Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (2015)

How To Play Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

Setup

To begin the Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 game, you will first read the Mission Briefing. If you are playing a month for the first time, you will draw cards from the Legacy Deck until you get one that says “STOP”. After reading the mission briefing, you will integrate any new cards into the game as needed. Other components of the game include the Legacy Deck, which will tell you what happens over the course of the game’s 12 months, a game calendar to record your progress, and eight packages that you will open periodically throughout the game.

To continue setup, place the board in the middle of all players and place all structures (only research stations at first) somewhere near it. Create supply piles of cubes separated by color and place a research station in each city with a starting research station sticker.

Place the outbreaks marker on the 0 space on the Outbreaks Track and place the 4 cure markers “vial” side up in the indicated disease tracking space. All objective cards should be placed in the objectives area. The infection rate marker goes on the “2” space that is furthest to the left on the Infection Rate Track.

Shuffle all of the Infection cards together and flip only 3 of them over onto the table. Place 3 disease cubes of matching color on each of the cities indicated on the cards. Continue to flip over 3 more cards and put only 1 disease cube on each of those for a total of 18 disease cubes. These 9 cards will be placed face up on the Infection Discard Pile, and the remaining unused Infection cards will now be the Infection Deck.

Player Deck

All players will now decide which Funded Event cards will go into the Player Deck. This deck can have as many of these cards as the current funding level (which will be 4 for the first game). Shuffle these cards together with the City cards and deal them out to all players as their starting hands. The number of cards given to each player will depend on the number of players in the game. Players should keep their hands face up on the table at all times.

Separate the rest of the player cards into 5 piles facing down, as close to equal as possible. Then shuffle 1 Epidemic card into each pile and leave them facing down. These piles will be stacked to form the Player Deck, with the smallest piles at the bottom.

Each player should now select a character depending on the special abilities they would like to play with and their corresponding player color. They will receive the matching Reference card and player pawn and place the pawns at any one research station. For the first game, players will all start in Atlanta. You can put away any excess character cards and pieces.

Immediately following setup, players would use any winning bonus that was earned from playing a previous month. However, for the first game there will be no bonus.

Player Actions

Each player’s turn is completed in a process of 3 steps:

Actions: Players can select any combination of actions and complete up to 4 per turn. They can also do the same action several times, as long as it adds up to 4. Movement actions include traveling by car/ferry or taking a direct, charter, or shuttle flight and usually require discarding a city card to get to another city. Players are also able to build a structure, treat disease, share knowledge, and discover a cure as part of the action phase.

Draw: After completing the 4 actions, the player will draw 2 cards from the top of the Player Deck. If you draw any Epidemic Cards, move the infection rate marker forward. Then infect the indicated cities with disease cubes, reshuffle the infection discard pile, and place them on top of the Infection Deck.

Infect Cities: During this phase, flip over the number of Infection Cards matching the current infection rate from the Infection Deck. Do this one at a time and infect the city indicated on each car. To infect a city, you will place 1 disease cube of matching color onto the board in its space. If it already has 3 cubes, an outbreak of the disease will take place in the city and you will discard this card to the Infection Discard Pile. In the event of an outbreak, you will move the outbreaks marker forward 1 space on the Outbreaks Track and increase the panic level of that city. All characters standing in a city during an outbreak receive a scar.

Each player’s turn ends after they have infected all cities as necessary and discarded the Infection cards. The cycle of play continues clockwise around the table.

How to End the Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 Game

The object of Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is for all players to work together and help each other to fulfill the necessary objectives and make it through each month. The players win the game when they meet all of the necessary objectives. When this happens, the game will end regardless of what is happening. The players lose the game if the outbreaks marker reaches the last space on the track, there are less than 2 cards to draw after a player’s action phase, or you are unable to place the number of disease cubes needed on the board.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 Review

“Pandemic Legacy is a rewarding and memorable gaming experience and is one that I highly recommend. It offers a genuine challenge for new and experienced players alike. It’s sure to create fantastic stories within your game group. It does, perhaps, benefit from being played over a relatively short space of time. At least on a regular basis. This is as it can be difficult to remember your place in the story.”

James Holden, board-game.co.uk

“I do think Pandemic: Legacy plays best if you go with the same group of people the whole time. That is not to say you can’t add in people along the way. In fact, Pandemic: Legacy can play just fine as “vanilla” Pandemic. The game even suggest a few games of normal Pandemic if you are a newbie.

Designers Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau really hit this one out of the park. They created a game that I found myself constantly itching to get back to the table when I’m not playing. It built on some solid mechanics, clearly well playtested, and provides a wholly unique gaming experience that you are unlikely to replicate on your tabletop. Absolutely pick this one up today…”

Tony Mastrangeli, boardgamequest.com

“Not just a game but, an experience…and one that I think every board gamer should have a chance to try. It has been an excellent rollercoaster of a ride. Story turns, new rules as you go and some big shocks that none of us saw coming. Fantastic game with amazing production and a great story. We have all wanted to play this over and over and all 3 of us have loved it so far. Excited to play more also worried that it will be over all too soon. Brilliant game!”

dbgames.co.uk

The content of this article is originally from Board Game Geek and dbldkr.com. For more information and a better understanding of the game, you can watch the videos below.