My wife, Mandi, came to the rescue, though. She pretty much hates gaming, but, when she learned that I didn't get to play any games that I consider to be fun, she agreed to play one with me. I chose Pandemic because I figured she'd like the cooperative aspect of it.
This session was only the second time that I had played it. The first time, Manny led us through the game, so I didn't feel the need to do a thorough review of the rules since I had that prior experience. Oops!
The session at Manny's ended with us being overwhelmed by breakouts, and I was determined to not let that happen this time. Instead of choosing random roles, I assigned Mandi to be the Operations Specialist to build research stations, and I played the Medic to more easily clean out infected cities. Together, we concentrated, in order, on wiping disease out of cities that threatened to outbreak, curing diseases, and eradicating diseases.
We were doing really well, too. We had cured and eliminated all the yellow cubes and had cured the red disease. I noticed that we were getting near the end of the stack of player draw cards and read through the rules to see if we shuffle them and start over or what. Turns out, reaching the end of the draw stack is one of the loss conditions. At that point, there was no way for us to cure the remaining two diseases to win the game.
Lessons Learned:
- Curing diseases is the priority. Though eradicating them gives you a benefit, you just don't have time to do it.
- I think that two player is much tougher than playing with three or four. You have the benefit of moving each of specialist more, but you have less specialists, meaning less abilities and less cards.
- If you're going to play two player, I wouldn't use the Operations Specialist. Because you can only hold 7 cards, you're getting rid of cards all the time anyway. Use the extra cards to build research stations.
- The Scientist might be absolutely crucial. Needing only four cards instead of five may be the only way to get all four cured.
- The Medic is useful but, again, with two players, may be a luxury that you can't afford. The Researcher's ability to transfer cards may be too essential to leave him out of the game.
For next game:
My plan is to concentrate solely on getting the 4 diseases cured and manage outbreaks only enough to keep from getting hoses.
BTW, Mandi did like the game better than most that I've forced her to play. No word yet on if she'll ever play again, though.
