What an amazing game this was.
When I first started I wasn't certain I could go through with it (see previous post) but in the end this truly was like playing a hardcore mode board game. Definitely an experience to be had.
So after 19 games we scored 535 points (out of a possible 1000) which is apparently enough to say "the world will recover" in other words - good job, you held it together but only by a few threads.
But as a friend said, it's not about the points - Pandemic itself you lose more often than you win, but the enjoyment always comes from those crucial decisions.
Most memorable was the game where Greg would not conceit defeat on the final turn and we literally sat for half an hour, the rest of us had given up but Greg managed to find a convoluted way to save the day in the final moment... there was much relief.
The game presented some horror moments for the completionist in me, where I realised that there were certain awards given for winning every month, and certain awards for losing x number of games... you could not open everything!
So it was of great relief to open those unopenable things at the end when it was all over and learn they were mostly only shortcuts if you were falling behind that badly. And there was no fabled secret compartment in the bottom of the box (there is a pretty picture on the bottom of the tray though)
So the recap:
Our CODA was blue, and it hurt us bad. Except Paris. Paris was nice. All the way through - no panicking at all. It didn't take long for all of Europe to be swallowed by the spread of CODA once it was in it's full strength. We tried road blocking the troublesome locations but it was never enough - it always slipped out that corner "we're fine as long as that one doesn't outbrea - oh."
And in the end we had so many roadblocks that would come back and bite us hard in the final months!
North America received CODA before we could block it properly there as well and we had realised then that the roadblocks were out of hand. We got the Soldier and the Colonel and killing them was the better option.. until we searched and found the Paranoid Soldier. I wonder if that moment was as painful for everyone else as it was for us as he raised his finger and points to the player character that was active in finding him and declares that person the traitor... for us it was the Soldier. One less way of dealing with CODA. So many times after that "we could do this with the soldier" Stupid soldier.
It was only in the final two months that CODA seriously got into Asia, and when it did it was in a big way. By the end there were only two cities that were still actual red, hadn't been infected with CODA at all.
We began Immunizing too late - it was attempted when we gained the Immunologist but it always seemed like there were more important things to do - and then the November game we just won quite quickly. So come December and the sudden change in objectives... we managed to immunize probably more than we'd expected, but there was no hope in dealing with Europe at all. Our only way in and out of there was via the millitary shuttle flights, and then that meant spending extra actions to immunize because there was a military base there!
One final special moment - on the final game, Asia was getting out of control - red cubes everywhere, then we were actually saved by the Faded as they came in and took over the areas, then they build up... one outbreak on any of three different cities would have meant a chain that ended us immediately - until the Nuke card came out. It was an immediate and unanimous decision. We nuked Jakarta - which had only become unstable. We nuked it flat and save the rest of the world because of it... then we went in and immunized it. Because we care.
So the board at the end looks like this - we saved most of the world outside of Europe. Europe is a festering heap of sickness and crazed monstrous zombies.
Except for Paris.
Paris is still nice.
