busman's holiday for pathologists

[luvcraft]

xuer and I played Pandemic for the first time last night. We played the "introductory" difficulty level, and thought we were totally kicking ass but actually ended up BARELY winning (we won when there was ONE card left in the player draw pile, and if you draw the last card in the player draw pile as part of your mandatory "draw two cards at the end of

Comments

[elijahdprophet]

I have not had a chance to play Pandemic yet, but I like the idea of co op games, and this one seems more accessible to new gamers, unlike say Arkham Horror.

[luvcraft]

yeah, this one does NOT take nine hours to play.

I've also heard that A Touch of Evil is somewhere between the two, if you want something more like Arkham Horror than Pandemic.

[stanleypain]

In fairness to Arkham Horror, it isn't really a very complicated game, it just has an overly elaborate set up and far too many gameplay phases/steps which is easily the reason why it takes so long to play. The pre-constructed new version of the Cthulhu card game (pretentiously called a LCC, Living Card Game) is quite literally the idea behind AH compressed and streamlined into a much more elegant experience, though the downside is only being 2 player.

I saw a game of Touch of Evil being played live and it didn't SEEM any less convoluted than AH, but maybe I would have to play it to understand. It also took up MORE table space than AH which I didn't think was humanly possible.

[dorukai]

Get the expansion, apparently it adds a lot of interest to the game, with a traitor element etc.

[luvcraft]

yeah, see, I don't know that I really want to "dilute" it with the bio-terrorist element. :)

[dorukai]

I haven't played the base game enough to get bored with it anyway (still just that one game at Essen, heh).

[brianarn]

One thing I like about the sound of the expansion is having a few more roles -- not that the ones there aren't great or something, but they have some mechanics to pull cards back out of discard, potentially expanding the game.

I've played six rounds (all on easy) and we're 3/3 so far. It can be surprisingly challenging at times. Also, for 2p, it feels like medic/scientist is the most potent combo, but having a researcher and a dispatcher in the mix in 4p is *very* powerful.