Game 82: Pandemic Legacy - Season 2

 As we continue to enjoy our time with two sons at home, Caleb introduced us to Pandemic Legacy, his gift to the family.  He's been playing this with friends in Michigan and has really liked it.  I've heard great things from others who have played it as well.  Today we played the prologue phase, and we lost.  We could have won if we had reversed a couple of decisions, but I insisted we couldn't time travel and what was done was done.  The prologue feels very much like standard Pandemic - a game I love but which Caleb isn't a fan of, and which is why, after 82 game postings, it is still not one I've blogged about!  We'll be playing more phases of this in upcoming days, so for now I'm mostly just posting pictures of it without much more commentary.

 One thing about the game is that you really individualize it.  For instance, we named the havens and wrote the names in permanent marker on the board.  We also choose and name our own character - adding stickers to our character board (unless you are Jacob who draws his own character!).

 And here's Caleb answering some of our questions about what future phases of play will look like.

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END-OF-GAME UPDATE

!!!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

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If you have not played this game and would like to, DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!  This is a game that unfolds with time.  Pieces are added to the board.  New developments in game play pop up that come as a complete surprise, so, seriously, if you want to play this, you don't want to read further!

OK  .  .  .  this game was amazing.  It was so cool to work together so strategically and so collaboratively as a family.  Though we lost the first two rounds (the prologue and the first round in "January"), we went on to win the vast majority of the rounds - winning in nearly all of the months on the first round in each month.  While this was exciting and felt really good, it was also to our detriment at times, because it meant that we were left without some extras that we would have otherwise had (such as "Rationed Event" cards).  Towards the end of the game, it also meant that we didn't have the time to set things up as fully as we would have liked for the end-game, so it got pretty scary as we headed into "November" and "December."  As we started "December," I wasn't sure we were going to win the game, and I'm not sure we would have had we not had the lucky break of David having the Utopia search card in his opening hand. But we did it!  WE WON!!!!!

Here are some pictures of the board as it expanded over time and as pieces and developments were added along the way and also some pictures of the victorious and of the self-sacrificial hero who save the world, Neon Glo (aka David).

 Notice that more of the world is being (re)discovered.

 Sorry, I just can't help but quote some T. S. Eliot:

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when 
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour, 
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom 
Remember us - if at all - not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men 
The stuffed men.

Above is what I believe was the key to our winning in "December."  In earlier months we made good use of monitoring and avoided "epidemics" very successfully in a couple of games.  That helped a lot!

We finally got into "Utopia" and the Pearl Lab where the cure was, at which point we (and by we I mean Neon Glo, aka David) made his torturous way back to the Jade Lab in Johannesburg in order to produce more of the cure and save the world!

 Here are two of the victors, Emeryx and Atsushi Yama (aka Caleb and Jacob).

 Here are the other two, Neon Glo and Hindi (aka David and Heidi).

 It was Neon Glo who made it to the Pearl Lab in Utopia and got enough of the cure out in the only way he could, by injecting himself with a (lethal, eventually) dose.  We hail him for his sacrifice!

 Below is the journal or game calendar for our campaign in case any of you who have played and are interested in seeing how we did at various points.  We began the campaign on May 27 of this year, and we completed it on July 22 of this year.  We're pretty proud of our winning record, but that also means we didn't get to play as many "games" as we otherwise would have, and, as you know, that's it; it's a one-shot deal.

This was a FANTASTIC experience, and I look forward to playing more legacy games.