I gave her an upgrade to counterbalance it. I was really worried about the lost character mechanic (if a character sees too many outbreaks, you tear up their card), but as I've gotten two more characters right away, I'm less worried.
So yeah! I'll probably play a bit more this weekend, but the anticipation of putting stickers on board games is just too exciting. Legacy games are a really fun and good idea. I understand you can only play the game 12-18 times, but...compared to how many times I've played Pandemic in my life? That's actually a huge return of value ratio! To December!
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