Pandemic Legacy ~ card/board Entertainment
You and your team are used to conquering viruses. In fact, you do it all the time! But this year, something is different….
If you’d asked me a while back, what I thought the highlight of 2020 would be… playing a board game about a pandemic while in the MIDST of an actual pandemic… probably wouldn’t have even crossed my mind.
But, here we are.
Today, I’m going to give you a feel for what it’s like playing Pandemic Legacy (without giving too many spoilers… because, yes, that’s a thing)
Game Play Overview
If you’ve ever played Pandemic, then jumping into Pandemic Legacy won’t be too difficult.
If you haven’t played Pandemic, here’s the gist: you and the other players are working together as a team of disease-fighting specialists to prevent the outbreaks of four different diseases that are wreaking havoc on the world. This is a cooperative game where you are working together against the board.
Pandemic Legacy starts out the same. However, right from the beginning, you will notice some differences: Legacy has a story arc. Each “campaign” takes place in a different month, starting with January (note, you do not have to PLAY the January round in the actual month of January… but it could be fun). You get two chances to win each month. If you win, you move on to the next month. If you lose, you try again. If you lose a second time, you move on anyway. This means that the smallest number of rounds you can finish this game in is 12, with a possible 24 if you and your team just never get the hang of it.
As the story progresses, there is a deck of cards to pay attention to, because certain things in play will trigger the reading of these cards. In order! These cards introduce new rules, new characters, new roles and responsibilities, and new elements to the story of what is happening in the world of Pandemic Legacy.
The world is a mess, and it’s YOUR job to fix it. But beware! the rules are changing at every turn….
The main difference in the Legacy experience is that these games are meant to be played ONCE. As you play through the story, you will be directed to alter various components. You may write on the board. Stickers will be placed in ways that permanently alter the board itself. You will be directed to DESTROY various cards or elements within the game, never to be used again! (As one who tends to work hard to keep games in very good condition… this is still a difficult thing for me to accept… but there’s also something a little cathartic about it).
Why I Loved Pandemic Legacy
This game gives you a reason to get together with a group of people and play on a regular basis.
Pandemic Legacy is constantly changing. As a scholar of stories, I enjoyed that this game had one. For those of you who play video games, that might seem old hat to you, but I never played video games (except for Tekkan II and Ladders) and so this idea of a board game having a story arc was probably my favorite thing about it.
Sometimes, a game can get old if you play it over and over. Not so with Pandemic Legacy! I really enjoyed how the rules changed throughout the rounds. It’s not just a game, it’s also a story, and you and your group are the main characters in the story… and you only ever know as much as your characters do! This game never grew stale, because there was always something new to remember or do.
The inside jokes. Seriously, this game had so much room for commentary. This game is sort of halfway between a standard board game and an RPG (role-playing game), which meant that there was a LOT of table talk and discussion about everything. And since we were playing it IN an actual pandemic… well… you can just imagine the types of conversations that were held!
Multiple seasons. When you’re finished with season one, the fun does not have to end! Our group is now playing season 2. We’re three rounds in, and so far it’s every bit as fun as season 1 was. The rules are a bit snarkier. The story picks up about 70 years after the end of season 1, and wow… the world has fallen apart. Too bad your team couldn’t live forever. I was skeptical about how they would keep the feel of Pandemic without just rehashing the same kind of story… but they have accomplished it quite well so far! I’m impressed.
Things I Didn’t Like
Honestly, there wasn’t much I didn’t like.
There were times when the game was really difficult… maybe too difficult. (Like the time we lost 4 rounds in a row… but then we got to open BOX 8… which we were all super curious about (as it had this little sign on it that simply said, “Open when you’ve lost 4 games in a row.” If that’s not a vote of confidence, I don’t know what is. We’d had a lot of fun imagining what would be in there. Some of us thought it might just be cookies, to console us for being terrible players. Some of us thought it might be a refund. I don’t remember all the theories… but we did eventually get to open it… and I won’t give it away here. BECAUSE: SPOILERS!)
There are a lot of things to remember, and sometimes we accidentally cheated because we hadn’t read something correctly, and then you can’t really go back and play that round over because you may have done things that already altered the board… so you just have to keep going. If you pick up the game, I highly recommend that you pay close attention to the wording on the cards (particularly your character card)!
Logistics
Number of Players
2-4 players. We played with a group of four, and I honestly don’t think I’d want to play it with any fewer than that.
Length of play
Each round takes approximately an hour — more if you’re talking and goofing off the way our group tends to. Less if things go REALLY well or REALLY against you. The first round will probably take longer because there’s the reading through the rules and figuring out what you’re doing and setting everything up.
Again, you have to play this game as a season, so you’ll play a minimum of 12 rounds and a maximum of 24.
Replayability
This is one of the weak points of this game. It’s not replay-able. Sure, there are ways to get around that if you want to keep track of all the permanent changes so you could go back and play through it or play a certain month again… but I can’t imagine it would be easy. If you really wanted to, I’d recommend just buying a new game and starting over.
Then there’s the story.
There are things about the story that you will know in advance if you try to play through it again. Like with any good story, it’s not going to ruin the game for you, but you will lose the “aha!” or the surprise of not knowing what’s coming next. Personally, I could see playing this again in a couple of years with my kids. But it won’t be the same experience for me.
Ratings (1-5 dragon eggs)
Fun-Factor
The fun-factor is off-the-charts I give it 5 dragon eggs
Production Quality
I thought the production quality was quite good. The only minor complaint I have is that the stickers don’t always STAY STUCK to the board or the cards, and that got a little annoying at times. Also, there are some things you have to scratch off… which always required a massive clean-up of glittery silver scratch-off dust. So I give it 3.5 dragon eggs
Replayability
As I said earlier, there’s not much in the way of replay-ability, but I feel it makes up for the lack by necessitating a solid 12+ game nights. We played through in 17 rounds, which we started in May and didn’t finish until December. So, even though it isn’t the normal definition of “replay-ability” I’m gonna give it 4.5 dragon eggs for 7 months of a very fun quasi-weekly activity.
Overall Score — 4.3 Dragon Eggs
Have you played Pandemic or any of the Pandemic Legacy seasons? What did you think of them? Do you enjoy the “season” or “legacy” style game (or the idea of it)? Does this game sound like one you’d enjoy? What are some of your favorite board games?
All images taken from Google search, because I forgot to take pictures of our own game when we were playing.