WARNING: This blog post contains shameless spoilers for Pandemic Legacy Season 2. Reading this blog post if you have not yet played the game will impair your enjoyment should you decide to play it in the future.

Previously, on Pandemic Legacy…

• We tried (and failed) to unlock the plan to enter Utopia
• We added all of the existing cities into the grid
• We lost both attempts at November

December (First Attempt)

It wasn’t long since our previous session, and we were all eager to get this ordeal over with, and skipped the usual bit where we review the report from the previous session. This meant that we completely forgot about the “turning point” card which would have granted us an extra 10 supply cubes per game. Ah well.

We couldn’t complete the plan ourselves, and needed a bit of help

The legacy deck instructed us to open the final package, number 8. Utopia is now a location in the grid, but we miss out on a rationed event card because we did not manage to get there without the help of a Deus ex Machina.

Utopia is now in the grid

We also have our new objective for the month – to pick up a sample from the lab in Lake Baikal, and transport it to the lab in Johannesburg, where we will need to have built a supply centre in order to process. Sounds easy, we thought.

Our new objective. It’s just one teeny tiny sample.

The initial infections for this game are awful, not helped by some oversights when placing initial supplies. We are up to 3 plague cubes already.

Cubey.

More cube

We crack out our usual characters:

• Karen – Ophelia (Instructor)
• Pete – Peron Peron (Immunologist)
• Susan – Lucius (Administrator)
• Gammidgy – Maggot (Farmer)

First Turn

So we know that Susan is going to be the key player in getting the supply centre set up in Johannesburg. Someone will need to travel to Lake Baikal to pick up the McGuffin, but then Susan will be able to use her ability to teleport them to her, and we’re done. Bosh. It’s Karen’s turn to go first. Gammidgy plays an out-of-turn event card to manifest some new supplies, which Karen places in London and Antananananarivo to mitigate the disasters there. Oh look, a plague cube in Sao Paulo.

The rationed event that Gammidgy used to get us some extra supplies

Pete is able to reach Utopia on his turn, but does not have the actions to do anything, so will have to wait for a bit.

Susan also travels to Utopia and establishes a supply line to Lake Baikal so that Pete can get there on his next turn.

A new supply line to link Lake Baikal in to the rest of the world

We discover that this mission is going to be harder than originally thought, as the carrier of the McGuffin will have to make the journey back the slow way, will have to spend a bunch of city cards along the way, and will also inevitably die as a result. Cheery. More plague cubes come out in Sao Paulo and Lagos. This game is going to be over very soon, at this rate.

The rules have changed, and oh shitty shit

Shitty shitty shit shit shit

Gammidgy moves to London, where he can use the satellite tower to send a blue city card to Susan. While this whole game is feeling a bit hopeless already, we need to at least make some effort to build that supply centre. He’s also able to make supplies and resupply Lagos.

Second Turn

Karen starts her turn in Antananananananarivo with some plague cubes, so needs to roll for exposure. Her luck is good. She uses her turn to build a supply route that will reduce the McGuffin carrier’s journey by one step. We can’t improve it any further than that. We have our first epidemic of the game, which results in a plague cube in Ho Chi Minh City.

A new supply line, for what it’s worth

Pete then travels to Lake Baikal and optimistically self-infects. He is able to make it back to Shanghai before a plague cube plops into Jacksonville. The game is over, and Peron Peron is also over.

This is how it ends for Peron Peron. Not with a bang, but with an experimental vaccine that dissolved him from the inside out

End of Game

A bunch of cities lose population. We’re not feeling optimistic about our chances at a second attempt. We don’t even bother spending all of our production units, though we do nominate a poor victim whose job it will be to carry the McGuffin on the next attempt, and give them an ability that might potentially help.

Meet Redshirt. Redshirt is already fucked.

December (Second Attempt)

We get initial plague cubes in Dar es Salaam and Delhi. We play the same characters as before, though the noble but pointless sacrifice of Peron Peron does mean that Pete is now playing as Redshirt.

First Turn

It’s Gammidgy’s turn to start this time. He travels to London, sends a couple of blue cards to Susan, then resupplies Dar es Salaam from the nearby haven of Ripley’s Hole.

Karen heads to Finch Reef and passes a black city card to Pete, who will need a couple of them for his journey from Lake Baikal to Johannesburg.

Pete is able to make it to Lake Baikal on this turn, but again will have to wait for the next turn to do anything else. We get another plague cube in Antananarivo – that city has been problematic for us today.

Susan resupplies Lagos and then uses her ability to move Gammidgy to Pete’s location so that he’s in a good position to offer support during the long slow trudge.

Second Turn

Gammidgy moves to Shanghai and resupplies there, before ending his turn in Hong Kong. An epidemic comes up, as anticipated, resulting in a plague cube in Seoul.

Karen resupplies Antanananarivo and finishes her turn in Turtloise Rock, braced to fast travel to wherever she might be needed next. Another plague cube, this time in St Petersburg. We’re doing much better than the previous game, but it’s still not great.

Pete is able to self-infect in Lake Baikal, and the journey back begins. He’s got the actions and the city cards to make it to Shanghai again, and innoculates Utopia on the way through, and makes some supplies to use up his final action.

Oh Redshirt, how briefly we knew you

Susan travels to London to resupply there. The presence of the hollow men means that she has to scratch for exposure on leaving, and she picks up a small scar. She finishes in Shanghai. We acquire new plague cubes in Delhi and Ho Chi Minh City – the next plague cube will be game over, and it’s going to take at least another two turns for our McGuffin carrier to make it home.

Another scar for Lucius

Third Turn

Gammidgy travels to Jakarta, where he can use the satellite tower to send some red city cards to Pete, who will need them for continuing his journey.

Karen does similarly, heading to Lima to send a yellow city card over.

With the red city cards from Gammidgy, Pete makes it as far as Kolkata. With his final action he builds a shelter so that he won’t have to roll for exposure at the start of the next turn. We get an epidemic, but no resultant plague cubes.

On Susan’s turn, we realise we’ve miscalculated. She’s too far from Johannesburg to be able to get there and build a supply centre on this turn, which throws away any chance of winning the game on Pete’s next turn. But it’s moot anyway, because we get a plague cube in Ho Chi Minh City and it’s all over.

End of Game

We throw the game away in disgust. We’ve performed terribly, as badly as is possible. Our disappointment is immeasurable, and our day is ruined.

Terribly

Terribly

Shitty shitty shit shit shit

WARNING: This blog post contains shameless spoilers for Pandemic Legacy Season 2. Reading this blog post if you have not yet played the game will impair your enjoyment should you decide to play it in the future.

Previously, on Pandemic Legacy…

• We induced the Hollow Men to defect
• We unlocked the Finch Reef haven
• We lost both attempts at October

November (First Attempt)

It’s been six months since we last played. As you can imagine, there was a lot of reacclimatisation required before we could even begin to play a game. We needed to remind ourselves of all the various rule changes, the recent twists and turns, our preferred strategies, and our goals.

Uncovering the top card of the legacy deck, we receive the unsurprising news that our objectives have changed. Building supply centres, which has been the mandatory objective of every game so far, is now no longer required. We now have a single mandatory objective, which is to perform four recon actions in Shanghai in order to unlock the plan to enter Utopia. These four recons do not all need to happen in the same game – if we only achieve partial success in the first attempt, then our progress will carry over to the second attempt.

Our single mandatory objective – to complete the plan

The first objective is going to be particularly challenging, as the player deck is now very large, and there are relatively few red cards in it.

The exact details of the recon actions that are required. Challenging!

During setup, we made a bit of a miscalculation during placing our initial supplies, and forgot to put a cube on Lagos. This sadly proved a problem when Lagos came up in the initial infection stage, and as of this point the city has been rechristened Plagos.

Plague cube in Lagos. Plagos. Do you get it? Honestly, if I have to explain this to you, I’ll be very disappointed.

We chose the same characters as in the previous game, and it was Gammidgy’s turn to start.

• Gammidgy – Maggot (Farmer)
• Susan – Lucius (Administrator)
• Karen – Ophelia (Instructor)
• Pete – Peron Peron (Immunologist)

First Turn

To start with, we just wanted to fix up some of the locations that were in a precarious way. Gammidgy moved to Ripley’s Hole from where he could resupply the adjacent location of Antananarivo, then hopped to the supply centre in Tehran to make some more supplies. Susan used her turn to move to London and perform the monitor action, averting a first epidemic. However, the frequency scanner card is now all used up, and the monitor action is therefore no longer available to us. Sad news, we’ve really appreciated that strategy. We also realised that we’d neglected to properly protect Jacksonville, and so another plague cube popped up there as well.

On her turn, Karen (who’d been summoned to London by Susan, on her turn) sat tight while Pete played an event card to make 6 supply cubes magically appear at her feet.

A rationed event card to make supplies appear from nowhere

Karen was then able to go to Jakarta and build a satellite tower there, which will be useful for helping people transfer their red city cards into the hands of one individual who would then have the responsibility for gathering enough to do the recon in Shanghai. She then built a sea lane to Bangkok, adding that city into the grid, before finishing her turn back in the comfort of Finch Reef.

A new satellite tower in Jakarta (sea lane to Bangkok soon to follow)

Pete used his turn to travel to Osaka via Finch Reef, from where he built a sea lane to Seoul, adding that location into the grid as well. Our first epidemic occured on this turn, result in Hollow Men showing up in St Petersburg and New York.

Hello and welcome to the population of Seoul. Good to have you with us.

Second Turn

Gammidgy was holding a “produce supplies” card with one more “systemwide production” action left, so we decided to play it. We lose the card as a result, but at this stage in the season, it’s time to start burning the furniture. He travels to Osaka to build a sea lane to Shanghai, which means that we can now get to Shanghai from Finch Reef in two actions. This feels like a useful investment for the future. On the subject of the illegal sea lane from Finch Reef to Osaka, we’ve decided that no punishment is appropriate, and we’re going to allow ourselves to continue to use it. We figure that there have probably been plenty of occasions when we’ve overlooked a rule to our detriment, so on this rare occasion that a rule omission works in our favour, we’re embracing it. Susan also played an out-of-turn action card to place 3 shelters for free.

Free shelters! Note that this is a one time only card, and is no longer available for future games

New sea lanes and shelters

Susan now has the requisite number of blue city cards in her hand, so zips over to Shanghai and completes one of the four necessary recon actions. Note that her character has an upgrade that allows recon with one fewer card, so only two are needed here.

Containment units: Prepared

Karen uses her ability to grab Johannesburg from the player card discard pile, as yellow cards are useful to us right now. She zooms over to Shanghai and gives it to Susan, thanks to her ability that allows her to transfer any city card to another player in her location, even if they’re not in that specific city. With a remaining action to spend and no good plan for it, she makes a little bit of supplies.

Pete establishes a sea lane to Tokyo so that we have that city in the grid, and then heads to Shanghai to do a little searching there. The result is disappointing – just a bit of lore.

Look at this lovely sea lane to Tokyo!

Look at this pointless search card in Shanghai!

A plague cube plops into Paris, and we all make sad faces.

Third Turn

Gammidgy travels to Shanghai with a pocket full of yellow city cards and devises a devious distraction before retiring back to Finch Reef. More plague cubes come out, this time in Johannesburg and Tripoli. The incident tracker is now up to 5, which is not fantastic.

A distraction so devious that I can’t even tell you what it is. Oooh, squirrel!

Susan goes to Cairo so that she can use the satellite tower there to send some black city cards to Gammidgy. Gammidgy takes this opportunity to play an out-of-turn event card to skip the infection step.

Karen joins Gammidgy in Finch Reef and hands him another black city card. We might as well have a crack at decoding the access key, but it’s feeling mostly futile. To use up her remaining actions, and offer us a slender chance at surviving another few minutes, she travels to Riyadh and places some supplies. Plague cubes in St Petersburg and Johannesburg, and the incident tracker is nearly at the bottom. One more plague cube will be the end.

Pete has a couple of red city cards, so travels to the popular resort of Finch Reef to do the recon there. This unlocks the Topaz laboratory, which gives us the ability to avert the removal of a supply cube from a city by playing a city card of the same colour. Might be useful, more likely we’ll completely forget about it.

Wellington being added to the board. Note the lovely nails.

There’s also a new character being added to the game, whose ability is to add a shelter to their location. This is pretty weaksauce compared to what our current characters offer, so this is probably not going to get used.

Vector Control Expert? Staying In The Box Expert, more like

The rest of the Topazzy blurb

Inevitably, a plague cube occurs in Tripoli, and it’s gg folks.

End of Game

I don’t generally report when a Hollow Man gets added to a location, because it doesn’t affect the incident tracker, but in this game Mexico City fell to “forsaken” status because of a Hollow Man there (and having started at population 1).

With our production units we spend 3 on a permanent satellite tower in Jakarta, and 2 each on permanent shelters in Shanghai and Osaka. The first two of these are going to be very useful, the last one less so but we’re really not sure what else to spend our production units on. In hindsight, boosting a couple of locations from population 1 to population 2 would have been good, but we didn’t think of that at the time.

November (Second Attempt)

We set up with the same characters and had another crack. While we have two of the components required towards the objective, it cannot be ignored that they are the two easier ones.

First Turn

Susan travelled to Cairo to resupply there after the initial infections left it devoid of supplies. There’s a Plague cube in Jacksonville. Great.

Karen travelled to Johannesburg to resupply there and innoculate it as well. At this point we would previous have played a monitor action to hopefully avert the first epidemic, but we can no longer utilise that strategy. We have a plague cube in Dar es Salaam. Great.

Pete did some supply makery, resupplied Sao Paulo next door. Here’s that epidemic, and we have a second plague cube in Dar es Salaam. Great.

Gammidgy got briefly distracted by Pete asking him to share his feelings on an unrelated topic. Gammidgy doesn’t like sharing feelings. After we all laughed at the awkward situation of Pete’s creation, we got back to the game, and Gammidgy went to Paris to resupply there. A plague cube in Tokyo brings the incident tracker to 4. We’re already halfway to losing this game. Great.

Second Turn

Susan went to Tripoli, used her ability to summon Pete and then take the Tripoli card from him. Might as well have a crack at getting three black cards into her hand, but it’s looking desperate already. Oh look, more plague cubes in Jacksonville and Washington. This is turning out to be the quickest game we’ve ever played.

Karen was able to use her turn to resupply Jacksonville and Washington, though this did require her to end her turn in Washington, leaving her in danger of exposure if we last as long as her next turn. Lasting that long is not looking like a certainty, at this point.

Speedrunning “Losing At Pandemic Legacy”

Pete travels to Dar es Salaam to resupply. It’s barely 20 minutes since we started this game. This sounds like a long time, but in the previous game it took us twice as long to reach this point. We’re not needing to take a long time to think through our turns because honestly what’s the point?

Jacksonville needs resupplying again so Gammidgy travels there to do that, before retreating to Helm’s Deep. Another plague cube in Sao Paulo leaves us with just one more incident left.

Third Turn

Susan has the requisite black city cards to go to Shanghai and complete one more recon. Our suspicion is that there’s not really much point to this – if we were able to complete all four recons, there’d be some reward, but just getting three of them is no better than getting none. But hey, if we can do it, we might as well.

The access key is decoded and turns out to be “hunter2”

Karen starts her turn in Washington so picks up a scar. It’s not going to be particularly punishing to have to discard a card after searching, and indeed it’s unlikely to affect her at all, but it does take up one space on her character card.

Ophelia has a new scar but it just makes her look tougher

Using her actions, she travels to Shanghai to give a red card to Susan (might as well) but it’s all in vain as we get an epidemic in Cairo that finishes us off.

End of Game

We’ve lost four games in a row, so we can finally scratch off the “turning point” card that has taunted us since we started the season. It will give us a few bonus supplies in the next couple of games. I can’t decide if this is going to be useful or of minimal impact.

A small handicap to compensate for our recent and continual failures

It’s been a bad game for our low-population cities. Los Angeles, Washington, Paris, Kinshasa, New Mumbai and Tokyo were all at population 1 at the start of this game, and thanks to plague cubes and/or Hollow Men are now forsaken. With a reduced number of cities in the grid, we only get 6 production units to spend this time, so we use them all on boosting the population of New York, Hong Kong, Osaka, Tripoli, Dar es Salaam and Sao Paulo from 1 to 2, in the hope of avoiding them falling to forsaken during our first attempt at December.

We’re hoping to have our final play session in early September, which will allow us to put Pandemic Legacy Season 2 to bed, and maybe get back to playing some normal board games for a while.

WARNING: This blog post contains shameless spoilers for Pandemic Legacy Season 2. Reading this blog post if you have not yet played the game will impair your enjoyment should you decide to play it in the future.

Previously, on Pandemic Legacy…

• We lost September on our first attempt and won it on our second
• We reconned East Asia
• We gained the ability to build shelters in cities

October (First Attempt)

The legacy deck reveals some new twists and turns. We now have just two mandatory objectives for the month, and no optional ones. We must build the three supply centres as usual, but our other objective is to coax three hollow men into havens at which point we can induce them to defect. To do this, we are given the ability to spread information which will cause the hollow men to move to an adjacent city.

The new “broadcast misinformation” action

Our two objectives

And a bit of bonus lore (click on the image to view it full size)

WARNING: This blog post contains shameless spoilers for Pandemic Legacy Season 2. Reading this blog post if you have not yet played the game will impair your enjoyment should you decide to play it in the future.

Previously, on Pandemic Legacy…

• We lost August on our first attempt (by a sliver) and won it on our second (convincingly)
• We gained the “monitor” action which can be carried out at satellite towers and allows us to potentially skip epidemics, if timed right
• We built a permanent supply centre in Tehran
• We spot a lost haven from New Mumbai, but don’t have a link to it yet
• We built a permanent satellite tower in London

September (First Attempt)

Setting up for September, the “Recon 1 new area” optional objectives has been destroyed and replaced with a “Recon East Asia” mandatory objective. This is fine by us, as we were planning on doing that anyway.

Our objectives for this game (two mandatory, two optional, and we need to complete three in total)

WARNING: This blog post contains shameless spoilers for Pandemic Legacy Season 2. Reading this blog post if you have not yet played the game will impair your enjoyment should you decide to play it in the future.

Previously, on Pandemic Legacy…

• We lost July on our first attempt and won it on our second
• We gained the ability to build satellite towers which can be used to send city cards to other players
• The Hollow Men have arrived – their presence in a city makes even passing through it dangerous
• We added a permanent supply centre in Buenos Aires

August (First Attempt)

Since we forgot to check Maggot for exposure at the end of the previous session, we start by doing that today. Sadly, he gains a scar. Of the available options, a slightly increased cost to chart a sea lane seems like the most innocuous, so we choose that.

Maggot now requires one more supply cube to chart a sea lane