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 This is a thread used in order to contain any and all spoilers and speculation regarding Pandemic Legacy and also to discuss the game in general. What is Pandemic Legacy Pandemic Legacy is based on the classic Pandemic Co-op game of going around and curing diseases, mixed in with the elements of Risk Legacy: the former was a standard game of Risk but it had the novelty of allowing you to have permanent changes occurring within the game, with you applying stickers and changing rules to truly make your game a one-of-a-kind. Pandemic Legacy has the same Legacy mechanisms but applied to an actually good game! If you have at least one other person to play it regularly with (a whole campaign of Pandemic Legacy goes from 12 to 24 games depending on how well you do), I would really recommend the game as it is a one of a kind experience! The Basics of Pandemic The original Pandemic features a dot-to-dot map of the world and 4 distinct diseases (all relevant to one specific area of the world). The aim of the game is to go around the world treating the disease to prevent outbreaks: if three cubes of a particular disease is present on the board and you are instructed to place another one, the city outbreaks, spreading the disease to all nearby cities: get too many outbreaks and you lose. You collect cards for the 4 different diseases and your aim is to collect at least 5 in order to find a cure for the disease. Once you found a cure for all 4 diseases, you win the game! You can lose the game by either running out of time (there is a draw deck of player cards) or by running out of cubes for one specific disease. There are also epidemics present within the player draw deck that increase the rate of infection (how many cards you draw to see where to place cubes) and also make you reshuffle the infection discard and place it on top of the deck, potentially loving up your plans. Thread Rules Yeah, I know, un-enforcable but please try to stick to them. If you are posting a spoiler, please LABEL YOUR SPOILER with the applicable month so that people know where they can look up to. It's the only way this thread is gonna work!
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Oct 31, 2015 19:02
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| # ? May 2, 2024 16:27 |
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Tekopo's Runthrough and Spoilers January Me and my fiancee actually kind of hosed this one up because we didn't read the STOP card about revealing it in the second epidemic card. We lost the first game anyway due to outbreaks in Asia, leaving Manilla rioting and loads of other SEA cities at 1 unrest. The second game we actually used C0dA-403 and managed to contain it thanks to the medic: having to spend two actions isn't too bad when you can remove all of the cubes. Having to treat only 3 diseases also made it kind of easier. Our generalist also got the Scar that reduces her hand size, which unfortunately meant that we were unlikely to use her in the future. We got a new research station in Hong Kong and our Medic got the upgrade that allows him to treat adjacent cities, which seemed a no-brainer. February Holy poo poo, we can't even TREAT COdA anymore? At least we have the tools to do something about them with the quarantines! This game went pretty well all in all: we even managed to eradicate black (calling the disease Vomitoria). Quarantines seem alright: you just use them to prevent outbreaks in the COdA areas instead of removing cubes. The new Quarantine Specialist is good and from now on we used 4 players because having the special abilities of 2 extra characters is actually better in some cases, especially with the relationships going around boosting people (we managed to get the researcher/scientist to be co-workers, making them a really effective combo). March Not too bad this month. We got military bases but they don't seem to do much in of themselves. We do have an additional victory condition as well as the Operations Expert, which we called Bob. We won by building the bases: the Operations Expert is actually alright since he can fly anywhere more or less if he is at a facility. By this time we have won all games except the first one, which means funding is 0: this is gonna be difficult now that we have no funding at all. The upgrades we got so far is another eradication on the Yellow disease (called Rick's Baecylium) and some more research stations as well as character upgrades: by the end of the turn we also have a starting military base in Manila since it was rioting anyway. April Oh oh, another 'go through legacy deck when you reach 2 epidemics'. I like how the system works actually: the game throws you a curveball in some games and doesn't give you all the tools necessary to handle the new stuff! COdA mutates again and it's basically zombies? Well, they become translucent and become 'faded' but it's similar. Our City Zero is Tokyo and although we win the game (after eradicating Vomitoria again), we end up with Taipei, Tokyo, Seoul, Shangai and Beijing as faded cities. This doesn't look good and holy poo poo, if you start your turn in a city with faded people you take a Scar immediately! Things are going to get a lot tougher! Tekopo fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Oct 31, 2015 |
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Oct 31, 2015 19:02
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My group's up to May so far, and enjoying it a lot. A few non-spoiler thoughts for people who haven't started yet: It's OK to have your play group fluctuate slightly, but it's easier to follow along with the changes if the core players are constant. Beyond that, it's fine if you have an extra player for a game or two, or for a player to sit out a round. Out of the box, Legacy is vanilla Pandemic. Obvious, maybe, but if you're like our group you might be used to playing with the difficulty cranked way up with expansion stuff. Make sure you read the rulebook VERY carefully. They do a bad job of highlighting the new Legacy rules that you need to be aware of. If you're like our group, you've got one player that's super excited to just open everything the moment the game gives permission, without actually waiting for you to read the stuff and apply the stickers and so on. Hit that player with sticks and don't let him near the packets.
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Oct 31, 2015 21:04
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Also one thing: losing games isn't that bad as long as you haven't had too many outbreaks.
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Oct 31, 2015 21:05
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Sure, if you don't mind writing LOSER on your rulebook in pen.  (Losing isn't that bad, but losing on purpose to try to game the system isn't very good.)
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Oct 31, 2015 21:18
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Oh yeah, I've been going for the win most of the times, it just isn't that much of a big deal if you fail the early months.
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Oct 31, 2015 21:20
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Interesting, I liked the concept of RISK: Legacy, so I'm glad to see someone taking that same idea.
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Nov 1, 2015 15:49
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Yeah I would recommend it f you liked risk legacy. Played May, no wins, at least funding is up. May Roadblocks seem okay but to be honest, I'd rather place quarantines. The colonel seems useful (especially thanks to having two military bases in SEA and Asia), but we lost both games to not being able to discover diseases fast enough. I think just having the quartermaster with the character upgrade that allows you to place quarantine tokens next to areas with military bases.
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Nov 1, 2015 21:17
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Grabbed the last copy in my local store. With the Shut Up & Sit Down and then Penny Arcade push, this game is going to fly off shelves even at the $70, one time play through price tag. Speaking of, Shut Up & Sit Down's Spoiler Free Review is fantastic. Pandemic Legacy in 6 frames (first game spoiler) 
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Nov 1, 2015 23:11
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fosborb posted:
This was our reaction too. Idea for the next time thus happens was to tear up into tiny pieces and sprinkle over the player wincing most like confetti We've played 3 games so far, lost Jan, won Jan then lost Feb. Next games will hopefully be tonight. Picked up some ultra fine Sharpies after completely failing to write on any of the components with a variety of pens last week.
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Nov 2, 2015 11:34
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Does this game have a DO NOT OPEN EVER mysterious sealed pack not mentioned anywhere, like Risk Legacy?
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Nov 2, 2015 12:24
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Pierzak posted:Does this game have a DO NOT OPEN EVER mysterious sealed pack not mentioned anywhere, like Risk Legacy?
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Nov 2, 2015 12:25
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Simply mentioning Risk legacy makes this game incredibly attractive to me.
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Nov 2, 2015 14:23
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Tekopo posted:Yeah I would recommend it f you liked risk legacy. May We've been having tremendous luck with the operations expert and the medic with the coworkers relationship. The ops ex can jet around the board building bases while the medic works on keeping everything under control. We've been able to consistently eradicate and upgrade diseases each game. The colonels seems like he's not worth the cost. That said End of June spoilers: The soldier looks real interesting. We're only playing with two, but I think he'd be incredible in a three or four player game. And I'm wondering how important it will be to equip all the cities in these months. At the end of June, we've only managed to equip one city, which happened to be the first Faded city. Pretty worried that'll have something bad happen to it.
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Nov 2, 2015 17:07
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Tekopo posted:No it doesn't, but it does have a 'only open if you gently caress up and lose 4 games in a row one. Just after opening the box, a player suggested to open that pack ASAP, in order to save time.
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Nov 2, 2015 17:10
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Prairie Bus posted:May The quarantine expert just seems so useful though and the operations expert will probably be less useful once we have permanent bases. Currently we have one disease at level 3 eradication and one at 1. We have the quarantine expert with the upgrade that allows her to place quarantine markers on nearby cities if she is at a military base (and with a military base in Shangai, this means that we can keep COdA under check extremely easily), and a researcher/scientiest combo that just discovers cures extremely easily. I think my go-to A team is gonna be the quarantine expert, the medic, the scientist and the researcher. I think having either the colonel or the quarantine expert (depending on relationships/character upgrade) allows you to deal with COdA easily, but you don't really need both. June is gonna be tonight for me, wish me luck!
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Nov 2, 2015 17:13
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Fat Samurai posted:Just after opening the box, a player suggested to open that pack ASAP, in order to save time.
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Nov 2, 2015 17:15
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Also the SU&SD review of this game is really good and mostly spoiler free, I would recommend viewing it as it pushed me over the edge in terms of actually buying the game.
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Nov 2, 2015 17:16
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Tekopo posted:Why would you do that? I'd only open it at the end of a campaign if I hadn't had the chance to open it previously. A fair and accurate evaluation of our capabilities and most likely outcome, mostly. Anyway, Tek, I remember that you said you played most of your games in boardgame meetings. Did you manage to get a full group for this, or are you rotating players?
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Nov 2, 2015 17:16
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Fat Samurai posted:A fair and accurate evaluation of our capabilities and most likely outcome, mostly.
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Nov 2, 2015 17:22
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Tekopo posted:Just me and my fiancee playing this at the moment. We do 2 characters each or only 1 character each depending on the month. Yeah, I expect this game would lose quite a bit with a rotating cast of players (besides the occasional "Why the gently caress are London and Moscow burning. I can't leave you alone a single minute!")
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Nov 2, 2015 17:56
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Prairie Bus posted:End of June spoilers: We won our game in June, eradicating black again. We managed to equip a lot of red cards (our faded cities), like 2 hazmats, some grenades and the especially useful 'counts as all colours' upgrade. We won on quarantines and eradication: our A-team of researcher, doctor, scientist and quarantine expert got the job done. Researcher and scientist with coworker is extremely good, I was just feeding so many cards. The quarantine expert just kept placing quarantines while staying at military bases: she's pretty awesome with that upgrade
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Nov 3, 2015 00:15
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Well we successfully beat February, then went straight on to beat March, then we thought we had April under control, we were a turn away from victory, then literally the last infection card hit the one place that would kill us, running out of blue cubes. April spoilers : zombies? Really? We kind of thought there was a possible military option open and ignored it in March when we saw an easy opportunity for an eradication. Seems like military bases might become even more important in future. Putting a military base into each region feels like a huge action sink right now without investing lots of end game upgrades on permanent military bases. What sort of teams did others run up until this point? Has anyone put the generalist to good use yet? Hes not really seemed relevant to us yet
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Nov 3, 2015 01:41
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Tekopo posted:June June Congrats! I've been tempted to use the Quarantine Expert. Our COda is yellow, and it's scary as hell sending people down to South America or Africa and risking a scar. That said, we've been winning pretty consistently with our team, so why mess with success. We're going to be playing July tonight, and I'm real excited about the new search mechanic. I think the operations expert is going to provide a ton of mileage, being able to set up a research base in a COda city he already has the card for. Generally, do you guys open up the new stuff at the start of a new game or at the end of the previous one? We open the start of the new month even if we're done for the night. It builds tension for our next game and is a good wind-down after a close call for a win. the Legacy deck is pretty clear on opening the cards at the start of the next game, but I guess we're just impatient.
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Nov 3, 2015 01:41
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I generally open stuff at the end of games, so I already have the July stuff open: I'm just too curious. July I actually think that the Soldier might be the best one to search: he doesn't need to worry about the scars from the Faded so he just stays in your research center and just searches all the time. It helps that I already have a research station in a faded city (Hong Kong). Alternatively, just have a quarantine expert there, if the city starts without Faded: you can just place a single quarantine marker there and as long as the quarantine expert stays there, she can keep searching WITH the bonus and there is no way that quarantine marker can get removed, as per the quarantine expert special rules.
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Nov 3, 2015 10:47
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Had our first session of this, 4 players. Lost first january game, then won the second january, won february and won march. We seem to have settled on a core team of Researcher, Medic, Quarantine and Dispatcher which works well so far. We have gotten through all 4 games without anyone taking a scar so far, mumbai and new york are level 2/3 panic respectively, the black virus is CODA which makes the whole of central asia/middle east a giant gently caress up that our quarantine expert spends all their time in. down to 0 funding, used both of the "Cheaper to cure" stickers, used the remote treatment upgrade on the medic, added a research station in asia, put an upgrade on quarantine expert, turned mumbai's card into the discard cards to remove cubes event since we can't cure or treat the black disease any more and can't fly into mumbai. and used 2 of the "can cure without a research lab stickers". The february and march games went by super fast, to the point where on reflection we possibly should have slow rolled the victory condition to put down some more research stations to give us a base in europe/central asia or maybe southern africa. Absolutely loving the game so far.
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Nov 3, 2015 13:48
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You do know that you can only place the 'cheaper to cure' sticker if you already have the 'can research anywhere' and 'can research without taking an action' sticker on them already? Edit: not a spoiler because it's stuff in the base game.
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Nov 3, 2015 13:51
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Tekopo posted:You do know that you can only place the 'cheaper to cure' sticker if you already have the 'can research anywhere' and 'can research without taking an action' sticker on them already? We somehow missed that sentence on the sticker sheet! At least they only got stuck on a couple of hours ago so I should be able to replace them with the lower tier ones pretty easily and move the illegal ones back onto the sticker sheet
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Nov 3, 2015 13:59
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I did that for a couple of things I got wrong, it's isn't usually too difficult. I've only managed to get one disease to level 3 and one to level 1 so far in terms of cures.
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Nov 3, 2015 14:02
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I like the funding mechanic, means accidentally cheating like that will rubber band pretty hard at you when you correct the mistake. Looking forward to our next game with 0 funding and proper disease mutations 
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Nov 3, 2015 14:09
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Tekopo posted:I generally open stuff at the end of games, so I already have the July stuff open: I'm just too curious. July Yeah, I may have to try the quarantine expert soon. We got our asses handed to us in our first try at July. We hit a couple early epidemics with a bunch of closely located COda cities. I tried to keep quarantines up while the fiancé did the research, but it just spiraled. We ended up with three new COda cities and some level three unrest before we lost. However, I was able to find the virologist. We won our second game with a little more control over COda, we stopped its advance into North America for now. Beginning of August I also vaguely discuss finding the virologist here, so beware. Speculation time - I think I can see a conflict with the governments and medical characters coming. Why would the immunologist be hiding? Medical characters have an easier time finding him, which suggests to me that he's hiding from the military/governments. Given that there's already such a stark line between the medical characters and military, I think a conflict is coming. Adding to that would be the last sentence on the virologist card. Maybe it's flavor text, but it sounds sketchy as hell. Excited for August tonight, although it sucks to no longer have the eradicate goal.
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Nov 3, 2015 15:34
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So far the only truly underwhelming character is the Generalist. Sure, she can have 4 upgrades but until you actually put something down she's really bad and all the other characters have specials that save a lot more than one action per turn. Also she is the only character in our campaign that actually has a scar, making her even less useful 
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Nov 3, 2015 15:51
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Tekopo posted:So far the only truly underwhelming character is the Generalist. Sure, she can have 4 upgrades but until you actually put something down she's really bad and all the other characters have specials that save a lot more than one action per turn. Also she is the only character in our campaign that actually has a scar, making her even less useful Yeah, it's really funny how she's just too slow. We haven't had much use for the dispatcher, but we're playing two players with only two characters. Our superstar has been the medic. With the right upgrade, the man is a beast. And with the ways to share, it's easier to make sure he gets the colors he needs to cure. He's single handedly eradicated multiple diseases. That said, he's afraid of small planes, and we find ourselves having to take a lot of shuttle flights.
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Nov 3, 2015 17:03
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Currently on our Medic we have (don't remember the month for this spoiler, sorry, but might be April/May) The one that allows him to distance treat once per turn and Veteran, which gives him the military symbol: my rationale was that since we have now 4 permanent military bases around the board, having that should allow him to get to hot-spots easily.
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Nov 3, 2015 17:18
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We got crushed in our first August game. COda has taken over five different red cities and about four different blues. We made some pretty simple errors that just kept snowballing. Didn't have a shot in hell at finding the immunologist. I think we might put the game aside for a day. It's stressful as hell, losing, especially knowing the ramifications for future games.
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Nov 4, 2015 06:49
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Welp, I hosed up (February/March spoilers) I misread how Relationships worked when we popped them out of the folder...we applied them to the characters we'd already been playing as rather than using them only when new, unused characters come into play. Consequently I'm pretty sure our February and March games were vastly easier than they should have been thanks to, among other things, a Researcher/Scientist Co-Workers combo that just made cleaning up a simple matter. The good news is the stickers peel off and reapply easily, no muss no fuss. Some liquid paper and a pen to re-write names and I think we'll be good, but I've decided that the next game we play we're going to be using the two unplayed characters who've had relationships retconned onto them and also that the next game we lose our funding, currently at 0 due to our winning streak, won't go up. I feel like an idiot, but there you go.
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Nov 4, 2015 10:43
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The Dice Tower has put all their Pandemic Legacy games on youtube. They haven't put up December yet. If you want to watch and compare how theirs plays out: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOlRvTbmD6tJ4eXcQz-kPaoJ6y4mscm_l
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Nov 4, 2015 12:26
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I would recommend anyone starting to play to make sure they read everything really carefully when they get new stuff: it is easy to make mistakes (I've made a few that were not too difficult to rectify) and since you can't really go back in this game and just try something again, it does affect the playing experience. June Does anyone know if you actually have to place down faded for towns that you drew in your initial hand? I assumed that since the sticker went into the area after you finished your turn and there isn't anything about placing extra faded in the setup page of the rules, you ignore the initial draws and DON'T place an extra faded for them?
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Nov 4, 2015 16:28
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Tekopo posted:I would recommend anyone starting to play to make sure they read everything really carefully when they get new stuff: it is easy to make mistakes (I've made a few that were not too difficult to rectify) and since you can't really go back in this game and just try something again, it does affect the playing experience. That's how we've been playing. It's also important to remember that the faded placement only triggers on drawing COda colors, not COda cities. We got that wrong and made it a lot harder for ourselves.
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Nov 4, 2015 16:35
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Prairie Bus posted:That's how we've been playing. It's also important to remember that the faded placement only triggers on drawing COda colors, not COda cities. We got that wrong and made it a lot harder for ourselves. 
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Nov 4, 2015 16:37
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