The Syndicate

Having been so close to a March win the first time, we kept the team the same. Madison the scientist, L'Roy the operations expert, Ian the medic, and Jane the Quarantine Specialist.

Our three cube cities were in Los Angeles, Bogota and Cairo – all bad options, since two were COdA and one our starting research station. On the bright side, there was just one red cube... Sydney. We used our game end quarantine marker on Bogota, and Madison immediately went to clear up Cairo completely. L’Roy quarantined LA on the next turn and started dropping Military Bases that might help Jane keep COdA under control.

The first epidemic struck Karachi, and unfortunately it immediately came off the top of the infect pile and had an outbreak, sending cubes into four cities that could be future epidemic targets. Having learned our lesson in the top of March, we went into full B.A.R.S. treatment mode. We used Remote Treatment to clean out a couple of the cities affected by the outbreak of B.A.R.S. The Blue Death and COdA were looking to be growing problems, but on the bright side no other red city had been hit, so red was looking very likely to be eradicated.

Blue was cured soon enough (thanks, second mutation!). Just after blue was cured, an epidemic hit Paris. Thankfully, though, it was able to be dealt with efficiently and although blue was hitting many different cities L’Roy and Ian had cleaned all of them out except St Petersburg (where Madison happened to be). Madison eradicated blue once again, moved to Istanbul and treated one cube there (leaving it at 2) but then after Madison’s turn our third outbreak hit.

It was fine at first – Washington, no new cubes needed. But it immediately turned sour when we realised both Bogota and Sydney were vulnerable, and we could only fix one in the next turn. Red had been so close to eradication, but COdA was too important to let it spread and so L’Roy chose to quarantine Bogota and leave Sydney to its own devices – which of course was an immediate outbreak and spreading of red.

Istanbul also had another cube drop, leaving it at 3 while Madison still sat there – and after Jane’s turn, we had our fourth outbreak, in Taipei, which was easily our most disastrous of all. First Taipei had an outbreak, leading to a whole lot more red cities to treat if we wanted to eradicate red, and also leaving Taipei in riots due to its January outbreak. Then Istanbul also flipped and had an outbreak... leaving it unstable but more importantly leaving Madison with a scar. We chose “Regretful”, which meant that Madison would have to discard should she ever leave a city while it had three cubes. We figured this was unlikely for Madison, since she has been the last person we’ve ever used for treating COdA, and she is unlikely to leave any other city without treating. Hopefully it will have minimal impact going forward, but it’s kind of scary to finally have a scar.

Madison then cured red, and it became clear that L’Roy would be in a position to cure black if he went to Istanbul and ended up meeting Ian there. Ian joined him in Istanbul, and despite all our bad luck with red, Jane had the right cards to be able to eradicate it on her final turn, so we did. It was named eCola. We had our fifth outbreak (on Osaka – once again no new cubes needed), and then L’Roy cured black and we had won March on our second attempt! For our game end upgrades, Jane got a second upgrade with “Pilot”, which would allow her to fly somewhere, keep the card, and hand it off to Madison (her Co-Worker) and the first positive mutation for eCola.

The military decided to come in to help us in March, as we got to the point where we needed to meet two separate objectives to win the month – along with curing three diseases, we either needed to eradicate one, or build Military Base in all six world regions. We were also going in unfunded due to our first two wins.

Qwik the Dispatcher sat out this game, as we had an Operations Expert come in and join the crew – L’Roy L. Wedding. He was a family member of Ian’s (probably by marriage), which allowed them to take an additional action if they started in the same city. Madison got the first turn, followed by L’Roy, Ian and Jane. Madison already started with two blue cards (and Jane with one to easily give over thanks to their co-worker bond) while Ian started with two blacks and L’Roy had Cairo. We had our three major starting outbreaks in Essen, Algiers and Manila... so starting in Cairo was an easy decision. We used our month end upgrade to add a quarantine marker to Manila.

So, we started with a pretty decent set up, and it only got better from there. We kept the Blue Death fairly handily under control, and looked very quickly in position to cure it (no need for a research station) and eradicate it too.

We hit our first little blip after turn 5, when we drew two epidemics together. This guaranteed that a city would outbreak, and the unlucky victim was Baghdad. Thankfully we were able to settle the area relatively well soon afterwards. The Blue Death was cured and eradicated in quick order, but B.A.R.S and the red area were both starting to look just a little concerning, with them getting to around 10 cubes or fewer left at times. Thankfully, COdA was giving us no trouble at all.

Soon, Ian had the five black cards to cure B.A.R.S and it was done in quick order, leaving us only red to cure and Jane in good shape to cure it, close to the five cards. This is when things started to go wrong.

The third epidemic gave us Lagos, and then the intensify step unluckily saw it shuffled to the top where it immediately came back and had an outbreak, leaving a stray cube on Khartoum which we unknowningly left unquarantined, not knowing how it would be our downfall. As Jane took her fourth card and drew her fifth, everything seemed in hand. The danger COdA cities seemed quarantined. Madison had her turn and dealt with a little of the B.A.R.S heat. L’Roy reduced some of the heat in the red zone. Now all we had to do was weather our final epidemic and the following draws and we were home free.

The epidemic gave us Khartoum. It immediately had an outbreak (our third), removing quarantine markers from both Lagos (at 3 cubes) and Kinshasa (now at two cubes). The intensify step occurred, and we were left with three cards to turn over. The first was Santiago (ok). The second, Khartoum. Khartoum had its second outbreak, and increased Kinshasa’s cubes to three. Lagos had its second outbreak, and so gave Kinshasa an outbreak as well. Suddenly we were sitting at 6 outbreaks with one card to turn over. It just needed not to be Lagos... but it was. Lagos had a third outbreak. Kinshasa a second (we could pick that or Khartoum). Game over, with the finish line in sight, and our first loss. Thankfully, no scars. But, damn! Three rioting cities in our COdA region.

The game gave us some new game end upgrades, and we immediately used one – “Local Pressure” – on Jane, which allows her to stand in a military station and quarantine all neighbouring cities. We figured this would be a necessity for dealing with our new COdA issues. The second upgrade was the second positive mutation for the Blue Death, allowing it to be cured without spending an action, so this would allow for out of turn curing.

A week had gone by, in which we discussed all of the various ways in which we might be able to go about treating the COdA virus and thought about which game end upgrades we should use this month to make it even easier. We had a couple in mind.

So we cracked into the legacy deck again before setting up February, and all of our plans were blown out of the water. The COdA virus had mutated again and was now COdA-403b. It was no longer treatable at all. Wow.

We soon discovered our new and only way to combat COdA would be to quarantine cities to prevent the spread of the virus. We found we had a new character, the Quarantine Specialist, and a new concept of 'relationships', where we could create a relationship between an existing character and a new character each time we brought a new character into the game. Character choice just got complex.

We decided to bring in the Quarantine Specialist. She was named Pvt. Jane Kontaine, and it turned out she was a co-worker of Madison, the Scientist, enabling them to share cards slightly more easily. This meant that we decided we could leave Heine, the Researcher, our of the group.

Our set up immediately seemed problematic. COdA had mutated to COdA-103b and could no longer be treated, but there were three cubes on Miami, 3 on Kinshasa and 2 on Mexico City to start the game. There were also 3 on Bangkok, but with no effective way to get there and our early effort clearly about to be focussed on yellow, we used our January month end bonus to remove a cube from Bangkok.

It was easy to quarantine Mexico City and Miami immediately, but we had hoped Jane would get to go first - instead, she was last, leaving Kinshasa vulnerable if we had an early epidemic. Thankfully, the cards were kind to us for the second game in a row and we didn't get an early epidemic, so we were able to quarantine COdA well early. Early on people were collecting cards of all different colours, and no apparent cures were emerging, so we went straight into disease containment mode. The Blue Death and the red disease were causing us some issues. Once again, the black disease was not particularly problematic for us. During the virus management phase, research stations were set up in Cairo (thanks to Ian) and Hong Kong (Government Grant).

Everything remained in control with no outbreaks for a long time, but as Qwik put together a good set of blue cards and Madison piled up black and red cards, we realised we had a chance to cure all three diseases in two turns (Madison curing two, Qwik doing the last on the second turn). Due to the co-worker relationship, Madison would be able to cure red, take Tehran from Jane, and then cure black all in one turn. The only dilemma... Jane had to spend all four turns getting to Tehran instead of using it to quarantine cities that were ripe for outbreaks. It was a risk... what should we do?

In hindsight, we probably should have let the board go around one more time. We cured all diseases as planned, but it cost us 4 outbreaks, at least two of which could have been prevented. Miami, Sao Paulo (thanks to the last epidemic and intensify phase), Chicago and Osaka joined the ranks of cities with one outbreak.

On the bright side, with blue able to be cured without a research station, Qwik had three spare moves with which he was able to dispatch Ian and eradicate black, now known as B.A.R.S. We immediately used a positive mutation on B.A.R.S, and also set up a permanent research station in Cairo. No funding left at all heading in to March. We did, however, discuss the possibility of using the "Pilot" upgrade. Unless things change to radically, that might be the plan for after March.

Playing January

The first couple of legacy cards did nothing much to affect the game. It pretty much set us on the path of a normal game of pandemic, except that it ominously talked of the diseases getting harder to treat and required us to flip another legacy card halfway through the game.

We chose and named our four characters. The Scientist was named Dr Madison S Garden. The Dispatcher was named Qwik Lee. The Medic was Lt. Ian Firmery. The Researcher was Dr. Heine Faltskog.

Madison was dealt two blue cards to begin with and opened the game by immediately taking a third from Heine (who, as the Researcher, can give her cards away freely) before drawing a fourth at the end of her turn and immediately being in a position to cure on her next turn. So turn 5 saw the blue virus be cured and Turn 6 saw Qwik, who is able to move other players, move Ian through the remaining blue cubes leading to an eradication. We named the blue virus ‘Blue Death’.

Although blue was quickly eradicated, focussing on this led to an unfortunate outbreak of the red virus in Taipei raising its panic level to 1. This turned out to be the only outbreak of the game. A research station was established in Shanghai (due to a government grant) to allow for quick transport to the red virus, which seemed to be clearly the biggest threat early on. Black hardly had any cubes at all, and although yellow started off with three cubes in both Los Angeles and Miami we had treated the disease early and it felt relatively under control.

Johannesburg was the victim of the first epidemic, but just before the second epidemic rolled around we decided to use "resilient population" on Johannesburg, so we didn't feel the need to remove the cubes just then. It was just as well that we had used resilient population... after the second epidemic we went back to the legacy deck and we were alerted to the mutation of a virus to become COdA-403a. COdA was the uncured disease with the most cubes left on the board, and it transpired that we had spent just enough time controlling red that we had brought it level with yellow with 8 cubes each. All things considered, we took the short term view in choosing yellow to be the COdA virus, because we had it far more under control. In fact, knowing Johannesburg wouldn't be hit again was particularly important. Red, conversely, had a lot more cities that were already amongst the infected city pile and it would have been much harder to treat. Given the COdA virus was taking two actions to treat each time, yellow seemed the far more sensible option.

With blue gone and black rarely showing up, the game quickly became about managing the yellow and red cubes. A good chunk of the infection pile being blue made the game very manageable. Qwik collected the cards to create a cure for the black virus, and shortly after Madison also had enough cards to shut down the red virus and finish January off strong.

It became clear that we were just out of reach of an eradication of black before Madison found the final cure – it simply wasn’t going to be possible. A couple of players could have achieved it if they had one more action. But board management was ultimately more important as we didn’t want to risk any further outbreaks. Bogota, Miami, Lima and Buenos Aires in particular needed careful management in the late game... we couldn't afford outbreaks over in the land of COdA.

So we won the game with plenty of time in hand, only 4 epidemics down, but COdA has the appearance of a long term threat. Ian took on the Grizzled trait to ensure he could be sent into the toughest outbreaks without risking a scar (he should be helpful treating COdA come February), and we managed to positively mutate Blue Death to allow us to cure it outside of a research station. We started to talk about the possibility of bringing in the Generalist to play February, since the extra action might really come in handy.

Overall, though, we felt good about January. Minimal damage, a great start to our campaign. We didn't have time to play February right away... we had to wait until the next week (although, being that 'next week' was last week... I'll post February when I get the time).