Released in October 2015 and designed by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is a legacy version of the base game released by Z-Man Games. Similar to Risk Legacy, in which the game added an ongoing storyline to the basic game.Meaning the game board and rules change permanently after each game.
Each game represents one month of time in a campaign which simulates the passage of one year. If the players win the first game, they move on to the next month. And if they lose, they try again. However, move on to the next month regardless of what happens in the second game.
New rules and components are in packages that remain sealed until certain events take place. Fore example, completing the game for a given month, or losing a certain number of games in a row.
It starts simply. A virus tougher than the rest. Nothing your team canโt handle. But as January turns to February, things take a turn for the worse. This is no ordinary virus. What results is a year that will never fade away. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is an immersive cooperative experience where players work together as a team to stop global outbreaks. With an overarching story arc played through 12-24 sessions, depending on how well your group does at the game. The campaign evolves over months, with permanent changes affecting gameplay.
Board Game and Components
The game consists of a game board representing a network connecting 48 cities on a world map, two decks of cards (Player cards and Infection cards), four colours of cubes with 24 cubes each (each representing a different disease), six Research Stations, and a pawn for each role.
The Player cards include cards with each city name (the same as those on the board). Event cards, which can be played at any time (except for some events in expansions) to give the players an advantage. And Epidemic cards. Infection cards consist of one card for each city on the board and a colour of the disease that will start there.
Pandemic Legacy is considered one of the most successful cooperative games that have reached mainstream market sales, condensing the type of deep strategy offered by earlier cooperative games, like Arkham Horror, into a game that can be played in a short time by a broader range of players.
