Pandemic: Legacy Final | Rahdo's Final Thoughts
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- čas přidán 4. 11. 2015
- Help Rahdo Run: / rahdo ❤️ Code of conduct: conduct.rahdo.com 🙂 And now...
A video outlining gameplay for the boardgame Pandemic Legacy.
For more game info, boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1...
Increasing the difficulty thread:
www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1...
Part I: Gameplay Runthrough
• Pandemic Legacy Gamepl...
• (static cam) Pandemic ... (Static)
Part II: Extended Gameplay
• Pandemic Legacy Extend...
• (static cam) Pandemic ... (Static)
Part III: Final Thoughts
• Pandemic Legacy | Rahd...
Part IV: Final Final Thoughts
• Pandemic: Legacy Final...
FYI, Pandemic Legacy has five differences from the original Pandemic map, not the four that you mentioned:
The Legacy board adds connections from:
Santiago to Buenos Aires (yellow)
Buenos Aires to Johannesburg (yellow)
Los Angeles to Lima (yellow)
And is missing the connections from the original Pandemic board between:
Bangkok and Chennai (black/red)
Bagdad and Karachi (black)
In addition to fixing mobility issues from cities becoming collapsing or fallen, this also stands to rebalance the colors. In original pandemic, "chain outbrakes" are super likely in black and super rare in yellow.
great post, PINNED! :)
We had a special story in our Pandemic as well. When we started playing August, we were told to find the Immunologist who was in rioting Faded city in Middle East.
...However, there were no rioting cities in the map as things have gone well until then...
I was playing a military character, Quarantine Specialist where my fiance was playing the medic.
I, as the Quarantine Specialist, told the Medic that things have to be taken care of and *a riot has to be started* in a fallen city in order to track the immunologist. The medic completely resisted this idea but I... having the military support... have put an epidemic card on the top of the player deck, resulting an intentional outbreak and a RIOT in the very first round of the game in Tahran... Then, there was our chance to find the immunologist. That cheat made things harder, and only one card draw before the third epidemic hit (which would mean that we lost track of him), we found the immunologist.
We were both shocked to find out that I, the Quarantine Specialist, was to be declared a *TRAITOR* in September. (that paramilitary upgrade!) I tried explaining I was only doing the things that were needed to be done and the Military was guiding me through my actions, no one listened... I was arrested, no trials were held, and I was lost forever....
+nuke fantastic! :)
Aw Richard, I think it's really sweet that you get so emotional about it. Not that I like to see you cry! Lol but it really is awesome that you and Jen can get so invested in board games! It makes the hobby that much better. Ugh could easily just look at playing board games as maneuvering cardboard, plastic and wooden pieces and that's it but I love the fact that you guys look at the theme and really get deep into it. It's beautiful and it makes playing board games a beautiful and meaningful experience. Bravo!
Just watched the very beginning, will come back for the remainder after we finish (still in May), but totally agree: Richard's enthusiasm and investment in the experience is what resonates with us, really enjoying his stuff.
I haven't finished your whole video mainly because of time restraints though I love the review so far! Only thing I will mention was the difficulty and 5 epidemic card choice. We started our first 5 months with 3 players, and a 4th joined for our remaining 7 months.
Our record through the first five months was 5-1, our record through the last seven months was 6-4, losing both times in December. Three was a challenge in the same way you described two, there were some lucky breaks and others that seemed like a breeze. That said, once we got a full 4, the game changed, and became a hell of a lot more difficult, every turn was thought of as a chess move, not planning the next couple moves but instead the next 8 just so you could use your actions on your turn effectively.
As for 5 cards, that's the balance the designers wanted. A simple reason would be the searches, because they have the time ticks on addition to them the search party cards are designed around them having 5 epidemics. After that it comes to designing a system that worked for 2-4 players without variant. 5 epidemics with four people almost felt unfair, you would get a turn, at max two before an epidemic vs your playthrough where you can get 4-6 turns before turning an epidemic, it's a huge difference. I think to cater to all playgroups 5 was the right choice as 4 would be way too easy and 6 would be overkill when it comes to playing with 4 people.
This is actually my first Pandemic experience, and personally I'm looking for a way to immortalize this board and I'll just pick up the normal edition to this game to play it regularly. I think it's a hell of additional to any games room to just have this framed board as a talking piece for when people come over to play games. I guess there may be spoilers, but really I just want to be able to look at it and remember just how great those sessions were!
yeah, it's definitely more difficult with more players (jen and i have played through the entire campaign again as a 4p game now), though it's still not super hard if you use the "self sacrifice" action to win... we used that a LOT and as a result didn't take many losses, but we had plenty of scars to show for it. in 2p we didn't need to sacrifice at all, and if we had, i suspect we might have won 12 and 0... :)
**SPOILERS (Just in case!)**
Yeah, I guess that was something we didn't utilize efficiently! We were scared of the scars but not outbreaks for whatever reason. Our losses in December felt more of a luck problem than anything else, our 5th epidemic in both games was one of the top cards in it's pile which resulted in the trail going cold earlier than we anticipated. I'm getting to the point you bring up your score, we were 25 points exactly shy of the tier 2 rank! Our boards are surprisingly similar too, Mumbai was our city zero. Keep up the great content! Subscribed!
I no longer own base Pandemic, and was very skeptical on the "Legacy" system and hated the fact you had to basically throw it away once you finished 12-24 games(at least that was the general consensus from other online reviewers). The fact that the board can still be turned back into base Pandemic and the other expansions work for it has given me an interest in this game.
Not to say I'm all for Legacy games now, they're some games in my collection I've played more than 25 times, and I wouldn't be too keen if this started to become a thing with every major publisher/designer. But I will say you gave me more of an open mind towards this system. Thanks Richard, I appreciate your thoughts on all the videos you put up :)
The 5 Epidemic cards are just a balancing things.
The 6th spot is for eventual replay-ability if you wanna play vanilla Pandemic.
This game is very very fun and a totally special experience. I have no complaints at all! :D
We just finished this game. We were two players because it would have been difficult for us to get more people together on a regular base. But we always played with 4 characters and this turned out to be the right choice. We only lost three month, but only the last month felt to be too easy, but that's ok because it is kind of a reward for how good you played before.
Overall, the game wouldn't have been nearly as challenging and interesting with fewer characters. With four characters, there's a lot of possible interactions between them to consider and not much room for mistakes as everyone only gets a few turns. It becomes a great puzzle to solve. With 4 players, gametime increased as we had to stop to think and plan ahead a lot, which was great for us as we love those situations. Solving problems that look impossible at first are (like how can we prevent an outbreak in a specific city or how can we fullfill an objective with only 4 turns left) feels really rewarding for us.
We started the first two month with assigning two roles to each of us, but after that we just played them as a group and we always made the decisions for each character together. That felt to be more naturally for us. That doesn't mean this has to work for other players as we both were on a very similar level and no one turned out to be the alpha player (or maybe we are just two alpha palyers 😉).
Anyways, this is a great game and i would recommend to everyone (no matter how many players) to play with 4 characters unless you have problems with alpha players. You can switch to fewer characters at any time if you want to reduce the difficulty.
I don't think the game is nearly as scripted as you think. There are a lot of other great combinations and strategies in the game, and so our year played out completely different. For example, outside of Win Bonuses, we didn't place a single Road Block or Military Base until the back 1/3 of the game when we needed to setup bases simply to destroy them. With the Quarantine Specialist, Road Blocks just weren't necessary...especially once the Paramilitary Escort upgrade came up (which of course, we lost after the she was revealed as a traitor). It seemed like they'd hinder more than help. And Military Bases seemed like a waste unless you had really difficult areas to get into...since we weren't using Road Blocks. Also, we didn't touch the Immunologist because we were able to easily vaccinate almost all of the cities prior to even entering December. Our relationships were all different. Our roles were different. I played 2/3 of the year without a meaningful upgrade as a matter of fact. Where you used Pilot for the Medic, we used it with the Scientist because we liked the idea that she wouldn't have to use cards for traveling....and would be able to use all of her cards for Cures. We didn't use Local Connections for the Medic either, but that was a poor decision at the time (although it helped quite a bit in December when the Operations Specialist picked it up). We hit all of the searches on the first try, so no Team Beta. Honestly, that's the beauty of the game. We all had unique experiences with unique storylines. The skeleton of the story may have been similar, but I think there is more branching involved than you're acknowledging. The only superbait, IMO, was the Paramilitary Escort...but obviously that didn't bait you guys. It may have been more scripted than Risk Legacy, but I think the little stories that you're talking about have likely played out quite a bit different from group to group. I know it did for us.
Oh, and I'd vote that you guys technically cheated. :) It's a co-op though, so whatever is fun for you guys. It definitely felt like a blow when the traitor hit, but it ended up not hurting us as much as we anticipated....
Just FYI, in our character payer game. We used the medic only the first game. We used the Operations Expert (Nathan Ford, from Leverage) almost all the game. The other was the Quarantine expert (Dr. Who), until she betrayed us, then we used the scientist (Bones) and the Soldier (Gibs from NCIS).
+Bernardo Gonzalez That's really interesting, my group also didn't use the medic beyond the first 2-3 games (can't recall exactly), and we brought him back in on the last game too. We had the Operations Expert on for 2-3 games to build a vast military base network (and then to tear it down and build factories), and the Quarantine Expert sure did stick with us for a good long time (our traitor was the Colonel). We found very little use for the Soldier, in fact, we only played him on the very last game we played. How'd you cure any diseases with a combo of operations expert, quarantine expert and soldier? o_O we relied heavily on the Scientist for that.
While it was on the easy side, I think this was less about the game and more about the experience. We played with 4 players, over a VERY short space of time (I think only a few weeks, playing the majority of the games in one weekend, like 8 of them). We ended up doing pretty well in ours eyes, 12-4, only losing on the first month because of some short sightings and the last month because of the lack of funding. I was actually really glad to see such an emotional response, we had the same, taking some time in between each game to collect ourselves before progressing. This was the best experience I ever had with a game (video or board). Never thought about using our Legacy world as a play area for the base games. I wonder if it might be worth getting another copy just to try playing it with State of Emergency and In the Lab also, could be interesting.
*SPOILERS BELOW*
I definitely think our worst moment was the betrayal, blew us all away, lost a vital member of our team as we didn't really change roles. I think how you went about it was an interesting technicality but it removes part of the emotion and UMPH that the game packs. Same with actually destroying cards, we didn't do this, but it felt a little less permanent because of it. When we had to destroy the bases, we kind of went nuts and were all basically foaming at the mouth to get them off the board, so much fun. Our board looks a lot cleaner than yours in terms of stickers, but we definitely struggled for a few of those wins. Our biggest let down of the entire game was opening Box 8 after we finished the game. We expected it to be a more interesting deus ex machina. We ended up only losing one city and it is actually really sad how desensitised we became to the fate of that city, never even setting foot there after blocking it in.
I don't usually really comment on CZcams because.. well.. CZcams, but I wanted to say I loved this video and yours and your wife's take on the game. Like you guys we loved it and became very attached to our characters, adding in that sort of role-playing element you mentioned (easy because we're tabletop RPGer's as well as board gamers). This made certain moments even more jarring than just swapping in and out with various characters, as many people seem to have done. It was like a journey for those characters and they were in it from beginning to end. The thought of losing one made things even more fraught really and added in an extra mechanic to the game really (using moves to ensure survival).
Great job on the video and re the crying, good on you both. The world needs more empathy.
Interesting to see your experience. We never used the Medic, ever, except for the first game. We did have a Pilot Dispatcher, though, and I credit him (I played him every single game) with our victory.
It's also worth mentioning, that Legacy board has 2 spaces marked "4" on the epidemic track, just like the regular board. So, when you get the On The Brink expansion, you can play regular Pandemic on the hardest difficulty.
The moment searches enter the game, the Soldier becomes INCREDIBLY powerful. From my notes on the July scenario:
The Soldier started with the Algiers card, and we started the game in Paris. On the first turn, the Soldier Equipped the Field Hospital onto the Algiers card, went there, built a Research Station, and pulled the card out of the discard. On his second turn, the Soldier Quarantined Algiers, Searched using the Algiers card, pulled it from the discard, and Searched again. "Hey, look! The Virologist is right here!"
Just seeing the beginning of your spoiler stuff and your investment into this Pandemic board makes my mind wonder to games I invested so much time into.
One of my first bigger boardgames was Arkham Horror... we played maybe ~70 games or something? I build so much custom stuff for it. I would love a legacy version of Arkham Horror :)
Thanks for your review of Pandemic. Makes me want to buy it... maybe, at some point. I guess a trade for a used game is out of the question though :)
This is a beautiful video Radho. Thanks for sharing, as always.
Can't wait to watch your season 2 when (if) it comes out.
So if you could take off the stickers does that mean you can replay to legacy aspect of it again? Just putting all the extra bits back in boxes?
+Adam Filgo the stickers aren't very adhesive, so if you pull them off, they won't stick again very well, so your 2nd playthrough won't really work, as none of your upgrades will stick to the cards.
i suppose for your 2nd play if you manually glued them back on, you could try to make it work, but then they probably wouldn't come off again? plus having to manually glue on 30-50 stickers over the course of a 20 hour 2nd campaign probably wouldn't be much fun :)
Comparing the price of this to the basic pandemic game (and looking at the scores on BGG) is this the better bet for 1) a regular game of pandemic (mods aside) if you wanted and a longer play time (or replay value, than the basic game)?
Brilliant review, love your passion and your emotional involvement!
Really surprised that you didn't get the top score though - we lost 5 games and still scored 850? Starting to wonder if we made a mistake - though Tom Vasel mis-scored by only scoring vaccinated cities, it seems easy to do.
well, our big problem was that we didn't find all of the searches ourselves. that was a big hit. plus, we didn't remove all the military bases (though we easily could have, we just didn't think it was important)
Yeah, that was a HUGE cheat. Researcher was your traitor. It's the active characters, not the characters in the box. This allows even the best team to experience losing their hand and having a civilian.
No, that isn't true. Nowhere on the cards does it say ANYTHING about only active characters being eligible. Characters in the box for the current game can be the traitor... in fact, that's covered in the FAQ (in the September spoilers section).
boardgamegeek.com/thread/1470601/compiled-faq-spoilers-hidden-each-month-hidden-sep
Oh, and although the game doesn't guarantee that every team will have a civilian at least once, it does at least make it very likely. The first candidate for being the traitor is based on a specific upgrade, and usually players will want to keep using characters that have been upgraded since they are more powerful.
And now that I've watched the video... YES it was a huge cheat, but not for the reasons you stated. The Researcher was the traitor because out of ALL the characters she had the closest birthday. INCLUDING the characters in the box.
IIRC, doesn't the traitor have to be military?
Yeah. I should have said "out of all the military characters".
As an aside, I'm commenting now because my group played in "real time" with each month being played in the corresponding real world month and we're now done. Since that's at least a moderately common choice, I'm curious now which character would be most likely to be the traitor that way (in our case, the upgrade determined it and we were lucky that we had chosen to leave out that character that particular month).
Richard, what you said just gave me an idea. Z-man could do it Days of Wonder style. Release expansion "map packs". In it you get a magnetic board, and a few magnets, just like panic stickers (just streamline them to 3 lvls, skip the first one, since nothing changes, and second one, since it is similar to third). At the beginning of the game, you draw infection cards, but instead infecting the cities, you put the magnets on the board, then reshuffle the cards, and proceed with normal setup.Just use the rules form Legacy game for this cities. You could make like USA map, Europe map, while adding some small things on the side, just like TTR map packs.
+Wojciech Król Or scratch that, do it euro style. Some colored triangle shaped pieces put next to the cities would work too.
I am thinking, with the whole "Season 1" thing on the box that they are obviously teasing with more Pandemic Legacy. The question is how that would look, is it just a new box with the standard Pandemic stuff and new Legacy stuff (new deck different things in the dossier etc)? Or perhaps it could be more like an expansion, where you use the same board, characters and cards from the season 1 game, but then add new legacy stuff and you play a new year.
Now I have only played 3 games so far, so I have no idea if this is even feasible after the last mission, but I think it would be a cool way to expand on the legacy concept.
I agree with the lack of a 6th epidemic card. Perhaps a middle ground they could've used to balance the difficulty is to include the 6th epidemic card as one of the "winner's curse" addition after you've won a game. That way beginners may play with 5 while veterans can play with 6.
Hey, I was wondering... I want to use my Pandemic Legacy as my customed Pandemic with the expansions as well. Do I have to keep all the cards and not rip them, when the game tell me too? Or do I only use for the "regular" customized game the cards that are not supposed to be destroyed. Sorry if it is answered somewhere, but I'm avoiding to watch any spoilers, as I'm about to start the campaign right now.
the majority of things that the game tells you to rip up are not important for any sort of long term ongoing gameplay. about the only exception to that is if a character dies because they earn a third scar, well... you're supposed to destroy their card, and that means no ongoing play with that character.
myself, i would still do it anyway, because it's part of the customized nature of your game ("the medic bravely sacrificed himself to save tokyo, let us never forget!"), but YMMV :)
Thanks! We'll begin in a couple of weeks, can't wait to play it!
Personally, when the game tells me to destroy something, I put it in a box labeled "the trash". Sometimes I find it's useful in online discussions to be able to pull out a "destroyed" component so I can reference the exact wording.
if you wanted the thrill of ripping paper, you could destroy everything the game tells you except the very small number of things that would actually affect replayability, which would be very obvious when they happen.
I'm glad I played, but I don't have any reason to play it again. I did enjoy your thoughts :)
Also I'm mounting my board on my wall so I can always look at it.
Great final thoughts. I'm still skeptical. I have pandemic + expansions and I love what On the Brink brought to the game with Virulent Strain. I do see that you can play with the changed board but It would be so much better if you can change it and play through it again. I'm sure the game would be different if CODA (Based on your first run-through) was in the western hemisphere rather than in the Red region. How different would it have been if CODA was in the black or even yellow? That's what I would miss. I still think that experience in replaying it again would be much more interesting. Even though we know what to expect. Incidentally, I would be curious how things would change if there were 6 epidemic cards from the onset. How changed would the board actually be?As much as I like Pandemic, That's what I would like to see rather than permanently changing the board and not play-through the legacy again. If the game is as good AS you said it was, There would be no doubt I would like to play it again with a different outcome.
So how do you up the difficulty if you don't have Pandemic?
boardgamegeek.com/article/20699717#20699717
*didn't watch the spoiler section*
so far, starting may was our 7th game, which we lost due to outbreaks, almost entirely of yellow (our bad one), and that completely wrecked us. we aren't sure if the game is even playable anymore.
+Zero Bad Ideas you can become so insanely powerful in the game with various relationship/upgrade/role ability combos, i wouldn't worry about it. soldier on! :)
i appreciate the encouragement :)
+Zero Bad Ideas Don't worry the game balances out greatly, I was amazed by that. Just keep playing ;)
So seeming as you can technically start anew by taking the stickers off, you shouldn't actually rip cards to shreds then. Right?
Any thoughts on Season 2, and whether you could use your Season 1 board with it (if, of course, Rob and Matt are making a new board for that)
+floccinaucci my bet would be that season 2 would start over with a new map, probably as a sequel it would be "five years later" sort of starting scenario,
+rahdo Or prequel, since that would be easier to connect with season 1 (with season 1 having so many very different endings)
Could you provide a follow up review that has you incorporating the expansions into your game plays with your wife on your customized board?
It looks like some of your structures should have burnt down in Jakarta based on the rules for them.
+Sarcanis_lupus omg you're right. vaccine factory should have burned down! i'll add a sticker.
it didn't really affect much because we got almost all our vaccine from our base in bagdad and rarely made it down there, but still, oops! :)
+rahdo in fact, i remember jen at one point saying she regretting building it because there was always a huge pile of pills built up there that we never bothered to pick up :)
+rahdo Having multiple factories definitely helps when you have more players spread out around the board. It gives more options to give people pills. I think 2 factories is a good number for 2 players.
+Sarcanis_lupus yeah, we built it almost on a whim because on of us happened to be nearby and had the jakarta card in hand. i remember in our one game, we literally had all of the vaccine pills on the board, and we only ever bothered to pick them up from bagdad. I think i might have used it once for a quick travel, but then, i was the pilot and never had a problem getting anywhere i needed to go anyway.
still, i am embarrassed! :)
Hey Rich! Great to see how you and Jen experienced the game ♥️ what are your recommendations for games that have a similar investment and are (nearly) as fun to play? Going to be so hard to match this amazing experience
aeon's end: legacy would be my #2 after pandemic:L, and then probably charterstone as my #3. i've done runthroughs for both so you can judge for yourself though :)
Rahdo, did you play 1 character per player, or did you double up (or have a shared third player)? Sorry if this was covered elsewhere, but I'm spoiler adverse so I didn't hunt too deeply.
+Anarchosyn They played as 1 character per player :) You can switch characters per game though if you want.
Thank you! Jumping in now..
The aspect you are discussing with Rita makes me kind of sad because we had a similar situation in our game, and we went with it. It was emotionally grueling decision, but it had a long lasting, memorable impact on us. Moments like that made our game special and built memories with the group. Just "pausing" kind of makes me mad. The game was designed to force you to do things you don't want to do. You have to commit to playing the game in that way.
Regarding the 5 epidemic cards, maybe season 2 requires season 1 and that is when they add cards. Just a guess.
**looks at video length**
**gasp**
+ignitedxblaze it is okay, only around 18:23 is unspoiled,
He goes into spoilers soon after that timestamp. (at 18:50 is the spoiler-iffic start.)
Thanks, I'll bail at that point then (still on May). What an amazing game!
I wonder if it would be possible to reset the trackers but keep the disease cubes on the board each month so that the diseases don't just disappear every month. Perhaps due to that persistence, diseases would be able to creep over the map and become more outbreak-sensitive, raising the bar? "Evil difficulty mode"
Kudos from The Netherlands!
+Noodles one could do that, though the game would become insanely hard. but there are thematic reasons (spoilers) that the rest of the viruses disappear at the end of every month :)
Richard, you are amazing!
Let us know how playing on the used legacy board works for future games.
+Eric Gerds yeah, i think i might revisit the topic when i'm doing top10 2015 videos :)
I guess using it as regular pandemic afterwards assumes you didn't actually destroy the cards if you used the nuclear option.
+SirMayland even if you did, let's say you trashed your sanfranciso city card and your jakarta infection card. those two cards being out of the deck in no way diminishes the fun factor of pandemic. you could play 100 games of pandemic in a row, and never see those two cards because they always end at the bottom of the deck, so look at it that way.
to my mind, the fact that those two cards are gone (though no one forced you to rip them up, of course) means your version of pandemic is even more special and customized, unique to you and the story that you and your friends chose. but the game is still completely playable with those two cards gone, and isn't really diminished at all...
You've got too emotional about the game. I'm scared.
Wait ... What happens if you replace the regular outbreak cards with virulent strain cards? :O
+Straddllw that would be cool if you're looking for more of a challenge
Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler for the comments as well (because maybe someone is reading this while in the first part of the video? who knows ;))
I just finished the game with my group (of 3) and I am SO curious about how other people played this game, and how other playthroughs could have gone... I'd totally be willing and interested in watching this game played by others :) So I naturally came to watch your conclusion (and I'll probably seek out other playthroughs as well).
And I gotta say ... I feel like we played a VERY different game. My group adopted every new mechanic the game threw at us and planned around it, which made for a powerful overall playthrough. We felt the game was hard all the way through, we were stretched SO thin, we were extremely unlucky on some occasions despite being very savy and our board was out of control more often than not.
All of this just made me even more proud to have gotten a really good score at the end of the game (one off form the highest), which in retrospect we could have gotten had we torn down the last of the military bases.
We switched characters left and right, which was super fun, we all got to experience new abilities and play styles, it was really refreshing and picking our starting-characters was always a heated discussion, we came up with some really interesting combinations (it was honestly something I spent time thinking about between sessions). Same goes for end-game upgrades, every choice was a tug of war of pros and cons and since we played into the scripted parts of the plot, it made for an awesome overall experience (for example, we had a large network of military bases so we could close the military objective super-fast every game, and we had picked the paramilitary escort character upgrade).
Also, regarding the possibility of "accidentally cheating" (which is really just making mistakes and being human), I feel like probably every group at some point made a mistake, big or small. Even my group of sticklers, that went over the rules every time and went over the new mechanics religiously made mistakes :) but what can you do? ... my thoughts on the matter are that if you had an easy game you must've made mistakes you were unaware of that made things easier :P either that or me and my group were extremely unlucky, because winning never came easy, and winning made us feel like such badasses. Then again, it's not like we lost a lot, I think we lost a total of 4 games overall, which really isn't that bad.
Regarding your Rita-the-traitor situation, I understand the heartbreak, but I would have played it differently, that loss of character had a HUGE impact on moral and on the game. Our traitor ended up being a character which we invested in in terms of upgrades and relationships, but also sucked up some scars for our team, it was in many ways a hero, so it was interesting to discover that dark truth and see them go away. And feeling stranded in a game where someone had to play a civilian was a huge deal as well, because things were rough enough beforehand. Our villain became a name we kept talking about in later games, a target for our contempt and resentment. It was someone we could rally against, it was our face of evil which made the game more meaningful.
The other interesting thing I think about is the nuke option, I fought against even adding that upgrade into the game. I wonder how playing that card felt to groups that did it. A lot of things about Pandemic Legacy are permanent, but I kind of feel like using that one in particular is a big deal, not just for the city on the board (we had a few fallen cities without nuking ;)) but mostly because you remove a card from the player deck which I was strongly against XD
Ah well, I seemed to have rambled a lot ... :3
I suppose I'm just super excited about the game and the playthrough I had :D I think I'll go read on some boards what other folks have to say.
+mythirdchannel adding a 3rd player radically changes up the game. originally, P:L wasn't officially going to support 2 players actually. :)
There is also a missing connection between Baghdad-Karachi.
Just finished playing weekly for two months. 23 games with 4 people. One first game win in Feb. loss/win every other month. First loss in August, I revisited the rulebook THEN realized we could start at another research station. Uggghhh. We never opened 8, we found every character, never lost a character mid game, and we scored 597... 12-11. Anyway.... not certain you can put two stations on a city.... maybe I have to revisit the rules again.
You know someone was playing PL two-player when they finish the game with a record of 12 wins/2 losses!
really puzzled by why NO ONE ELSE has mentioned this? Bizarre.
+Jason Wayne Speicher the thing is, every reviewer who has done a final thoughts on pandemic had to binge play the game over the space of a few weeks to get their 20-30 hours done so they can comment on it. i suspect for most, after that binge play, no one is particuarily excited to go back onto that board, so they're quicker to dismiss it as 'one and done'. normal player i suspect will enjoy their pandemic legacy game for MONTHS, playing just a few sessions a week, and the won't be burned out at the end :)
MEGATHUMBS UP FOR THE COMMANDO REFERENCE! :)
+rahdo LOL!! Remember I told you I was going to kill you last...? I LIED!
To stay a bit on topic, got Pandemic : Legacy this wek and ready to start the plathrough Tuesday. Hardest part was assembling the group of four John Matrixes that will save the world! After seeing your videos we're all hyped up to the max! Will be back for the spoilers! :) Thanks!
Should I play regular Pandemic before I play this?
+Minty Moxy This game recommends you play at least a couple games of standard Pandemic. Luckily, it shows you how to do that as well.
thanks for giving clear signposting! I stopped at 18mins
You cheated! lol It is all good, I doubt I could have waited that long. I played the medic for all our games, my wife changed up characters. It is amazing how attached you get to the characters. Thanks for your recommendations for using the game again, good stuff. You are one passionate dude about your gaming, awesome stuff!
+Charles Hill yup, the waiting was definitely the harsher punishment! :)
Hmmm this review (didn't continue after the spoiler warning) has me skewed a little more into buying the game. I love the idea of unique and personal experiences in games that pretty much become unlike another player's experience. What I don't like is permanently altering the board. In your honest opinion Rahdo, do you think there could be a way to not apply the changes in a permanent format, but still have them affect that game's length of sessions (such as having the stickers still on their backs or something and simply use them like tokens?). Trying to think of a "home brew" sort of change to still utilize the components and design of the game, but still have it nuanced and different in subsequent playthroughs.
+Nick Santillo (Nickywhat) you could mimic all the stickers with postit notes if you wanted, i suppose, but that would significantly weaken the overall impact of the game. i wouldn't want to play it that way. permanent change is what amkes the experience meaningful
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Thanks for the tip and I am considering the permanent changes, it's just I've never played a Legacy game before (I know there aren't a plethora of em) and I'm def the kind of person who tries to not have anything done to my board games and such. I guess it's a bit of a leap for me to get into it. Did you have any hesitations about doing that to your game at any point in your board gaming history? Odds are, I'll probably use it as it was intended, just have to get out of my usual comfort zone xD
+Nick Santillo (Nickywhat) we had no hesitations, but then i'm also not a player who sleeves the cards in his games! also i knew that in risk legacy you could continue to play the game once the campaign was over, so i suspected the same thing would be true here :)
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Thanks a ton for taking the time to reply Rahdo! I just had a chance to order a copy as it was out of stock, so I'm eagerly awaiting to crack it open :]. I feel less anxious about progressing with it, in part of how you describe it and your extra insight of it! Thanks again and may your Rolls be the best :D!
No on the brink review?
+xyst not yet
I have never seen someone get so emotional over a game. Wow. Just realised how different we are, especially in our group where we prefer betrayal games and games where you kill stuff.
Matt Leacock, the co-designer, told Rahdo directly that this game was not designed to be replayed.
Legacy games are not designed to be replayed.
It's another way of thinking about board games -- a different approach.
If you don't like that, don't buy it.
So very simple, isn't it?
+chuckm1961 well, he actually didn't quite say that at essen. instead he kind of deflected the question a bit saying that a player's focus should be on the main campaign, not what comes after. it was sort of a non answer. risk:legacy actually is very much designed to be playable once the campaign is over, and if you check out my 'final final' thoughts for pandemic legacy, i believe it is 100% playable once the campaign is over. :)
+rahdo Yes, I know. But wouldn't you agree that 1) the game was designed primarily to be played as a one-off; and 2) playing any board game for about 20 hours is amazing value for your money, as compared to eating out, movies, etc.?
+chuckm1961 well actually
1) that's not the case. i talked to both Matt & Rob Davieau at BGG.con this week about it, and they both confirmed that they intended to have the design allow for ongoing play after the campaign was over, but they didn't have enough time to test it properly since it had to be launched at Essen. they hope to address this in the future. And in the meantime, jen and i have had great fun continuing to play on our P:L map after the game ended, and i wonder if we'll ever go back to our regular pandemic.
2) yup, fantastic. even if the game wasn't replayable (which it is) it'd be worth every penny :)
This Pandemic Legacy is recomended for 4 players. What about 2 players? It will be still good game? You played only with Wife? Help me Rahdo :)
+Amadeusz Michajłowicz fantastic 2p
The part I don't get is the people calling it a "money grab" because it can't be played again. I understand you would have to buy a new copy to play it again. But I'm going to venture that most people won't. They'll play through it once and then never play it again. I know I'm not. And I can also say the 3 other people I played with are not going to buy a copy of it either. I've seen many a time, we've played a game and someone would go off and buy their own copy. That's not happening here either, I assume. So really, they're limiting their market by making it a one time only play through. Cause now there are 3 potential sales lost, cause they all played through on my copy.
+Ranerdar The opposite could also happen. There are plenty of people that don't buy a game because someone in their play group has it. And with Pandemic Legacy, they may buy a copy (after having played it with someone else's copy) so they can play again with a different play group, or their family, etc.
+Ranerdar This is what happened with me. I played it once because a friend bought it but there is no way I am buying it myself. I just hate the sticker option. Absolutely hate it. Even if you remove the stickers and, as Richard claimed, you have 99% of the original game there (which is probably closer to 95%), each subsequent playthrough will be ''less'' than the first. Some player may not have a problem with this, but it is not for me.
I don't think I've seen before a game with so polarized opinions. Those who love it will say anything to support it, and those who dislike it, there is just no way to change their mind.
damn dude, you recorded this in 2015. Looks like you've been self quarantined to survive Covid 19 in 2020
i've been living the social distancing lifestyle for about a decade now :)
SPOILERS
I am so confused right now. Our 3 player group just finished the game (good timing for playing pandemic). Our board looks fine outside of Coda, only one city is rioting. But we have 7 fallen cities! And we lost 6 games, although one intentionally. We also lost 2 months completely. That Sagittarius reveal made one of us a civilian on the 1st turn of the game and so many cities fell because of it. But we still got over 800 points! We got all the extra bonuses (no military bases, no team bravo, no box 8) and vaccinated everything. But I am still surprised and confused. Did the game get a reprint with a new scoring system?
i haven't heard of any reprints. tbh the end scoring wasn't handled as well as it could have been i'd say
@@rahdo I can see that. If I were you, I would be a little pissed, because you did a very good job at keeping the world safe. Or whatever can be called safe in Pandemic 🙂 we kinda guessed the whole "destroy military bases" thing and did it on the last turn in December, but we had no idea about how important searches are, we were just curious. And it gave us 280 points, more than for keeping ALL cities stable.
Also, there is this virus thing going on since January. And it looks like in November we found a vaccine. Sounds familiar...
@@dariakazakova2138 yeah, the ending was sadly anticlimactic because we did an amazing job, we just had no idea what we'd be scored on (or even that we would be scored)
@@rahdo may I ask how the 4 player game went? 🙂
@@dariakazakova2138 it went great, we had a fantastic time. i think we only lost a few times, and if we'd been wiling to sacrifice a bit more, we probably wouldn't' have lost much at all, but it was a lot of fun all over again, because we got to experience the storyline all over through fresh eyes of our friends :)
You only lost 2 games?? Whaaaat? Now I know we suck at Pandemic
Why not just play your final end game over and over again.
+Michael Kieffer the final missions is really a one time sort of thing, it wouldn't hold up to repeated plays i think.
I'm confused, how did your last character, Ike the Immunologist, get 2 upgrades on him and you only ever played him once at the very end? Did you add upgrades to a character that you did not play in a game, because I didn't think that was allowed. You could only add the upgrades to characters that had been in the game you just finished.
+Murr Rockstroh we gave him the upgrades after we won our 2nd attempt at december, because you always get two upgrades, and since we continue to use legacy as an expansion for pandemic, it made the most sense to us to buff him up for future plays :)
I do not understand why you are concerned with when someone plays the game, the next DOB should be based on game time not real time, early or late in a given month defines now and the next DOB is based on this, that is how we played it.
What I don't understand is how one can fall in love with a "one night stand" and claim that this game is the best game ever made (nr. 1 on BGG)? How can this game be the best if people can only play the "legacy"-part once? That would be like saying that a movie is the best ever made though you have only watched it once.
+DarthMessias to play P:L's campaign "once" lasts probably at least 15 hours if not more. So you should probably instead draw a parallel to "best TV show ever", where someone might very well say that Battlestar Galactica is their fave show, even if they've only watched the series once.
Besides, *NO ONE* is saying that Pandemic Legacy is the best game every made... after playing it, people are generally saying it's their favourite game. Very big difference!
But doesn't the number one spot on BGG send the signal that this is the best game ever made? Many critics seem to feel that the intention of this game is not to produce a good game but to take people's money. Even if the purpose was to provide a great game experience the fact that half of the game can only be played once might inspire a wave of "consumer-focused" legacy games with the sole intention of milking board game players for money. Isn't this a threat?
+DarthMessias people can interpret the BGG ratings however they want - they're simply an amalgamation of individual preferences. is shawshank redemption the greatest movie ever made? it's at the top of the imdb ratings.
as for the threat of future legacy game cash-in's, i don't see people creating content to meet consumer demand to be inherently threatening. also, i firmly 100% believe that people make boardgames for the love of making boardgames, not to get rich, because boardgames are a crazy small niche hobby that aren't going to make any developers rich.
Or how a stooge for the industry praises disposable games that destroy themselves while playing, so you need to buy another copy once finished.It is the wet dream for a money hungry company and the worst nightmare for game collectors who cherish their board game collection. 46 years and ... THIS was the best game experience of your life? ... LOL Perhaps the biggest money grab for you yes.
+The BoBo yup, you got me. i'm a total industry stooge... completely corrupt, on the take, in the pocket of "big boardgame", which we all know is a major multi billion dollar a year industry that has their evil fingers in all sorts of dirty back dealings, with the intent of stealing as much money as possible from customers and lining their pockets. the publisher, the designers, and the reviewers all in cahoots in the ultimate get rich quick scam.
OOOOOR, maybe something else? maybe i'm not a liar, as you seem to accuse me? maybe P:L really is a fantastic experience (considering its meteoric rise on the BGG top games of all times ranks, where it's currently sitting at #3)? maybe, must maybe, your view of the situation is a wee bit cynical and a bit out of touch with reality?
I think probably the latter, but it's your call to believe what you like :)
+rahdo I couldn't care less about popularity. I do care about our planet though which is not going well with products we need to purchase and then destroy themselves just for the fun of it. There is no added value to this Legacy principle where you need to mutilate the board and pieces you bought ... unless you want to promote these things like you do. I have 50 year old boardgames in mint condition as if they were published yesterday. I don't need a game that puts stickers on it and cards to tear up to have fun. Apparently your video is one huge publicity for this kind of consumer throw away policy.
I don't buy this tearing up of cards and mutilating of components ... so you can purchase it again when you would want a restart... You just lost on all accounts, no matter how many words you used.
+The BoBo well at least you've moved on from questioning my morality and calling me a corporate stooge (though who knows, maybe you still think i am a liar in this regard and my opinion can be 'bought').
still, your new argument is equally unfounded, unfortunately, because the game remains perfectly playable once the campaign is over, so there is no wastage. i'll be able to play my copy of P:L in 50 years just fine, like you can play your 50 year old games.
+rahdo I never called you a liar. You came up with that word yourself btw :).
But you ARE a stooge of the industry as ... 8 months BEFORE the latest game (Thunderbirds) of Pandemic designer - Matt Leacock - got published and RIGHT UP with the money draining campaign (KICKSTARTER) you promoted that game too... Everyone with 2 brain cells can see the Obvious.
Go tell everyone you got a copy 8 month in advance for free :) and went on as a professional salesman to promote the thing that wasn't even in existence. Thunderbirds is a terrible game too btw.
You already were a lousy video game developper (never worked for Blizzard I suppose), now you are a very mediocre game paid "reviewer" (stooge) for the board game industry.If this latest money drain by Matt Leacock was the best game experience you ever had in 46 years, well I guess it shows it all really.
+The BoBo to say that i'm a stooge for the industry is to say that my opinion is not my own and i'm working for them, hence that i'm lying when i say that my opinions are my own and are not 'bought and sold'. it's actually quite rude and insulting, but i'm trying to let that slide and simply point out to you that so far, all your assumptions are wrong, and continue to be in your latest post.
I did *not* get a copy of thunderbirds 8 months in advance, i got a prototype of thunderbirds worth exactly $0, and after the runthrough was over, i sent it on to the next reviewer. To date, I have never gotten a final copy of Thunderbirds (you'll recall that in that runthrough I said why it wasn't a good game for me and Jen), so to continue to state that I'm an 'industry stooge' is not only offensive, but demonstrably incorrect.
in short, I receive *NO* money from any publisher or designer of any game I've ever covered, so again, you've gotten it way wrong.
and i was actually a pretty good videogame designer, far from "lousy" IMO, but still, thanks for finding another way to insult me. #stayclassy