So you enjoy board games? Have a really consistent group you play with? Think you’re pro level Pandemic players? Well Pandemic Legacy is the game for you. It’s ever evolving and can be down right brutal. You’ll love it!
Warning! There are very minor spoilers below, but if you want to be 100000% spoiler free I suggest you not really read anymore…
Pandemic Legacy starts off just like the regular game. There are a few minor rule differences (like marking panic levels and adding player scars) but nothing that seems difficult. My group can regularly win normal Pandemic with 6 epidemics, so how bad could this be? I mean we were only given 5 epidemics so we expected an easy game. We were wrong.
The game started off fine. We were doing really well. I was playing as everyone's favorite Dispatcher, and we had the game well in control... and then the epidemics started... and then the outbreaks happened... Being the dispatcher I was able to position everyone to fully control it... and then I got a scar.... and another scar... and the next thing I knew my character was dead. All from one epidemic... That's right we lost the Dispatcher in game one. Pandemic Legacy was going to be a lot different. All our choices matter now. (To be fair I made an awesome move to save the game as the Dispatcher, and then some bad bad epidemic action happened. RIP Mr Dispatcher)
Each month marched along and new things happened. The game was constantly changed around us and we were having to constantly change our style of play. Every time we started to really get control of the current situation and rules, we were thrown new curve balls. I mean viruses mutated, new structures were added, we had new objectives to find people, it was insane. We made a lot of iffy decisions that sometimes paid off in big big ways later down the road, or caused us massive heartache and problems. This caused our group to literally over think EVERYTHING. Crucial moves caused arguments, divorce papers to be drawn up, friendships to be destroyed, and it was all worth it and a lot of fun.
The only thing I didn't like was trying to keep up with all the rule changes. When you play the same game with slightly varying rules, every game, it can get confusing. I mean even the characters were constantly changing with new upgrades and/or scars which change the way they can be played. We literally forgot to use new upgrades we could use for games at a time. We made a few rule mistakes, but it didn't cause any long term issues.
Our gameplay turned super conservative as we played and we did everything we could to avoid scars on our characters. In fact we only lost one other character through the game... and by we I mean me... RIP Mr Solder... So I was playing both of the characters that we lost. I guess I'm like the harbinger of death to the characters I play. We improved our standard Pandemic game understanding immensely. We got to where we could pretty much calculate where the epidemics would fall and what cities would be drawn during the later portion of games. It really created new ways to look at and understand the game.
I highly recommend anyone that enjoys board games to find a group and play through it. I don't know that there is a lot of replay value because you'll know all the twists and turns. I enjoyed being a part of an evolving story and our decisions mattered and caused long term effects on the game. Now onto Pandemic Legacy Season 2! I hope to give a game by game write up on Season 2 (I didn't think to do it for Season 1 until we were pretty much finished with the game)