[Pandemic] - Game 3 - Game Over - Humanity finally survives

stever777

Welcome to Pandemic, Z-Man Games' game of global disease containment. In this game, players take the roles of five Center for Disease Control (CDC) operatives, racing against time to cure outbreaks.


You and your companions are highly skilled members of a disease-fighting team waging a battle against four deadly diseases. Your team will travel across the globe, stemming the tide of infection and developing the resources you'll need to discover the cures. You must work together, using your individual strengths to destroy the diseases before they overtake the world. The clock is ticking as outbreaks and epidemics accelerate the spread of the plague. Will you find the cures in time? The fate of humanity is in your hands!


Four diseases have broken out in the world and it is up to a team of specialists in various fields to find cures for these diseases before mankind is wiped out.

Players must work together, playing to their characters' strengths and planning their strategy of eradication before the diseases overwhelm the world with ever-increasing outbreaks. For example, the Operation Specialist can build research stations, which are needed to find cures for the diseases. The Scientist needs only 4 cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal 5.

But the diseases are breaking out fast and time is running out: the team must try to stem the tide of infection in diseased areas while also towards cures.

A truly cooperative game where you all win or you all lose.


This will be a Play-By-Post Introductory Game of Pandemic for 5 players, participants from previous signs up.

[RULES]
[Discussion and Sign-ups]

stever777

A QUICK TUTORIAL ON PANDEMIC

Pandemic is a cooperative game. You and your fellow players are members of a disease control team, working together to research cures and prevent additional outbreaks. Each of you will assume a unique role within the team, with special abilities that will improve your team’s chances if applied wisely. The object is to save humanity by discovering cures to four deadly diseases (Blue, Yellow, Black, and Red) that threaten to overtake the planet. If you and your team aren’t able to keep the diseases contained before finding the necessary cures, the planet will be overrun and the game will end in defeat for everyone.

The Board & Cards

-The Turn Phases-

Each turn, the current player must:

1. Take 4 actions
2. Draw 2 cards to add to his hand
3. Take on the role of the Infector (cards drawn & tokens placed by Host)

After the Infector has gone, the player’s turn is over and the next player begins his turn.

-Actions-

A player gets 4 actions to spend on her turn. A player may select from any of the available Basic and Special actions and spend 1 action to perform it. A given action may be performed more than once during a turn, so long as 1 action is spent for each instance. Each player’s Role will grant them special abilities that are unique to that player. Players may also pass if they have nothing else to do. Unused actions may not be saved from turn to turn.


BASIC ACTIONS

Charter Flight
Play the card corresponding to your pawn’s current location, and move to any city on the board. Discard the card to the Player Discard pile.

Shuttle Flight
If your pawn is in a city with a Research Station, move it to any other city with a Research Station. (See below for details on building Research Stations.)

Direct Flight
Play a card from your hand and move your pawn to the pictured city. Discard the card to the Player Discard pile.

Drive (or Ferry)
Move your pawn to an adjacent city. Cities are adjacent if they are connected by a red line. Red lines that go off the edge of the board “wrap around” to the opposite board edge and continue to the indicated city. (For example, Sydney and Los Angeles are considered to be adjacent)

The Dispatcher may move other player’s pawns on his turn (using any of the available Basic actions) as if they were his own pawn. He may also spend an action to move a pawn to any city that contains another pawn. He may only move other players’ pawns if they permit him to do so.
Note: For the Charter Flight action, the Dispatcher must play the card corresponding to the current location of the pawn he wishes to move.

Pass
A player may also elect to pass (and do nothing) for an action.


SPECIAL ACTIONS

Discover A Cure
Once your team has discovered all four cures, you win!
If your pawn is in a city with a Research Station, discard 5 cards of the same color to cure the corresponding disease. Place the spent cards into the Player Discard Pile.

The Scientist only needs 4 cards of a color to discover the cure of the corresponding disease when performing the Discover Cure action.

Build A Research Station
Building Research Stations helps your team move from place to place.
Research Stations are also required for discovering cures. Play the card corresponding to the city your pawn currently occupies, then place a Research Station in that city. Discard the card to the Player Discard Pile. If there aren’t any Research Stations left in the supply, select one of the Research Stations already in play and transfer it to the city your pawn occupies.

The Operations Expert does not have to play the card matching the city his pawn occupies when performing the Build A Research Station action. He simply spends an action to add a Research Station to his current city.

Treat Disease
Over the course of the game, your team can treat diseases to buy the time needed to discover cures. Remove a disease cube from the city your pawn occupies. (Each removed cube costs one action.) Place the removed cube back into the stock by the side of the board. If players have discovered a cure, instead of one cube, remove all cubes of a cured disease in your current city for one action.

Eradicating a Disease
If a cure for a given disease has been discovered and all of the disease cubes of that color have been removed from the board, flip the Cure marker for the disease to the “Sunset” side. From now on, cards of this color have no effect when drawn on the Infector’s turn. Cubes of the eradicated color will not be used again for the rest of the game.

The Medic may remove all the cubes of a single color (instead of 1) when performing the Treat Disease action. Also, if the Medic at any time finds herself in a city that contains cubes of a disease that has been cured, she may immediately remove all of those cubes. This unique ability is in effect during all players’ turns and does not cost any actions to perform.

Share Knowledge
Sometimes it’s hard for one player to get the cards necessary to discover a cure. The Share Knowledge action (while difficult to perform) can be useful in these cases. Transfer a card from one player to another. Every card transferred costs 1 action. Both your pawn and your fellow player’s pawn must be in the same city, and you may only transfer the card of the city that you are in together. (For example, if you are together in Moscow, only the Moscow card may be transferred from one player to the other.) If either player holds more than 7 cards as the result of a transfer, the excess cards must be immediately discarded to the Player Discard Pile.

The Researcher may give a fellow player any card from his hand when involved in a Share Knowledge action. He is not restricted to giving the card of the current jointly-occupied city, like other players are. This freedom only applies when the Researcher is giving a card—he always receives a card with the same restriction as other players. The Researcher can utilize this ability when involved in Share Knowledge actions on any player’s turn.

-Special Event Cards-

The Player Cards deck contains some Special Event cards. These cards may be played at any time (even on a fellow player’s turn) and do not require an action to play. When you play a Special Event card, immediately follow the instructions on the card, then discard the card into the Player Discard Pile.

-Hand Limit-

Players have a hand limit of 7 cards. If the number of cards in hand ever exceeds 7 as a result of drawing cards (or performing the Share Knowledge action), the player must immediately discard cards in excess to the Player Discard Pile. Players may choose which cards to discard. Players may play Special Event cards (including any they have just drawn) instead of discarding them, to help reduce their hand to 7.

-Sharing Information About Cards-

Players may openly discuss strategies during the game, but like the real world, the players do not immediately know everything that the other players do. To simulate this, if you are playing the Normal or Heroic Games, players may not show the contents of their hands to their fellow players during the game. Players may however, freely tell each other what cards they have. The Introductory Game has no such restriction and players may decide to play their hands openly. Because Pandemic is a test of cooperation and mettle (and not of memory), players may freely examine the contents of the Player Discard Pile and the Infection Discard Pile at any time.

-Infector Phase & Outbreaks-

Draw cards from the Infection Draw Pile equal to the current Infection Rate and add one cube to the pictured cities, using a cube of the same color as each card. Resolve the cards in the order you draw them. If, however, the pictured city is of a color that has been eradicated, do not add a cube. If a city already has 3 cubes in it of the color being added, instead of adding a cube to the city, an outbreak occurs in that color. When this happens, instead of adding a 4th cube, add a cube of the outbreaking color to each adjacent city. Each time a city outbreaks, move the Outbreaks Marker up one space on the Outbreak Indicator. If the number of outbreaks ever reaches 8 (and the Outbreaks Marker reaches the skull symbol), the game immediately ends in defeat for all players. Also, if there are not enough cubes to add to the board when infecting, the game immediately ends in defeat for all players.

Chain Reactions
If any of these new cubes would cause the total number of cubes of that color in an adjacent city to exceed 3, additional outbreaks may occur, causing a chain reaction. Note that each city may only outbreak once in each chain reaction.

DEFEAT OR VICTORY!

The game ends immediately in defeat for all players if any of the following conditions occur:
-A player needs to add disease cubes to the board and there aren’t any left of that color in the supply.
-The eighth outbreak occurs (the Outbreaks Marker reaches the skull symbol on the Outbreak Indicator).
-There are not enough cards in the Player Draw Pile when a player must draw cards.

Players collectively win the game immediately when the cures for all four diseases (Blue, Yellow, Black, and Red) have been discovered. Players do not need to administer cures to every infected city in order to win the game—victory is instant when any player discovers the fourth and final cure.

stever777

Player Selection Roll

Players Rolls

Maximus 931
Kirindal 180
kime 147
Cerberus 251
kuhlmeye 271
CesareB 279

That gives us Maximus, CesareB, kuhlmeye, Cerberus & Kirindal for this game & in that play order.
Sorry again, kime!

Roles Selection Roll

Roles & Play Order -
@Maximus - Scientist
@CesareB - Dispatcher
@kuhlmeye - Medic
@Cerberus - Researcher
@Kirindal - Operations Expert



Final Set-up soon!

stever777

Maximus - Scientist Turn

You all start in Atlanta, at the Research Station, (red cross icon).

3 cities received 3 disease cubes.
3 cities received 2 disease cubes.
3 cities received 1 disease cubes.
These cities are not in danger of receiving more cubes until an Epidemic card is turned over from the Player Deck.
Then, those card are shuffled and placed on top of the Infection Deck and that's when the trouble starts, as outbreaks begin to occur.
Obviously, the 3 cube cities are the most dangerous, as they could outbreak the fastest.

Please ignore the purple cubes, as we are not playing with them this game.

You can click on the board to see it enlarged to read the cities and texts.

You may want to discuss a strategy before beginning or not.
@Maximus has 4 actions to play.


Starting hands -
Roles, locations, current hand sizes & cards -
Maximus - Scientist; Atlanta; (2) - St. Petersburg; Los Angeles
CesareB - Dispatcher; Atlanta; (2) - Moscow; "Forecast" Special (Look at top 6 Infection cards. Rearrange them as you wish.)
kuhlmeye - Medic; Atlanta; (2) - Tehran; Beijing
Cerberus - Researcher; Atlanta; (2) - Toronto; Manila
Kirindal - Operations Expert; Atlanta; (2) - Milan; Osaka

stever777

Once you decide on your final actions, post them in the color of your pawn on your turn.

Maximus - gray
CesareB - mediumorchid
kuhlmeye - darkorange
Cerberus - peru
Kirindal - limegreen

stever777

Example of how it's played out here.

stever777

TIP -
Forecast is best used after an Epidemic card shows.
Then you can set up when outbreaks may or may not occur.

Any Special Action card can be played at any time by the player holding it.

Zombie Hero

Awesome, another pandemic game is up for me to spectate.

Good luck, folks!

Cerberus

So people, thoughts on initial plans?

CesareB

Totally new to the game, but I have some initial thoughts:

Red and Blue have the most disease going on, but we also have the most cards for them, so if we can get them into the right hands we should aim to cure those first. We can probably afford to sacrifice yellow or black cards for more quick movement if need be. I could use my Moscow card to get into position in Europe or the Middle East then bring Kirindal along to start up Research Stations there while the others shift cards around and clean up Asia.

I just want to make sure, but the Researcher can give cards of any city, but must be in the designated city in order to receive them, right?

stever777

True.
The player giving the card must be in the same city as the card, unless it's the researcher doing the giving.
It's always based on who's giving the card.

E - The Researcher can give cards on any player's turn, using his ability.

The Researcher may give a fellow player any card from his hand when involved in a Share Knowledge action. The Researcher can utilize this ability when involved in Share Knowledge actions on any player’s turn.

Every card transferred costs the current player 1 action.

kuhlmeye

Full disclosure, this is my first game.

As far as I'm concerned, if our dispatcher wanted to move me over to Paris on his turn, I could get to work cleaning out the blues, and then make my way over to red.

CesareB

kuhlmeye wrote: »

Full disclosure, this is my first game.

As far as I'm concerned, if our dispatcher wanted to move me over to Paris on his turn, I could get to work cleaning out the blues, and then make my way over to red.

My first as well. Yay for new experiences! Anyway, if Maximus moved to Paris then I could move you to him. Heck, I could move both you and Kirindall over there, then you could clean it up while he built a Research Station in that area to keep it controlled in the future. But since I'm probably going to want to move Cerberus to Maximus (so Maximus can take his cards), it might not be a great idea to concentrate everyone in blue while ignoring red. It might make more sense for you to get red clean while the rest of us handle blue and black. Heck, you can cure Sydney entirely on turn 1, but if you move to Europe it's going to be forever before any of us can cure Sydney without burning a card.

I'm kind of wondering what the usual plan regarding Research Stations is. Since we don't really know how many turns we'll have before things get crazy, it seems like the most prudent plan would be to get 1 or 2 up and running as fast as possible then fill in underserved areas later. For example, we could start by getting one in Istanbul and Bangkok, which puts every city except Santiago within 3 spaces of a station, then add them in Sao Paulo and Tokyo to get every city except Santiago, Johannesburg, and Sydney within 2 of a station. I'd imagine that once we've got 4 or 5 stations we'll either have things under enough control as to not really want any more, or be so close to the edge that we can't waste time putting more up. Is this about right?

Cerberus

Getting stations set up early will help us later when we need to travel a lot, lets work on this with our Ops Expert and me and the Scientist do cures.
Though this is my first play as well, yay for letting noobs save the world...

or NOT save the world as is likely the case!

CesareB

Cerberus wrote: »

Getting stations set up early will help us later when we need to travel a lot, lets work on this with our Ops Expert and me and the Scientist do cures.
Though this is my first play as well, yay for letting noobs save the world...

or NOT save the world as is likely the case!

I'm sure things will shift tons in the meantime, but for now it seems like we're in a pretty decent place. Karachi is the only 3-block city that we can't get to quickly, there's almost no disease in either South America or Africa, the most infected areas are also the ones we have the most cards for, and our turn order should let us get moving pretty quickly. Again, totally new, but I'd guess that we've gotten as good a starting position as we could reasonably expect.

Iron Weasel

Oh, don't worry - things will rapidly go to shit.

Good luck!

Cerberus

Not that rapidly... Where is the main man / women?

stever777

@Maximus

NotoriusBEN

you foolish naive lambs... just wait 8->

kuhlmeye

Oh don't worry... I'm preparing for a brutal death.

stever777

@Maximus has about 6 hours to live.
(or make his moves)

If not, Scientician kime will arrive!!!!!

stever777

OK.
Maximus died studying the Black Death.
@kime, as his understudy, takes over as The Scientist.
Kime has 4 actions to play.

CesareB

Welcome Kime

I hear Paris is lovely this time of year.

kime

Oh hi look I'm playing!

Wonder what's happened so far...

CesareB

Nothing at all! It's been super fun.

kime

Apparently! Looks like going to Paris is a good plan. Four actions to move to le Paris

stever777

kime - Scientist Turn

Player Card Draws -
Madrid; Jakrata

Infection Card Draws - (1 cube placed in each city)
Johannesburg; Mumbai

stever777

CesareB - Dispatcher Turn

Roles, locations, current hand sizes & cards -
kime - Scientist; Paris; (4) - St. Petersburg; Madrid; Los Angeles; Jakrata
CesareB - Dispatcher; Atlanta; (2) - Moscow; "Forecast" Special (Look at top 6 Infection cards. Rearrange them as you wish.)
kuhlmeye - Medic; Atlanta; (2) - Tehran; Beijing
Cerberus - Researcher; Atlanta; (2) - Toronto; Manila
Kirindal - Operations Expert; Atlanta; (2) - Milan; Osaka

stever777

Bookmark this page -
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/170728/pandemic-discussion-and-sign-ups

CesareB

Oh good, he drew a blue card. So I can move Cerberus and Kirindal to Paris, Cerberus can give kime his Toronto card, Kirindal can meet kime in Milan, and blue can be cured easy peasy. I'm a bit torn on what to do with my other 2 moves. I could go to Paris with everyone, cure Washington, or move down toward South America on the chance that things pick up there. I'm leaning toward heading south since cleaning blue will be easier once it's cured anyway. Sound about right? Cerberus, Kirindal, fine with me moving you to Paris?

Cerberus

I was planning on giving my card to kime anyway (as the researcher do I need to be in the same location or anything?), other than that I had no plans as was going to see what the board looked like when it got to me.
Though i was planning to move to sydney...

CesareB

You must be in the same location. Your power just allows you to give any card. Like, if kime and I met in Paris, the only card that could be transferred is the Paris card. You can give any card no matter your location, but the two players still need to be together. That's why I was thinking to send you over there, to get your cards to kime.

Cerberus

Makes sense as long as someone is going to Sydney to keep that down.

kuhlmeye

I could make my way over to sydney, since everyone else is gonna hang out in Paris. I can get to Sydney, completely cure it on my turn.

CesareB

Ok then, I'll head down to South America, no reason for 4 of us to swamp Paris.

1: Move Kirindal to Paris
2: Move Cerberus to Paris
3-4: Move to Bogota

stever777

Oops, Cesare.
You can't move someone to Paris unless you have that card to discard or unless another pawn is already there.
Please revise orders.

Cerberus

@stever777 isn't kime already there, so thats how he can move us?

stever777

Duh!
I should look at the board, huh?
Thx!

Cerberus

Hey, remember that time I made a stupid statement in Chaos and you kept reminding me about it all game?
Well, this may be pay back

stever777

CesareB - Dispatcher Turn

Player Card Draws -
Karachi; Chennai

Infection Card Draws - (1 cube placed in each city)
Beunos Aires; Lima

stever777

Cerberus wrote: »

Hey, remember that time I made a stupid statement in Chaos and you kept reminding me about it all game?
Well, this may be pay back

Hehe!
Ouchy!

It's worse when a host makes an error.
Loses the players' trust.
"I'm not a bad host!! REALLY!!!"
:P