Game Review: Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 by Z-Man Games

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 designed by Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock and published by Z-Man Games

OVERVIEW:

Building upon the success of two previous games, Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock have crafted a sprawling co-operative board game experience in Pandemic Legacy: Season 1. 

Leacock made the original Pandemic in 2008. It is a co-operative game where players crisscross the globe fighting the spread of four diseases while trying to discover cures for those diseases. Each player is a different character who has a special action only that character can do (like the Dispatcher moving other characters' pieces on the Dispatcher's turn (with permission)). The game requires a careful balancing of collecting and using resources (cards from a player deck). The diseases pop up in various cities and will cause problems when too many people get infected (causing "outbreaks" that spread to neighboring cities). The game is wildly popular for its co-operative nature, the difficulty in winning (it is not an easy game but it is not too difficult), and the heroic theme.

Daviau made Risk Legacy in 2011. Players competed militarily to control the world. The twist from classic Risk is that the players control different factions (not just different colors) that have the ability to take actions that other players can't. Even more, the player has two options of an ability and must choose one, destroying the other, i.e. it can never be used. The rules say to tear up the card or component and throw it away. Also, at the end of the game, players (usually the victor) will make permanent changes to the playing board. Subsequent games play a little differently, and more differently as more games are played. A campaign is introduced that changes the game and makes it more exciting as it goes on. The game is wildly popular for its innovations, the permanent changes made, and "something new" with each subsequent play.

Leacock and Daviau combined the Legacy concept and mechanics with the Pandemic co-operative experience. The result is a game that starts with an initial typical game of Pandemic that has a sudden change half-way through the first play. One of the diseases morphs, creating new rules and objectives for the game. Components are destroyed and stickers go on the board, changing how the game is played. As players win or lose each game, resources and rules are added or taken away. 

The campaign is played over an in-game year, starting with January and going to December. Each month, players have two chances to win. That is, if they fail the very first game, they get to play January again, though if they fail a second time, the game moves on to February. Ultimately, the players have twelve to twenty-four games. A victory brings bonuses but also penalties. The player deck includes "Special Event" cards that players can use to remove diseases, perform extra actions, or other special abilities. The number of these cards fluctuates--if the players lose, their budget is increased and they can add extra event cards; if they win, their budget is decreased and they need to be selective about which cards to include since fewer card will be added. As the game challenges shift, different cards seem more valuable than others.

The board also changes. When an outbreak happens, the overrun city starts rioting and panicking. If things get too bad, it becomes hard to move through the cities. Players can also add permanent stations (as in the base game) to help them move around the board and solve problems. Also, stickers become available to add to the player cards so they have more than the regular use of traveling around the board, building stations, or finding cures. Choosing which cards get stickers and when to use the abilities is a fun and interesting twist.

Game board from publisher's website with spoilers removed

Player characters get modifications, beyond just adding names to the characters (we had a Quarantine Specialist whom we called "Isa Lationist"). They can get special relationships with other characters, enabling them to trade cards, use extra actions, or other abilities. Individual abilities can also be added. If a character is caught in a city that has an outbreak, a scar sticker is added that causes a disability (like not being able to find cures). Too many scars means the character dies, i.e. permanently removed from the game. The character development is an interesting part of the game.

At the end of each play, players can make modifications to their characters or to the board, hopefully making things easier for the next game. Sometimes new components are added, creating new challenges. The initial objective of finding cures for diseases quickly changes with new, different objectives that are more or less easy. Often, players have the option of solving just three of a multitude of objectives. I don't think we ever had more than five objectives. When some objectives are solved, a reward is given and that objective is trashed. These expiring objectives often move the story forward.

The overall story is interesting and exciting, though obviously discussing it here would contain many spoilers. We enjoyed the storyline a lot, which leads to...

OUR EXPERIENCE

We played with an initial set of characters that remained consistent for the first few months. We lost the very first game, which meant our resources increased and we had a leg-up on the subsequent plays. The game is challenging but my wife and son had been playing plenty of Pandemic over the past year. They had a good sense of what was possible and how to set up future moves or avoid potential obstacles (like drawing a card that causes an outbreak). We had a mixture of successes and failures through the games, which kept things exciting for us. We were happy every time we got back to the game. 

Since our playgroup was limited to family members, we were able to play through the game relatively quickly, in less than two months. Having the Christmas holiday and some snow days helped too (along with no traveling over Christmas). The excitement had us returning, sometimes the very next day, to make more progress with the new things we just discovered. 

The legacy aspect is fun, though some of us have a hard time tearing up cards or destroying components. Losing characters, which only happened a few times, was not so traumatic. The game comes with a variety of characters and new ones are added that help with the new objectives. Adding stickers to the board and to the rulebook (with explanations of new rules) was not a problem. The growing complexity never got too far out of hand, though we did miss a key rule in the first few games (adding the rioting stickers to outbreak cities) that probably made things easier than it should have been. The final state of the game is not playable but is a satisfying conclusion to the story. Assuming you achieve the final objectives.

Players can calculate a score at the end based on the state of the world and what they accomplished over the twelve to twenty-four games. We had an average score. That was a bit anticlimactic but we played for the fun experience, not the score.

Even though we ended with a board game we can't play any more, we thought we got our money's worth, considering the quality of the story and the game. Also, the number of plays is good, we have a bunch of games that we've only played two to five times. Getting twenty plays out of one game is satisfying.

Recommended, though you need a play-group that is dedicated to playing through the whole game.

SPOILER FINAL PICTURES OF OUR GAME!

The final state of our world!

The history of our campaign!