Pandemic

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Faustus5
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Joined: Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:08 pm

Pandemic

Post by Faustus5 »

For some mysterious reason, I felt a strange desire to play this board game and my game buddies were sadly reluctant to come over and join me. Could the reasons be related? Hmmm.

So I played it solo. I don't know if I and my friends just suck at this game, but we've never beaten it, even when always playing on the easiest "setting". I was just about to win--literally, the first action on the next turn would have cured the last disease and instantly won the game, but the final Infection card caused a cascade of outbreaks in South American, and boom, humanity lost again.

Anyone else ever play this and what were your experiences?
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Gendo
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Joined: Thu Jan 01, 2015 7:38 pm

Re: Pandemic

Post by Gendo »

I have no idea why I didn't see this thread until now... I must have clicked it without noticing, which marked it as read.

Anyway yeah, Pandemic is a great game. I've played a bunch, as well as some of the expansions and other spin-offs. Pandemic: Iberia is probably better than the original, and I'm a big fan of Pandemic: The Cure, which is a dice-based version.

There's always the chance of super bad luck where you just can't win even if you make all the best decisions. But that doesn't ruin it for me, because there's also clearly lots of skill and learning where you can get better as you play more. The primary skill seems to be knowing when to take which risks; there's a lot of probability math that goes into it.

Pandemic Legacy is easily one of the best board games I've ever played. You play between 12 and 24 games of Pandemic, while things change over time and you make decisions that have permanent effects on the rest of your games. I have Season 2 though haven't played it yet; not sure who my group will be for it. Once you are able to have regular get-togethers with friends again, I highly recommend finding a group of 4 people for this. They'll need to commit to the whole thing; I doubt it would be nearly as good if you don't have the same group for every session.
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