Pandemic: On the Brink - Bio-Terrorist Mod

It's funny that after owning all these other versions of Pandemic (Rome, Iberia, Warcraft :P), I decided to revisit the original and my first expansion of On the Brink where we never actually get to use the hidden movement variant of the bio terrorist 1 vs many PvP mode. Well, here's an easy mod I came up with to integrate him into a cooperative game - and really you don't need On the Brink to do it, you just need another marker or something to indicate where he is. Play with all the events available to have a chance.

During setup put his marker on the first infection deck city you pull (so the first of the 3 cubes).

Players get a new action: If they are in the space with the bio terrorist, you can spend one action to arrest him and put him beside the infection deck.

While he is locked away the game plays as normal, but when he's on the loose you simply do this: on the first draw of the infection deck, place the bio-terrorist there and add a cube of the appropriate color if allowed as per normal (eradicated diseases or characters that prevent cube spawns will also stop his cube from spawning). Obviously if this makes it go over three cubes in a single city, "explode" the disease as normal.

If an epidemic card is drawn then he escapes captivity (if he was captured) and will again appear on the first draw of the infection deck.

This makes him move around a fair bit but after an epidemic card his movements will be more predictable (and dangerous) since he is visiting cities that already have cubes!

Barely won our trial game with him so I think I'll try put him or his counterparts into my other Pandemic things to see how they go. Warcraft in particular is way too easy in normal mode.

Update: The Warcraft one reaches a suitable difficulty level if all the scourge cards are in the deck. No need for any adjustments there now. :)

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (board game) and Uno No Mercy

Games of wrath!

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

In this 1-5 player cooperative game, each player is a character from the World of Warcraft setting out to stop the Lich King who is spawning stationary ghouls and up to three abominations who actively pursue players. He also wanders around making things hurt more if he's in the region. To win, the team must complete three random quests (out of 9) and then complete a final quest at the Lich King's castle by rolling dice and maybe having cards with the right symbol to help push the progress tracker along. 

Combat plays much the same way. Players lose if the despair marker reaches the end of its track: moving twice for any player "killed" and once for each figurine you needed to spawn but have no more of. But how does the game actually play? Almost exactly like Pandemic. 7 hand card limit, do four actions per turn, ghouls spawn in location cards drawn, bad cards wait in player card pile to make things worse. I do quite like that you don't need to do the five of the same cards business this time around which makes it different enough to be interesting for me, but I also think it makes it much easier than any of the other Pandemic games in my collection thus far. :P

Update: Playing will all the scourge cards puts it at an ok difficulty level, always go ahead and do that!

Uno No Mercy

This competitive card game is just like Uno in that you want to be the first one to get rid of all your cards and have to say "Uno" once you're down to one. The no mercy bit comes from all the +plus cards in the deck, like +2 means the next player draws two and loses their turn - BUT the +plus cards stack, so if you have a plus card you can just put that on, and on, and on, until someone needs to pick up a +32 or something. Also, if you ever get 25 or more cards in your hand, you're out which opens up another path to victory: kill all your opponents. Expect tears if played with younger kids. Not the type of game for me.

Pandemic: State of Emergency and In the Lab

Jim let us try out these expansions for Pandemic that he's had for awhile and they both can change the base game just enough to make it feel different again.

State of Emergency

While this adds a Super bug (purple cubes) challenge and lock down tokens where you can pay a card to quarantine a city (up to 4, or 6 is someone is using the Colonel role) which prevents disease cubes spawning on it twice, the "bigger" change is when you use the Hinterlands challenge that adds two mini boards next to the world map which depict the animals in those regions also spreading the disease.

You can normally only move to them through one of the five cities they are attached to meaning they're hard to get to, but once there you can trade any card of that color with another player in the same Hinterland region (as opposed to exactly the same city). On the negative side, should a Hinterland outbreak - all the connected cities get hit as well and vice versa.

In the Lab

This one also adds a new board, the Lab, where someone must spend turns sequencing the cure for each virus. On the flip side, instead of one person needing 5 of the same colored cards to make a cure those can now come from numerous players. It's a nice mini-game but someone will probably be locked in there the whole game so that's a bit hit or miss.

Are either compelling enough for me to purchase for myself? No, I think I've burned out on old Pandemic. Happy to play Pandemic: Fall of Rome though, where the "virus" is people!

Couch Co-op Replacement

If your split screen co-op console choices are becoming limited, switch to board games. Odds are you can play with more people (including those not tech savvy) and have a more interactive time to boot. Good co-op starters for those who don't know what to look for are Pandemic: Fall of Rome or Forbidden Desert. At the very least it gives you a few more choices of things to play.

Pandemic: Fall of Rome

The virus is barbarians!

For those who don't know, Pandemic has become a series of good, cooperative games that usually involve researching (and stopping) the spread of various diseases across the game board map. In Fall of Rome, the "diseases" are barbarian tribes who are marching their way into Roman territory and the players (Romans) must prevent this invasion by allying and/or eliminating all of them.

While there are many similar concepts from the other Pandemic series here, such as card matching to then cure/ally with a disease/tribe, there are new ones too - the most obvious one being the recruiting of legions and the dice rolling battles which is fast and enjoyable.

The components are pretty too!

Also the event cards now have a "stronger" optional effect in exchange for corrupting Rome a little more, bringing everyone closer to defeat. This makes for some great strategy on top of the "which tribes will we ally and which will we just kill?" question.

Yes you can win by wiping them all out, but good luck with that. :P All up this is a very enjoyable take on the series and currently my favorite one because of the fighting! I give it 5 out of 5 and highly recommend it! :)

Insight: Defending the front with forts and legions is a good way to keep the hordes at bay.

Pandemic: Iberia

Less technology, more difficulty!

Pandemic is one of my most played games currently, so getting Pandemic: Iberia was a natural progression for me. Much of the game play from the original is familiar. The disease cubes, epidemic cards, trading of cards and researching disease are all the same.

It's the differences that make it harder, for one diseases must be researched to win, but they can never be "cured". Secondly, there are no airplanes which means travel is slow - until you build up the railway system, which is one of the highlights of the game for me. A single move action can take you to anywhere connected by the placable rail tracks. It's very cool!

It also has cool art!

This is one of those games that is easier with less people though so be warned! Bringing a full complement of 5 characters means winning (or losing) by the skin of your teeth. On the other hand, if the game is too easy you can try run the "patients" version where the cubes move, or face historical viruses which makes those cubes more deadly.

A good challenge and a good game. If you are tossing up on getting regular Pandemic or this one, get this one. I give it 3.5 hospitals out of 5.

Forbidden Island

Cooperative Greed!

Inspired by my board game collection, one of our June guests decided to get Forbidden Island and got us all to try it out. In this prequel to the Forbidden Desert, players are trying to collect four treasures and escape before the island sinks completely.

It does give you that sinking feeling.

Gaining treasures feels very Pandemic-y though, as you require four matching cards to get the doo-hickey from the matching tile - and given that you can trade cards the game ensures everyone starts out separated at the beginning.

While the game plays just as fast as the Desert variety and the double sided tiles are just as pretty, it seems like a much easier game and one that will hit the "solved" stage right away. Sure, a bad draw might actually trigger a loss but a team working together should be able to mitigate most of that.

Still fun and one I can recommend to cooperative board gamers, though I feel if you are only going to get either Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert, get the latter. I give this 3 sandbags out of 5.

The Solved Games

Where enough experience leads to almost certain victory.

After numerous play throughs I'm finding that a few of my cooperative board games have reached a "solved" status - where repetitively using the right tactic often leads to victory. Spoilers / Tips ahead, depending on your point of view!

Police Precinct - never had a defeat in this, the team just to divide labour between keeping crime in check and finding the murderer / preferably focusing on what their character is good at but being fluid enough to adapt to the board. I still really like the "emergency" system. Score Adjustment: -1.

Pandemic / Pandemic: On the Brink - while defeat comes quickly if you go for the full epidemic card set having less than that almost makes for an easy game. The red ones of On the Brink are almost mandatory for us now as we can even win with the full green epidemic cards of the base game. Obviously the bio-terrorist option (which we haven't tried yet) might mix things up. Score Adjustment: -1.

Shadows Over Camelot - on full cooperative it is almost impossible to lose provided the team works together. Defeat only comes if everyone does their own thing and tries tackle the harder group quests solo, or keeps quest hopping. You don't have to win every quest, just be sure to win the important ones. I can see why the traitor mechanic is almost mandatory. Score Adjustment: -1.

Operation Flashpoint: Fire Rescue - while bad luck can ruin any game it can be mitigated a bit here simply through communication. Planning ahead pays well, as does not intentionally damaging the building more than necessary. Almost trivialized if you have the driver in the fire engine to provide cover. Score Adjustment: -1.

Zombicide Season 2: Prison Outbreak - knowing your perks and staying together (more HP to share around) is the main rule here, as well as sharing the XP so that the spawns don't become overpowered ahead of your team mates. Bad things usually happen when people wander off on their own, and most scenarios later on even force the players apart because they know a team together is near unstoppable. And that's even without equipment juggling. Hot potato chainsaw is fun. Score Adjustment: -1.

D&D Adventure Boardgame System - all the ones I currently have reviewed (Ravenloft, Ashardalon, Drizzt, ToEE) fall into this category. Victory lies in finding the quest tile fast, and that usually means splitting up to burn through the tile deck quicker. Yes, this puts more monsters on the board but they are usually more manageable than the dreaded encounter cards. Score Adjustment: -1.

Xenoshyft - though it delivers a few brutal losses at the start, once you know how to manage your card hand properly (don't buy garbage), and how to position troops (weakest dudes NEVER go at the end of the lane) loss becomes a thing of rarity in this game. Just don't expect any of your troops to live through the whole thing. Score Adjustment: -1.

Forbidden Desert - PSYCH! This is the true stand out in my current collection. Despite having such a simple premise each game requires active thinking from each participant to mitigate those deadly loss conditions. Such a treasure of a little game, and one I'm going to recommend again right here: if you haven't played Forbidden Desert yet, please go do so! Score Adjustment: +1, and is now the "best" game in my collection.

Today I Smiled: Too Much of a Good Thing?

My little cousin stayed over for a night of boardgames and did we go through a whole bunch! Won two rounds of Pandemic (easiest level then easiest with mutation), lost two rounds of veteran level Flash Point: Fire Rescue, lost one and won one novice round of Forbidden Desert, and surprisingly won two games of Eldritch Horror, without any detective casualties, against Azathoth and Yog-Sothoth!

We then moved onto more competitive rounds of regular playing cards and a game my cousin calls "Chinese". She won 4 out of 5 of those, followed by me winning two rounds of Bluff and finishing off with two games of Lords of Waterdeep where once again my wife proved she was the ultimate Lady of Waterdeep winning both games by a huge margin. As you can imagine a little bit of board game fatigue has since followed. :P

I've also finally gone through all the "vigilance quests" (just shy of 200, counting repetitions) introduced in Neverwinter Online's Elemental Evil and am now level 70 on my rogue. At least you get a lot of good gear for going through all of that - an artifact main hand and off hand weapon to boot! I normally put video links at this point, so for those who don't play or haven't reached any of the dragons, here's a clip taken by my brother. That's me with the knives and the weird helmet! Or, if that doesn't interest you - have a trailer to Batman vs Superman instead. :D

Hope you all have a great day!

Pandemic

Deadly viruses are on the loose and it is up to your team from the CDC to stop it!

This game plays out on a world map where little colored cubes represent deadly, nameless, viruses that are spreading rampantly across the globe. If you run out of cubes of any color, or have too many outbreaks (which usually comes down to bad luck), or run out of player cards to draw (two of which are drawn each turn), you lose. That last, yet simple condition is excellent design for me as it pretty much guarantees that each game you play will only go for 45 minutes to one hour simply because you WILL run out of cards by then.

Having a "set" play time makes it easy to plan around, unlike some other games that can go on for a long while. Having multiple uses for those all important player cards also is good design in my book, as it will require coordination to actually come out on top to find a cure for all the plagues and win the game. While we have only played beginner difficulty games so far it has already been exciting with close calls and even one loss. The adding of Pandemic cards (which make the plagues burst from already sick locations) dictates the challenge level.

And if that isn't enough the "On the Brink" expansion adds three optional challenges in the forms of virulent strains, mutations and even a playable bio terrorist. We haven't tried any of those so far as the base game adds quite enough of a challenge, however that expansion does come with a better "box" to contain all the components from the first game as well as interesting new roles and cards which allow a fifth player to also join the team.

It's fun, easy to setup, easy to play, and as challenging as you want it to be. I give it four outbreaks out of five. Score after re-review: three outbreaks out of five.