Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

Overview

 

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is a game that has a great mixture of teamwork, strategy, chance, and story. Players are CDC employees who work through 12 stages (the 12 months of the year) to save humanity from ever-spreading diseases. Depending on which character you pick, players have different abilities, such as removing more disease cubes or being able to move another character’s piece on your turn. I played this game with three of my closest friends. My character was the medic, so I was able to pick up more disease cubes and stop the spread of certain diseases once cured.

The diseases are spread by drawing city cards at random to see where the disease spreads next, but if an Epidemic card is found, cities that have already been drawn are shuffled and placed on top of the deck, increasing the amount of disease in a city, which could lead to an outbreak. The game is won by curing all four diseases, which you do by collecting cards that match the color of the disease. There are several ways that players can lose the game:

• There are no more cards for players to draw
• There have been eight different outbreaks during the game
• All disease markers of any disease have been placed

In this version of Pandemic, the consequences of the decisions you make in one stage will continue to effect you in the next one. If you played the original, you’ll love the Legacy version for all the twists and turns that it involves. Here are some of the biggest differences:

• Every time there is an outbreak, a sticker with a number between 1 and 5 (depending on how many outbreaks) is placed next to it, which effects the game play more as it escalates
• Character cards can be changed with different abilities, relationships with other characters, or damage that could eventually lead to your character dying (you have to rip up the card, which is a difficult thing for any board game fan to bring themselves to do).
• Each round has certain objectives that you have to complete to win, rather than just curing all four diseases
• You have two chances to win each of the twelve rounds, and if you lose a round twice, you can still continue to progress
• There are certain upgrades and game changes after each round

**Disclaimer: If you care about spoilers for the story of this game at all, do not read this section**

The first round of this game starts like any other Pandemic game – there are four diseases that are spreading across the world, and the four CDC members have to move around to stop the spread and cure the diseases. Once you pull the first epidemic card, things start to get different. Whichever disease has spread the most at this point has mutated, and cannot be cured (for us, it was the black disease, which was mostly in the Middle East). As the game progresses, this disease becomes more difficult to cure, and eventually mutates further to create essentially zombies.

It is also revealed that the government was the one who made the zombie disease, and you were accidentally helping them. The objectives change, and you spend the last couple rounds curing the zombies and toppling the government. One of the players is even revealed to have been in on it the whole time, and you have to rip up their card when reveal, forcing you to basically negate any upgrades you have given that character, and it truly feels like a punch to the gut (shout out to my friend Katie, who was devastated when it turned out she was the traitor).

 

**spoilers have ended**

Mechanics

 

I have heard people complain that you can only play through Legacy games one time. While this is true, I believe that the number of times you play it makes up for it. Since you can play each of 12 rounds twice if needed, you will play this game anywhere between 12 and 24 times. My group played it 17 times. There are few games that I know I played 17 times, so for me, I think it was worth the money.

I hate elimination mechanics in games. It’s no fun when someone is eliminated super early and just has to sit around while the others finish. Pandemic: Legacy gets around this by allowing you to choose a new character if yours dies, and there are a bunch of choices to pick from.

Wrap up

 

Overall, I would give Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 a 9.5/10. It is addictive and has a great plot. All of the elements are beautifully themed and you get a lot of play out of it. My one complaint is that the directions can be a little bit hard to follow because there’s just so much going on. As a whole, it is a fantastic game that I would recommend for anyone.