by AronFJenks
Tonesta78 wrote:
AronFJenks wrote:
End of game spoilers!
[o]
Once Utopia is accessed, is Shanghai still the only way in or out? Or, can we draw a supply line from bangkok? Is that blue squiggly-squarish line supposed to represent a fence or barrier that a supply line cannot cross?
(In case it wasn't obvious - I'm trying to figure out the fastest way to get from goal to goal in December. I'm rather disappointed, frustrated, and angry at how utterly impossible it was for us to win, despite crushing the game for the first 11 months. I would like to write a long rant on the subject but I figured I should first check to see if I overlooked something .) [/o]
[o]
Once Utopia is accessed, is Shanghai still the only way in or out? Or, can we draw a supply line from bangkok? Is that blue squiggly-squarish line supposed to represent a fence or barrier that a supply line cannot cross?
(In case it wasn't obvious - I'm trying to figure out the fastest way to get from goal to goal in December. I'm rather disappointed, frustrated, and angry at how utterly impossible it was for us to win, despite crushing the game for the first 11 months. I would like to write a long rant on the subject but I figured I should first check to see if I overlooked something .) [/o]
[o]No, I'm pretty sure that you have to start Lake Baikal - Utopia - Shanghai.
I believe that the shortest possible route is seven (red/red/red/black/black/yellow/blue)....although the way we had set up the board prior to December, we needed an additional red.
Either way, I can see how it can be challenging to win December the first time round if you happen to have brought the wrong characters with you, and get a bit of bad luck with the red card draws.....but with knowledge, the second time should be OK?[/o]
[o]Well. Perhaps I should post a game report and get some opinions. I'm sure exactly what the "wrong" team would be. We used the team that got us through November with a nearly flawless game, in position to score in the highest category if we had just been able to win December. Maybe we could have gained a slight advantage by swapping out a character, but I think the game should not be insurmountable with the "main" unit that did so well until that point. Also, by the time we realized how difficult December was going to be, well, we had already started December and it was too late to use a different team.
When you say "The second time around." Do you mean the second try at December? Or do you mean a second play through of the entire game? Obviously the game can be won fairly easily on a second entire play through, so I assume you mean the second attempt in December.
Whatever chance we had was in the first month of December. We went all-out to win. We used our last checkbox on at least 2 of the production cards. We used our remaining two unrationed events. And we didn't waste time doing any remaining searches (there were only 2 left that hadn't been done, (plus utopia), but one of them certainly would have been useful.). We didn't waste time trying to build supply centers that we could have made permanent to give us an easy game in the second half of December.
In hindsight, we could have just lost December on purpose to set up an easy win for the second half - but that's not the spirit of the game. You play to win, and we didn't think it was reasonable for us to be in position where we had to lose December on purpose just to win the overall game.
So, at the start of our second game in December, we had ZERO unrationed events (having used and wasted the crucial card that moves 4 utopia cards to the game end area, and having used and wasted the crucial card that gives 8 supply cubes from the reserve). We had 2 fewer production cards, and we were minus our best character for the carrier task (The character that had the upgrade to swap a card for any other card). We didn't have any permanent Supply centers in Red and we didn't have one in Johannesberg. Almost Zero chance to win unless we got lucky with card draws.
It didn't help that we got very unlucky both times in December, but still. We invest all that time and energy over a course of several weeks, and it comes down to the luck of the draw? And yes, we did have both red card upgrades (the ones that turn two non red cards into red cards).
There just didn't seem to be anything we could do to stop 8 plague cubes from being placed. It makes me wonder if I'm missing something. If a city has no supply cubes, there's nothing whatsoever to prevent one from being placed and moving the incident marker up one, right? Unless we missed something, there isn't a character, an upgrade, a companion, or a lab bonus or anything that can prevent a plague cube from being placed when an infection card is drawn and that city has no supply cubes on it. We can remove them using certain cards, but that doesn't back up the incident counter. It was really annoying to watch helplessly as we drew one card after another that put a plague cube on the board whenever we needed it to be a Hollow Man, and vice versa.
So, maybe it was just bad luck. Maybe we had some strategic errors. But through 11 months, we didn't really need to rely on luck. We played well and put ourselves in position to defend against bad luck, bad draws, and worse case scenarios. Its frustrating to realize that in hindsight, we should have just lost a couple more times in the later part of the campaign - gaining extra upgrades and getting some more rationed event cards into play. Instead, we ran the table from April onward, never having any rationed events and gaining only on month's worth of upgrade points each time, only to get screwed in December.
AAAAAARGH.
[/o]