by Rozy
So it was a while since our group of 4 met. Many things happened in real life - two of us got married to each other. So after more then a month we found some time to play again together.
INTRO
[o]After struggling a lot last time during May and June we sprinted thru July and completed the search for Virologist. We still do not know what that helps us with, but we are pressing on. We were also able to eradicate the yellow virus in July so we took two positive mutations for it (to a total of 3) so now we need 1 less card when trying to cure it. We took it over the Paramilitary Escort upgrade as we thought it would be better for now. We start with 6 events due to funding + we have bonus from opening box 8 (since we lost 4 games in row last time) [/o]
AUGUST
[o]We start with Scientist (Anne), Generalist (Dr. 13), Quarantine Specialist (Burnham) and Colonel (Jack O'Neil). We took Jack over the Soldier since we did not have the grenade in our starting hand and we needed to deal with a lot of Faded quickly so we thought the Colonel might help. We also had the event New Assignment (that allows us to switch character) in our opening hand so we thought we are covered. Since we won July we can build one permanent Military base and we choose Paris. We need a strong foothold in Europe for Burnham with the upgrade to allow quarantines to be places in cities neighboring the military base where she is stationed. Our only Military base in Europe was in Moscow up until now. Since we start with 7 military bases now we have as for past few games completed the objective right away. As for the search for Immunologist we have 3 cities we can search in: Moscow, Istanbul and Alger are all Faded cities with 2 or 3 panic level. We soon draw a Moscow card and gather most of our group in Moscow to finish the search. With the information we find it all makes more sense to us - so looks like we need to find two more people. We switch Jack for John (Soldier) as soon as we have grenade. With Burnham we keep the Faded cities at check. We finish blue cure quickly and we can make cure for yellow as well but we wait hoping to eradicate red once we make cure for it as there are very few red cubes on the map. But red cards are spread among us so we are trying to think of the best strategy. We need to use one of the 3 bonuses from box 8 to help with the pressure, but we think it's worth it if we can eradicate red. In the end the best strategy we find is that John a Pilot flies into red Cities and gives cards to Dr.13 since they have the Co-workers relationship. We spend one round cleaning red cubes and finally make a cure. Then we immediately make a yellow cure (since it requires no action) and win the month. For our bonuses we give John the Paramilitary Escort upgrade as we feel that will be very strong and we pick the very last positive mutation for our red disease. Now we have blue with 4, yellow with 3 and red with 2.[/o]
SEPTEMBER
[o]We decide to start September with the same characters as we ended August with. We start again in Jakarta that has both Science and Military bases. And we decide to go for the Paranoid soldier quest early. We have a bonus from last month so we start with 2 points already in search and with John that call pull equipment cards from discard pile (that are mostly black CoDA cards) we finish the quest before the end of 2nd round. SPOILER! Most of this month continues with spoilers after completing the Paranoid soldier objective: [o]So we open Box 6 and read. It's a bit confusing as we do not know what to read first. But seems it all makes sense in the end. So we need to destroy John our Pilot Soldier that we just upgraded with Paramilitary Escort. He was only able to use the new ability twice and he is gone forever. The rest of the month is tough, without John and not having New Assignment event (dropped due to funding) we do not have any way to reduce the Faded population. We decide to cut of Asia from India to prevent faded spreading there, but that causes few pandemics in the India. We are slowly working towards cures, but we struggle with red again. In the end we make cures, but since having Military bases is no longer a viable objective and we decide that we do not want to destroy 2 military bases yet we try to place 7 quarantine tokens on Faded cities. The card draw is not best, but it the end we manage to survive. We are left with only 3 or 4 faded figures in the supply while middle east goes into Outbreak chains again. To prevent our loss we use the equipment "Drone transport" to drop into Istanbul at panic level 4 a completely isolate it. Once it's Burhnam's turn she can place 4 quarantine tokes and complete the objective and save us. For the end game bonuses we debate a lot but we choose both bonuses to place permanent roadblocks so we can use all 6 to keep Istanbul isolated. We have lost already twice to chain outbreaks in middle east and now almost a 3rd time so we hope that this will help us in the future. As I think of it anytime I say something like that the next month something unexpected completely changes my mind on how good that decision was.[/o][/o]
