Carson City, Pandemic
Tonight was game night at the local gaming store, and so I showed up ready for it...maybe a bit too ready. I knew that one of the players had been hammering this worker placement game called Carson City, and it sounded interesting, so I read the rules last night, ready to play. Turns out I ended up learning the game better than he did. And while it was a real self-esteem boost, I felt a little guilty coming in swinging like that.Anyway, Carson City combines worker placement with a neat map placement element and a small conflict mechanic. It seems to mush a lot of elements together, including role choosing which don’t actually interact with the main game very well, and some of it gets a bit lost, but it was still pretty fun, mainly because it’s such a short play. You only have four turns to get everything done, and the order that things are going to happen is very obvious. The game also makes a point to limit the cash you carry between turns, which can make a bit of a tough decision to spend for points or save to make big moves next round. I’ll definitely look into picking this up if I see it somewhere.
Then pretty much everyone left, and survivors played a game of Pandemic. Pandemic is a cooperative game that been the coop of choice since its release, and I tried to hate it for a long time. Naturally, with things you choose to hate, I hadn’t actually played or anything, as exposure to the thing can “force” you to admit that you’re wrong, but actually Pandemic isn’t that bad. It’s a bit crunchy and terrifying, mainly because there’s a lot that can go wrong and you’ll crash quickly and you’ve no clue what you should have done differently to make sure you didn’t lose (besides be psychic). But the cooperation aspect requires people to communicate, which is a great way to get to know a group around a table. What people focus on in a coop game is always interesting to watch.Pandemic, though, only gives you one thing to really focus on. How screwed you are. The game is relentless in how often it throws more to worry about, and how you’re not going to be able to do what you want, merely because of the distance issue. Something is going wrong in Jakarta and you can’t do anything about it because you’re in Buenos Aires, so...cross your fingers. Most of your victories are sighs of relief at your luck, so it’s definitely not my favorite coop. That will always be Battlestar Galactica until something comes out to prove me different.
As for this particular game, we were doing pretty good to start with, although we had a few pretty unlucky outbreaks early. But we managed to cure a couple of diseases and one disease didn’t even threaten until two-thirds of the way through the game. We thought we had it under control, but it turns out that five player Pandemic makes things a little too hard. Sure, you have more roles available, but when an epidemic comes up every single cycle around the table...you’re not going to get the cards you need to cure the damn thing. The deck is spread too thin, and even having a researcher didn’t help.
Oh man do I go into a lot of detail. Expect some posts soon where I try to explain just what the hell I’m talking about.
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