The Year We Fell: November

The Year We Fell is a Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 game diary. The previous entry was October.

No one wanted to play.

After the relative ease of slipping Legacy into October, November was a different story. The first weekend I was away in Wales, the second weekend the little girl was attending a birthday party, the third weekend little girl had a rugby tournament event, the fourth weekend little girl was participating in a county gymnastics competition. If you’re wondering who the family revolves around, it’s a complete mystery.

We forced the November game onto the second weekend. But I didn’t want to do it, what with being behind on every task as usual, plus it was a Thinky Games stream weekend. No one wanted to play Legacy. But play we did.

Play board games out of duty rather than excitement? Welcome to The Year We Fell.

HEY, UH WATCH OUT FOR SPOILERS BELOWWWWW

The big surprise

So the big surprise this month was… no surprise at all. Zodiac threatened us, but it was all mouth and no action. Literally.

The only quirk was a scratch card for teams who hadn’t yet opened Package 6 or 7. I checked online what this card unveiled: basically, it terminates all of the searches and forces players to open boxes 6 and 7 making sure every player campaign is on the same story page. But, rules wise, it was a big nothingburger for Team Dance and, in a way, we were pleased. Startup was swift with no new rules to learn. We would continue our vax strategy.

Not too much Faded trouble, with some green men falling upon Montreal and London, while heavy infections were splashed across Hong Kong, Delhi and Buenos Aires. A new military base was deposited at HK as per the new rules for Zodiac expansion.

Intensive discussion followed over whether we should take the new immunologist character into the team for this game. It came down to choosing the immunologist to accelerate vax rollout or retaining the quarantine specialist who we had never played without since she entered the picture. We reckoned vax work could counter Faded threats but it was a difficult decision. And if we failed this month, it wouldn’t be all bad, as it meant we could fix even more Faded cities before the grand December finale. Although I had no idea when we might insert a second November game into the month.

The team: Immune Dad, Medic Boy, Dispatcher Mum and Builder Girl. We thought the Builder would be good for building more vaxfax and possibly a research station if needed. We’d set up Medic Boy to deal with cube threats but, in an unusual twist, Medic Boy was last in the character rotation. We’d have to survive three turns before his super cube blaster became available.  An epidemic before then could be trouble.

That meant we had to force all the other characters into performing cube triage. Efficient moves were the order of the day, with Dispatcher Mum using a spare move to walk Builder Girl to HK in her sleep so she could sort it out in the very next turn. We accepted the risk of an outbreak at the end of turn one, potentially leaving the Builder with a scar. But it was November. Scars, especially on our Builder character, were not a serious concern. Indeed, no epidemic emerged. Red being our Suppressed virus meant she stripped all the cubes from Hong Kong in one move.

We built a second vaxfax at Milan to start rolling the vaccine out in Europe. The big problem with Europe, however, was the Milan military base making vaccination costly in terms of actions.

And, well, we also made a mistake. We planned to get some equipment from the Milan vaxfax but realised too late that although you can fly between research stations and vaccine factories, they are not the same at all. The vaxfax cannot deliver equipment. We had planned to use the Bioreactor equipment (generates extra doses) but that plan was foiled due to this misunderstanding over the vaccine factory.

The first epidemic emerged at the end of the third turn, just before Medic Boy walked on stage.  It smote Algiers. Delhi remained at three cubes but we deployed the Chennai/Experimental Program card which allowed us to siphon out one Delhi cube. The Dispatcher/Builder Rivals relationship allowed us to save the card and Girl took it in exchange for Buenos Aires and Chicago. As Buenos Aires carried Riot Gear – which keeps you safe in a Faded city – we Rivalsed it back as a way to get the Riot Gear to Mum, discarding St Petersburg and Miami in exchange.

You might think saving Experimental Program, which only deletes one cube from somewhere on the board, might be too minor an advantage to justify discarding two cards. But we were aware that the lack of the lockdown character meant we had lost our quarantine-of-last-resort option and needed something as backup.

Unfortunately, Medic Boy’s entire turn was expended on walking to Algiers to cure it. It seemed a nightmare waste of a turn.

You must be joking

It’s time to admit another rule failure, unfortunately to our benefit.

We “realised” that the Dispatcher’s Pilot upgrade, which allowed the Dispatcher to keep a City card when using it for a direct flight, could be used a second time to fly out from that city to anywhere on the board. Unfortunately, this isn’t true. That second flight is known as a charter flight and does not fall under the Pilot rule and you have to discard the card for that flight as normal. We used this erroneous double-Pilot rule to move the Dispatcher around a couple of times.

Perhaps this highlights a real problem with Legacy: so many rules. I think we’ve been losing out more from forgetting rules (roadblocks, self-sacrifice) than gaining, but the problem is the same. It takes time and effort to experience the rules rather than simply learn them. The reason that Legacy doesn’t help too much with clarification is because (a) snappy rules are better than snappy essays and (b) Legacy doesn’t want to spell out the full implications of the rules, the ways they can be legitimately exploited. A successful Legacy campaign team will be combining rules in genius ways to make genius moves.

Anyway, in her turn, Dispatcher Mum picked up LA with Riot Gear and also… the second epidemic. It fell upon Tokyo, which was less than ideal. Further, as the Infection deck barely had any cards in it, the chance of a Tokyo outbreak in the Infection draw was… let’s see… 50/50? And that would be a pain in the ass because it would blast Faded across Asia, just after we’d done great work vaxxing numerous cities.

Of course Tokyo was in the infections.

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, board.

We spent a long time thinking about our direction for the next turn but I asked Builder Girl to build a vaxfax in Montreal while using a dose to chip off one of the three Faded figures residing there. She was safe to sleep there in Riot Gear. Uncomfortable, for sure, but safe.

Then it was my turn as Immune Dad and I annoyed everyone as I slowed the game down to work through a cunning plan.

Without quarantines, resolving problems like Tokyo was very difficult. Tokyo was now a collapsing city, so we needed a card to get into it, and another epidemic could bring it around for a second outbreak. This was expensive and dangerous. But as the immunologist I could remotely vaccinate a city and, further, if I had a card equipped with an Aerosol, it meant I could remove all Faded and vaccinate in a single step – normally it would take two actions and I could only remotely vaccinate once per turn.

We stepped through the plan and, to my annoyance, it was not possible to pull off in a single turn. At least nobody expected a third epidemic for a little while. I grabbed some vaccine, remote vaccinated Paris then waited in Taipei for the next turn. Another stroke of good luck was picking up the Essen/Airstrike in my Player card draw, something nice to keep in reserve when needed – such as the next epidemic.

As the turns ground on, we were getting a bit tired that our vaccinations weren’t having a better impact on the board as the infections kept assiduously avoiding vaccinated cities. At least Miami popped up in the infections which led to some muted cheers.

After cube pruning and Faded pruning, I carried out the plan to remotely vaccinate Tokyo. It worked nicely and Tokyo would no longer be an issue in this month nor the next. I also managed to pick up Taipei from Medic Boy on this journey which meant red was cured passively, but I was stuck in Osaka, a Faded city with Faded.

Medic Boy saved Dad’s ass. First, he eradicated red, which was not as big a deal as it usually was, considering half of the red region was now Faded. But then he stopped by in Osaka to use a grenade belt to take out that green guy. I suppose it’s a bit weird we now have a choice to explode or cure the Faded. Perhaps there should be an ethical dilemma baked into the rules, that if you’re willing to detonate your way through trolley problems, you’re actually propping up Zodiac.

No rest for the WCKD

Dispatcher Mum then managed to use the same Aerosol trick on Chicago, super-vaxxing it from three Faded immediately to vaccinated city. The card on which the Aerosol had been applied was Montreal, and Builder Girl rivalsed it back then blew up the military base in Milan, too.

It seemed there was no let up on this board because her turn ended with the third epidemic – at Manila, a Faded city.

I don’t think we felt, at any point, that we would fail the game, but we were exasperated that we couldn’t do more on the vax front. It also felt like we were half a team. Dispatcher Mum was distracted with Real Life arrangements being discussed on Whatsapp and Builder Girl was doing her usual art and talking to cuddly toys. I felt a lot more weight on my shoulders than normal while juggling the board and compiling a game diary. It’s safe to say this was a lot more of a snappy game, in that the players were being a lot more snappy to each other. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whinger.

We faced three cities which were outbreak-pregnant. London and Manila had three Faded figures each; Delhi, three black cubes. We didn’t want any more Faded outbreaks so we used the airstrike against London, recycled it with Rivals and redeployed against Manila. We also used Experimental Program to push Delhi down a cube again and rivalsed that as well – unbelievably we had enough cards to do all this rivalsing. We patted ourselves on the back because Delhi turned up in the infections!

Over the next few turns we prepared cures and vaxxed what we could but it was not enough to stave off a London Faded outbreak. We used Rivals to pull a black cure into Dispatcher Mum’s hand by using Chennai/Experimental Program which was pretty neat.

Then in turn 18, we used the supervax manoeuvre again. Builder Girl used an Aerosol to cleanse New York of Faded and vaccinate the city. Another success. Followed by… another bloody epidemic. Thankfully, this one fell on a vaccinated city, San Francisco.

But we kept having this problem of not being able to quite seal the deal. Immune Dad picked up some doses and got London down to zero Faded. As I had no extra actions on the clock, I couldn’t vaccinate the city, but what I did was important as London then crawled out of the Infection deck. Narrowly dodged the outbreak bullet there.

It all came to a close on turn 20. Medic Boy already had the yellow cure in his grasp on the previous turn, we just hadn’t been able to deliver. So he took his sweet time to vax Atlanta, meaning it was finally safe as a starting city again, then concocted our final cure. The table was victorious once more.

Light at the end

Surveying the board, we counted 12 vaxxed cities, 11 of which had been Faded and thus completely neutralised in the Infection deck. God, it was such a kick to the groin that Tokyo exploded when we were so close. It still hurts, even now.

November, for all its promise, was a game of many frustrations and we repeatedly made the mistake of not picking up more doses than necessary, because spare doses were always useful. Our first upgrade was to make the Milan vaccine factory permanent and our second upgrade was to apply the Flexible character upgrade to our beloved Dispatcher, which allows a player to swap one of their cards with any card in the discard pile of the same colour. This was much more useful now with half the Player deck splashed with equipment and Unfunded Events.

Now, there’s no other way to articulate this. The win bonus was upsetting.

The bonus offered two options. Option (a) was three vax doses. Option (b) was a search track boost. A search boost? WHAT.

Now there’s a shitload of cards left in the Legacy deck and, staring at their side profile, I’m pretty sure one of them is a new search (groan). I have this horrible suspicion there will be a bonfire of objectives, considering December only has two objectives according to the board. What is going to happen in the final month? Is Zodiac going nuke the world? Explode Faded everywhere? Knife team members with every epidemic? Summon Eldritch aliens to eat Brazil? WHAT HAPPEN

But, the sad truth is, we’re all weary of Pandemic Legacy. The final month awaits us. And we await it.

Next: December