by Vooshvazool
I have had a love hate relationship with Pandemic ever since I received the game. I love the tension, the theme and the cooperation but the set up, the intimidation factor with the number of components for new players and the math-y nature of the game meant it never got much play at my home (they prefer more casual games). The came The Cure and suddenly my wife loved it!But I always hoped for a bit more but the cost of the expansion... well, it costs more than the base game! Then I had a thought, could I use the In the Lab, my personal favorite expansion, with The Cure? Could it be integrated I easily but add that next level of team work and challenge without the 50$ price tag (and inject some needed theme to boot)?
Well, here is what we tried for our first run through. See what you think and let me know if there are ways to refine it.
Setup:
Set up The Cure as normal.
Place the in the lab board to one side, shuffle the sequence card and reveal one.
Place 24 cubes, 6 of each color to match the disease dice, next to the lab board.
Gameplay:
Play The Cure following normal rules with a few new actions.
New Action Treat - when using the treat face of a die you may put 1 matching colored cub in a sample dish.
New Action Collect Sample (face only) - a Collect Samole face may be used to either process a sample or sequence a disease.
New Action Collect Sample (die + disease die) - a Collect Sample die with matching colored uncared disease die from the treatment center may be used to...
1) Characterize a disease
2) Test a Cure, if the sequence card has any cubes on it. Then remove one die of the matching color from anywhere in the world to the treatment center.
3) One player may use 3 samples of the same color on their player card to Cure the disease. Then open a new research line.
The game play went smoothly. The limitation on the cubes made the choices you make in sequencing or in what tray to place the cubes much more important and using the locked Collect Sample dice like city cards really put the pressure on even though we could all contribute to finding the Cure.
We ended up loosing through outbreaks with only the blue disease left to be cured. My only other adjustment would be having the scientist be able to find a cure using only 2 Collect Sample dice when curing the disease.
Again, let me know what you think. I would love to hear your ideas, input and advice. If it works out I could try and tweet to turn order cards to match this new variant.