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Other Games / Re: Pandemic Legacy (probably will have spoilers)
« on: December 29, 2020, 06:32:43 am »
Season 0 mini playlog. My partner and I have played the Prologue and January, I'll list some highlights here. Will spoiler tag everything except the Prologue.
Prologue game: 2 objectives - An unknown city in Europe, and a known city Novosbirik
Basically an introduction game, it went smoothly enough. We played the Dispatcher like (move another pawn or team up to 3 spaces for an action) and Scientist (form teams with only 4 cards). We weren't able to form teams for a while, but once we did, things started going smoothly. We formed a Neutral team midgame, a Soviet team a little later and an Allied team towards the end. The unknown city ended up being Rome, I believe, which was allied, and we opted for just waiting until there were few enough cities that we could place teams in all of them, since we didn't quite have enough Europe cards or a Safe House in Europe to aquire targets.
What we learned from this first game is that forming the right types of team and aquiring targets is hard - you need a safehouse in the right allegiance or the right continent respectively, and while getting 5 cards is potentially easier than in regular Pandemic, being at the right location with that safehouse adds an extra complexity to it.
January game 1: 2 objectives - Known targets in Sao Paolo and Santiago, and unknown city in Asia
Unsurprisingly, no new mechanics at the start of this game, and no new ones midway through. We played the Dispatcher like again, but I switched to playing the Operations Expert. We had a very rough start - my partner went first and couldn't treat anywhere important, so we opted to move us both to Mexico City and she would take the card for 4 Neutral cards (as we need 2 neutral teams). Then a turn 1 Escalation lead to 3 incidents by the end of turn 2, with nothing we could have done about it. We got one more incident soon after which might have been preventable but only just.
From there the game progressed reasonably smoothly - we got the incidents under control, and with our early neutral team was able to mop up all of the neutral hotspots. Next we formed an allied team, and I was able to acquire targets in Asia, identifying Soviet city Peking. Unfortunately we hadn't drawn many Soviet cards by this point. IIRC at 3/5s of the way through the player deck we had drawn 5, with 1 under the objective card, meaning 8/14 were still in the deck. And I'd just used 2 to identify the target city.
We had the board fairly clean except for three cities with 3 agents before the final escalation was drawn, so we were confident about not losing to incidents - it was just time that was the question. Or so we thought. I moved a team to mop up one of the final 3 agent cities before the final escalation was drawn, as we got me positioned so I would be able to form the final team and finish the second objective on my final turn. Then we drew that final escalation, placing 3 agents in Leopoldville. I removed one of the 3 agent cards with Resilient Population equivalent. And then infected Leopoldville, causing the 5th incident. The incident effect? Add an agent to all cities with an incident in Africa, causing the 6th incident immediately. Drawing another incident effect, add an agent to all cities with an incident in Africa. So we went straight from 4 incidents to 7 in a completely impossible to prevent situation, lovely. Partner's final turn finished one objective, and just needed to not draw the one remaining city which could have an incident and we would win!
She of course drew that city, giving us a pretty frustrating loss that felt rather unfair - 6 incidents out of 8 were completely unpreventable, the remaining 2 potentially we could have dealt with but it'd have meant other sacrifices. Bad draws also left most events in the 2nd half of the deck, along with most of the Soviet cards - and we had a lot of hotspot Soviet cities that had come up from the infection deck. Technically it was an "Adequate" pass, we move on to February - but it still felt pretty annoying. I reckon that we probably could have won the game with slightly more optimised play, it's hard to say though.
We decided to spend our 2 upgrade points giving the Politician to the Operations Expert (eventually I'll remember their new names... think this one is Hospital Administrator?), target city Washington. As a character who can get around quite easily, having the option to go back to Washington for 2 actions and a card at most at any time, and then give a card to someone else, feels pretty strong.
Prologue game: 2 objectives - An unknown city in Europe, and a known city Novosbirik
Basically an introduction game, it went smoothly enough. We played the Dispatcher like (move another pawn or team up to 3 spaces for an action) and Scientist (form teams with only 4 cards). We weren't able to form teams for a while, but once we did, things started going smoothly. We formed a Neutral team midgame, a Soviet team a little later and an Allied team towards the end. The unknown city ended up being Rome, I believe, which was allied, and we opted for just waiting until there were few enough cities that we could place teams in all of them, since we didn't quite have enough Europe cards or a Safe House in Europe to aquire targets.
What we learned from this first game is that forming the right types of team and aquiring targets is hard - you need a safehouse in the right allegiance or the right continent respectively, and while getting 5 cards is potentially easier than in regular Pandemic, being at the right location with that safehouse adds an extra complexity to it.
January game 1: 2 objectives - Known targets in Sao Paolo and Santiago, and unknown city in Asia
Unsurprisingly, no new mechanics at the start of this game, and no new ones midway through. We played the Dispatcher like again, but I switched to playing the Operations Expert. We had a very rough start - my partner went first and couldn't treat anywhere important, so we opted to move us both to Mexico City and she would take the card for 4 Neutral cards (as we need 2 neutral teams). Then a turn 1 Escalation lead to 3 incidents by the end of turn 2, with nothing we could have done about it. We got one more incident soon after which might have been preventable but only just.
From there the game progressed reasonably smoothly - we got the incidents under control, and with our early neutral team was able to mop up all of the neutral hotspots. Next we formed an allied team, and I was able to acquire targets in Asia, identifying Soviet city Peking. Unfortunately we hadn't drawn many Soviet cards by this point. IIRC at 3/5s of the way through the player deck we had drawn 5, with 1 under the objective card, meaning 8/14 were still in the deck. And I'd just used 2 to identify the target city.
We had the board fairly clean except for three cities with 3 agents before the final escalation was drawn, so we were confident about not losing to incidents - it was just time that was the question. Or so we thought. I moved a team to mop up one of the final 3 agent cities before the final escalation was drawn, as we got me positioned so I would be able to form the final team and finish the second objective on my final turn. Then we drew that final escalation, placing 3 agents in Leopoldville. I removed one of the 3 agent cards with Resilient Population equivalent. And then infected Leopoldville, causing the 5th incident. The incident effect? Add an agent to all cities with an incident in Africa, causing the 6th incident immediately. Drawing another incident effect, add an agent to all cities with an incident in Africa. So we went straight from 4 incidents to 7 in a completely impossible to prevent situation, lovely. Partner's final turn finished one objective, and just needed to not draw the one remaining city which could have an incident and we would win!
She of course drew that city, giving us a pretty frustrating loss that felt rather unfair - 6 incidents out of 8 were completely unpreventable, the remaining 2 potentially we could have dealt with but it'd have meant other sacrifices. Bad draws also left most events in the 2nd half of the deck, along with most of the Soviet cards - and we had a lot of hotspot Soviet cities that had come up from the infection deck. Technically it was an "Adequate" pass, we move on to February - but it still felt pretty annoying. I reckon that we probably could have won the game with slightly more optimised play, it's hard to say though.
We decided to spend our 2 upgrade points giving the Politician to the Operations Expert (eventually I'll remember their new names... think this one is Hospital Administrator?), target city Washington. As a character who can get around quite easily, having the option to go back to Washington for 2 actions and a card at most at any time, and then give a card to someone else, feels pretty strong.