[Pandemic] - Game 12 - Game Over - Yellow Fever Wins

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 five 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!

Five 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 Mutation Variant Game of Pandemic for 5 players, participants from the discussion sign ups.

[RULES]
[EXPANSION RULES]
[RULES SUMMARY]
[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 five deadly diseases (Blue, Yellow, Black, Red and Purple) 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 five diseases (Blue, Yellow, Black, Red and Purple) have been discovered OR cures for the standard four diseases have been discovered and there are zero Purple cubes on the board. 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 fifth and final cure or fourth cure with no Purple cubes on the board.

The purple disease can be cured if a player, for an action, discards 5 city cards (in any combination of colors) at a research station.
At least one of these cards must depict a city which currently contains one or more purple cubes.

GoodOmens

Sign-up because I've got a bad cold so screw the viruses.

discrider

I totally know how to play this and have won many times before.
The cubes are people right?

I have read the all the rules above, and so have a working knowledge of how this game plays, but no knowledge of any of the card frequencies or mechanics as I haven't played this one before. This totally won't end horribly.

stever777

Daemonis wrote: »

Signup

@Daemonis

Preda

Let's sign up, I've seen the world die plagued a lot of times without mutation, and surely it would help me to kill it once more...

Daemonis

Signup

stever777

One more plz!

stever777

Well, we may have to go with 4.
Starting soon.

El Skid

Sign up if I'm not too late!

discrider

|:D|

discrider

Oh wow that did not work at all. Those were meant to be arms.

So in lieu of that terrible reaction I will supplant it with this:
*Thrusts arms in the air jubilously because now we have 5 people to play with*

El Skid

FYI, locations for rules pdfs in the OP have apparently changed:

[RULES]
[OTB RULES]

stever777

Thx Skid!

Actually, I Google-Doc'd them.

El Skid

Okay, so I know about how the base game for this works, but have never played. As such, I'm going to be relying on the experienced members of the team to tell me when I'm about to mess up the game for us. My understanding is that playing with mutation is even more difficult then the base game so...yeah. Apologies in advance just in case I kill all humanity >_>

discrider

Don't worry El Skid. We can be incompetent together!
And why is my avatar more fitting here than in the miniphalla I made it for? Weird.

stever777

We will let the group decide on how many Epidemic cards will be in this game.
4 (Introductory), 5 (Normal), 6 (Heroic - really NOT recommended) or 7 (Legendary - Are you nuts??!!)
Please indicate choice in bold limegreen!

@GoodOmens
@discrider
@Preda
@Daemonis
@El Skid

You may then choose your roles in that player order.
I know, there are 2 Operations Experts shown.
Only one is available.
Also, the Bio-Terrorist is not available.

Preda

My live score break more or less even with 5, while I'm 2 wins out of 13 played on 6...
So, unless everyone feels bold I'll say 5.

discrider

I will also say 5.

It's like videogame difficulties, right? Introductory is just for people who haven't played a board game before?
... Maybe I should cut back on the sass since I'm not actually going to be antagonising these people in a game of mafia.

discrider

I'm also accepting suggestions as to role choice.

Preda

The roles that should be present for sure in a 5 player game are Medic and Dispatcher, higly suggested is Operation expert. Than everithing is good and comboable with something else.

El Skid

5 sounds about right.

El Skid

Also, I can't see the last character image...Is it the list of OTB characters?

GoodOmens

I'll take Dispatcher so that I can sit around in Atlanta all game eating doughnuts and telling y'all where to go.

STRAIGHT TO HELL!

Also, let's go Normal.

GoodOmens

discrider wrote: »

It's like videogame difficulties, right? Introductory is just for people who haven't played a board game before?
... Maybe I should cut back on the sass since I'm not actually going to be antagonising these people in a game of mafia.

It's more like Dark Souls difficulty levels. 7 is if Dark Souls, Ninja Gaiden, and a multi-variable calculus text made sweet, sweet love.

discrider

Well, I'll take the Medic since running around vacuuming up cubes sounds like an easyish job. Especially if I get airdropped everywhere by the dispatcher.

Preda

I'll go Archivist. Someone else should go cube containing (troubleshooter generalist or containment expert) and someone other shoud go cure specialist (epidemiologist, field operative and scientist).
But if you have a better plan ignore me...

Daemonis

Scientist

El Skid

So what do we think? Shall I go Containment Specialist then?

El Skid

Sure. Give us someone else for dispatcher to run around hoovering up cubes. Containment Specialist

stever777

I'll get this moving later tonight.
You have not been forgotten by a grateful world!

E - Probably 10-12 hours from now.

discrider

When is later tonight?
Actually nvm, I should just sleep now.

stever777

@GoodOmens - Dispatcher 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.

The purple cubes will begin appearing on the board as Mutation cards are drawn from either deck.

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

GoodOmens has 4 actions to play.


Starting hands -
Roles, locations, current hand sizes & cards -
GoodOmens - Dispatcher; Atlanta; (2) - Johannesburg; Khartoum
discrider - Medic; Atlanta; (2) - Cairo; Riyadh
Preda - Archivist; Atlanta; (2) - Sydney; Taipei
Daemonis - Scientist; Atlanta; (2) - Madrid; Kinshasa
El Skid - Containment Specialist; Atlanta; (2) - Essen; Mexico City

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

GoodOmens - mediumorchid
discrider - darkorange
Preda - dodgerblue
Daemonis - grey
El Skid - peru

discrider

I'm thinking of going Miami, clean, Cairo, clean then Riyadh research centre.
Potentially you could move me to Miami so I can get a start on that if you want.

discrider

Although you could drop a research centre in Khartoum yourself if you wanted. And then make me move to Miami. Although unless I spend the Cairo card, it doesn't get cleaned completely this turn.

Preda

You'll be an action short of placing the reserch centre anyway, so you'll build it in the second round anyway. he could move you to miami now or from cairo to riyadh next round, is indifferent.

discrider

Maybe it'd just be better if GoodOmens built the facility in Khartoum and then just moved me to Miami or someone else to Khartoum so I can walk up and down that west coast, whilst other players hit Madrid and Cairo through the facility.

Preda

He can't build the centre in riyadh only you can (he can move you, he can't act with you). Better for him to go to mexico city, where he could get the card from el skid (early jellow cure should be good) and either clean one in chicago or get elskid with him there.

Preda

Your first was actually good, you clean 6 and next turn place the research centre. If epidemic shows in the first 2 turns, I go clean madrid, if not I go build a centre in taipei and Daemins clear Madrid.

discrider

He could build the center in Khartoum by spending both his cards, and then move you to Chicago, so you can cure, go back to Atlanta, fly to Khartoum and retrieve the Khartoum card.
Then the Scientist could come through, grab the card and then have 2 yellows?

discrider

To be honest, you're probably right about the dispatch heading straight to Mexico City, teleporting El Skid there and taking the Mexico card (whilst cleaning a cube in New Mexico).
Then I go to Miami, clean, Cairo, clean.
Then El Skid could march up to Madrid through Chicago, or direct to Essen, clean, then march to Madrid.