Jurassic World: Legacy of Isla Nublar. Adventure 1

 With much anticipation, we've begun playing Jurassic World: Legacy of Isla Nublar by Funko Games.
This is a 12 episode (including tutorial) legacy adventure game. 

If you're new to legacy games - the game includes new rules that are unlocked as you go, bonuses and consequences dependent on your choices, all of which are permanently added or removed from the game by means of stickers, writing on components, scratching off secret panels or just ripping cards up!

I'm a big fan of the Jurassic Park franchise, dinosaurs in general, and thematic board games. So this was always going to be a must for me.

I'm going to write up the stories we create through these adventure packs here for anyone that wants to read them. But beware that this is pure spoiler territory below. So only read on if you've either already played or don't intend to play but would like to enjoy from here.

Here be spoilers

The story starts with John Hammond arriving on the Island as the Park is freshly constructed. After multiple fever dreams (the turtorial) in which everything went wrong over and over until the last dream where it all worked out nicely, he's decided this is a good idea after all.

Our first decision sets the stage for how the game will be played - we must choose where the main gate, visitor centre and genetics lab are located on the map - by placing stickers! Which areas they're in grant different bonuses. This took nearly half an hour to place three stickers.

A few other minor additions of components and rules and we're ready to start the game - John Hammond is preparing for the topping out ceremony and wants everything to be set up ready... but a helicopter bringing in park employees crashes, apparently scattering the poor employees into the jungle! Oh no!

According to the Adventure Objectives:
1. We must find the missing park employees and bring them to safety before it's too late!
(Have at least two Park Employees inside the Visitor Center at the end of Round 5)

2. Organize the press gifts for the topping out ceremony at the Visitor Center.
(Make a row or column of merchandise)

3. We can will the gaps in the donosaur genes with DNA from West African Frogs.
(Make the described DNA sequence)

Ok so we have a philosophy from the start of keeping an acceptable minimum number of people alive, while ensuring the park is pretty and the science is marginal. We can work with that.

We have 5 rounds to rescue the Park Employees following the unknown adventure cards:

Round 1 begins with looking for the chopper itself. We know it went down in the vague area of Sector 3-5... There are 6 sectors on the map so this is literally half the island it could have landed.
John Hammond prioritises by going to the Visitor Centre to check on the merchandise display, and also see if there was an helicopter remains there... and there was! He helps the one Park Employee there in to the safety (maybe) of the Visitor Center. It seems the other employees all jumped out of the chopper before it crashed conveniently next to the Visitor Center. They'll know better next time.

Round 2 suggests we go looking further into the jungle. This time it takes us a couple of searches. We have veterinarian Gerry Harding and hunter Rober Muldoon searching the jungle, with Hammond staying at the Visitor Center barking orders across the walkie talkies like a true leader. Eventually we found another employee out there, as the dinosaurs start roaming apparently loose in the jungle, we guide the employee back toward the Visitor Center. We have the minimum acceptable survivors, this is going well!

Round 3 presents a distraction. The tall Brachiosaurs have wandered in to the helipad area and decided to make this their new home, causing havoc for travel in and out of the island. We are instructed to move them out of the way before the end of round 5. But at this point we have the Tyrannosaur and Velociraptors converging on the Visitor Center... Maybe this won't be a walk in the park after all, more like running and screaming in the park.

In Round 4 our priority was certainly the fact that the Tyrannosaur and Velociraptor had both arrived at the Visitor Center, had eaten our goat, and were looking to see what else was inside. Then we're told there's more employees out there maybe? Maybe at the volcano, maybe at the lagoon? That's a lot of maybe when we're trying to survive deadly carnivores, clear away pesky Sauropods, and arrange the merchandise nicely!
Harding checked the volcano, no one there, and came back to help Hammond who was working on the merchandise while Muldoon, armed with all the weapons and survival gear, finishes gene sequencing and then goes on a one man mission to distract the monsters outside.
We realise now that the worst that could happen is that the dinosaurs could kill each other, loosing us valuable attractions for the future park. They must be separated at once! 

Round 5 - "Help! I'm still alive!" and she's deep in the jungle, but safer than the rest of us... she can stay there.

Robert Muldoon, with his arsenal of items, manages to tranquilize the Tyrannosaur and shock prod the Velociraptors away saving the assets, I mean animals, from grievously harming each other.

Hammond and harding weigh up finding the remaining employees in the jungle and by the lagoon, or clearing away the Brachiosaurs from the helipad. But we realise there is hardly enough time to do any one of these things, however we did unlock a sweet cache of new items by finishing the gene sequencing, so it's probably worth getting the merchandise all nice and tidy. And it was, lots of new items now unlocked including an ATV!

And so the adventure concludes by teaching us about research and Park budget... which we get bonus buget for all the employees we rescued... which was the bare minimum 2... but still we got some cool items for next time!

As you can see the game really did feel like a Jurassic Park story. It was nice, some things went wrong, then they really went wrong, and then we prioritised assets over employees. 

Spared no expense. Spared only minimum acceptable employees.

Pandemic Legacy - the finale.

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.

Pandemic Legacy: Session 2

In our second session of Pandemic Legacy we replayed January and went on to February.

We let the Scientist stay home this time, since she had developed PTSD apparently triggered by all of North America, and instead brought in the Researcher, Lucy Carlton, who proved to be a great asset to the team.

This game was incredibly short and simple - with extra government funding and researching powers we cured the three curable diseases, eradicating yellow (thanks to the no-research-station-necessary upgrade) and eradicating red as well.

In the end we upgraded Snotty to it's second upgrade - we now do not even need to spend an action to cure, if a player just gathers five yellow cards it's instantly cured!

We also upgraded red to the no-research-station-necessary status.

The was one casualty though - A CROOKED STICKER!

All upgraded and looking good.

So. Feeling good about the world we moved on to February. And it appears Snapper Rocks Pox (blue) just got worse - now it's beyond incurable but is now untreatable! No treat action will affect blue at all.

But on the plus side we are introduced to the Quarantiner - who's name is Tina Quaran (obviously). and quarantining abilities. Yay, now we can control the blue problems and cure the rest of the world.
Except first round we had a dilemma - get the medic to Europe to place a quarantine token on blue and control the area before it breaks out early, or Africa to fight the threat there.
We chose to control blue, and of course Africa broke out straight away. A few turns later South America was breaking out in multiple places and in next to no time we lost by number of outbreaks.
Not a single thing was cured that day.

 Rioting has been spreading. Still nothing worse than level 2 (only just) but it seems to be a common thing along the Atlantic.

The team returns home, slightly embarrassed, but determined with new tactics for February part 2.

Score so far:
Jan LOSS

Jan WIN

Feb LOSS

But in the end the main thing is, though some stickers were stuck this time, no cards were harmed in this session. A box was opened and some new cards and tokens added. And we got to scratch the scratchable thing. It was terrifying knowing there could have been a feature that we never knew about.

Oh and relationships! Our quarantiner and researcher have suddenly realised they're related. They now gain an extra action when they start in the same location. This seemed to be more work to attempt than anything, and a new rule to remember. But still something more good than bad.

Onwards to second attempt at February - and yet another risk of losing out on the scratchable :-/

Pandemic Legacy - January

Welcome to Pandemic Legacy.

If you've played Pandemic you'll know it's one of the hardest games to master, and even when you're good at it you might win 50% at best.
Pandemic Legacy takes it one step further with the Legacy system - every game you play affects future games. Everything has consequences.

I'd been looking forward to this for a long time, but as fun as it is it is equally excruciating. And I mean physically cringe-worthy.
The reason is for every permanent effect that comes into play you enact it. Permanently. There are stickers to be placed on the board and cards, you write on the board and cards, and worst of all, there are times when you are instructed to rip cards in half.

So I am looking forward to playing this more, and I'll be writing all about it. I'm just glad I'm not the one that owns it. I'd be divising intricate methods of not defacing the board, writing up lookup tables and journals requiring hours of revision before each game all in the name of keeping the game in it's original condition. I was the kid that would photocopy Cluedo pads so that no one would ever touch the originals.

Finally - if you ever plan on playing Pandemic Legacy DO NOT READ PAST THIS SECTION. This game includes real, actual, deadly spoilers. There are pre-determined events in the game. Even in the first game if we had have known what a certain event card coming was we would have played differently, and it would be hard not to. So if you don't think you'll be playing it in the memorable future, read on and share the horror of Pandemic Legacy with us:

Spoilers and traumatic Card-tearing below

This is Pandemic Legacy:

It looks innocent enough, but it is far from it.
This is the final photo of it in it's prisitne condition.
Note the eight black boxes. These contain unkown elements to the game which we do not even know what is in there, but we speculate extra cards, characters, buildings and maybe even diseases.

The team of heroes  that were working to save the world in the first month:

These actually get written on the character cards *shudder*
INFECT0R (or Kevin Wang to his Mother) - the Dispatcher. A 1337 hax0r who really knows how to sit behind a computer and tell people what to do.

Roger Williams - The Medic, very passionate about medicine and chemistry, has his own chemistry set for recreational chemistrying.

Ruby Condick - the Scientist. Expert in Snapper Rocks Pox (see below) and generally expert in all manner of diseases transmitted through intimate contact.

Jane Doe - the Generalist. She's recently woken up from a coma and doesn't know who she is or anything about herself other than she is destined for great things so she might as well save the world.

 Meet the diseases. Yes, we had to name these ourselves. The names stick for every game from now on. *shudder*

Snotty - spreading across South America and Africa is the globulous, mucus firing horror that is Snotty.

Planking - the virus that seemed harmless enough at first, but soon enough it became apparent that not only did it spread visually and made use of the Internet to spread from Asia across the world, but it leaves it's victims completely paralyzed in the most awkward positions and locales.
Snapper Rocks Pox. Thought to be an urban legend from Coolangatta, Australia when a Swedish backpacker face-planted into a rocky patch one fateful day. The details are unclear of what exactly happened to him but the facts are clear. On his return journey to Sweden the disease spread itself across North America and then to Europe. It is rumored that the backpacker in question met with Scientist Ruby Condick along the way.

And finally - the Devil's Ball Bags. You don't want to know.


So the game started off well, we coordinated, spread out. Snotty was looking quite serious and we had a few yellow cards between us so with the aid of our dispatching friend we consolidated our resources and discovered the cure quickly. With the medic close at hand it wasn't long until the mucus was all wiped up and Snotty was eradicated.

It was at this point that the first trigger for the Legacy deck occurred. The Legacy Deck is the story element of the game - pre-determined cards in a set order which stays inside the box with instructions on the back (top) to tell you when to draw the card.
So after the second Epidemic card was resolved we flip the card, and this happens:

*shudder*

 Rip up the objective card. Physically rip it in half. The card is gone.
You'd think that was horrifying enough but instead, the disease with the most cubes on the board is now incurable and takes an extra action to treat. Permanently. For the rest of the game. Put a sticker on the board just to rub it in. *shudder*
Snapper Rocks Pox (blue) was the obvious contender for this. It already had multiple points on the brink of outbreaking. So now it's incurable and harder to treat.
Then - new objective: Cure three diseases. Gee, Thanks.

Despite this we continued on well. Our Scientist, instead of collecting coloured cards managed to collect more goverment grants and the ocasional epeidemic, But put a huge effort into the daunting European effort, and was joined later by the Medic to help control the issue.
Meanwhile Dispatcher and Generalist were flying around the world quelling outbreaks before they happened and gathering resources. They were about to cure planking (and possibly eradicate it) on the very next turn when the worst epidemic broke out in the middle of Europe, triggering multiple outbreaks and losing the game by all blue cubes on the board.
We were all so confident too.

Endgame - the cause of our demise.

Not only did we lose but some of the cities have begun to panic. See the yellow numbers on Madrid and New York there - they're levels of unrest. it rises whenever there is an outbreak here and makes it harder to get to the city. At level 4 the city falls and is gone. These numbers are stickers. They are permanent *shudder* the Northern Atlantic crossing may soon become unusable! Also, because the Scientist was in a city which had an outbreak she takes a scar - this is a sticker you place on your character card *shudder* with an additional rule, which is selected by the player. Ruby now has a distrust of North America and loses an action for starting there.

On the plus side we gained a new starting Research station in central Asia, and because we eradicated Snotty we can apply a positive mutation for next time it emerges (next game), and forever onwards (it's a sticker for the board *shudder* ) - we no longer need a research station to cure this disease.

The winning team.

So the game continues with the described permanent effects - upgraded and downgraded  diseases, rioting cities, new research station and traumatised scientist, as well as extra funding for more government grant cards.

I'll be looking forward to playing the next game - Late January. If you lose you play the month again. Losing a second time the game moves forward.
It feels like we're off to a pretty dramatic start, but we're determined to win this. The fate of the world - and every delicate paper thin card in the box depends on us.

I'll just be having nightmares of tearing noises and stickers everywhere...

Hello again

So my last post was 6 months since the previous post... that was over 18 months ago...
Thought maybe I'd give it another go.
Why? Why now, nobody's been reading the stuff I put here, nobody's even been reading the stuff I don't put here, it's a barren wasteland of nothingness with added nothing on top.
Because they will come. Write to them and they will come... or something. I don't know.

The truth is publicity. Covered with a veil of random humour and interesting things. Not at all publicity.

I'm starting up a new crowd funder for my next board game - Spiders!
What? oh yeah, 18 month gap catchup...
2012, while recovering from brokenboneitis (see previous post) I decided to have a look at this crowdfunding malarky and have a good old go at it with a game I'd been mucking about with 'Zombies Aliens & Monsters (oh my!) it appeared on Pozible, people pledged money... 18 months later it's in all good stores (not that many actually but the good ones at least)
In and out of jobs since then, Father died, ate some cheese, played some games. You're all caught up!

So, now crowd funding Spiders! on Kickstarter. Starting next week - Wednesday 13th November, to coincide with the launch of Kickstarter Australia (hello riding the hype).

So watch out for Ambivalent Overlord Games on Kickstarter, and for all the goodness, follow us on www.facebook.com/ambivalentoverlord

See you in a few years!