#32b/52. A Game Trilogy - Pandemic: Contagion

Pandemic: Contagion can be
acquired through Amazon

Another entry in my 2016 52 Game Challenge fell on Friday night!!! One of the categories was to play a game from a trilogy. When I was working on my list and came across this requirement, I was a bit befuddled at first. I mean, what the heck is a game trilogy??? I've heard of games with expansions, but never trilogies. I started looking into games that were serials. I didn't find anything that satisfied that qualification, but I did find a franchise with several stand-alone games in it. Pandemic!

There is Pandemic the base game that has several expansions - additions to the game that can make it better or more complex - where you are trying to stop a world-wide pandemic from spreading and wiping out humanity. This is a cooperative game, which means that the players are working together to beat the game.

Then came Pandemic: Contagion. In this competitive game you are the virus and are trying to spread world wide to wipe out humanity. Whichever virus wipes out the most people wins! Fun and uplifting topic, eh?

The third game in this "trilogy" is Pandemic Legacy: Season 1. I haven't played this game before, but as I understand it each time you play this game you make subtle but permanent changes to the game itself to make the next time you play slightly different. You get to play with this copy of the game 12-24 times before it's "done."

Pandemic: Contagion Game Set-Up

So the game I played on Friday, January 8, 2016 is Pandemic: Contagion. This was our first time playing this game. It was a simple-to-understand and play game. It went fairly quickly - about 45 minutes. You have these little cubes that you place on city cards. You have to pay contagion cards that match the color of the city cards you wish to infect. Additionally, each round there are event cards that get drawn. The event cards usually seem to help the viruses spread, but sometimes they hinder. Every fourth card is a WHO (World Health Organization) card that drastically hinders the virus' ability to spread.

It's important to develop a strategy for spreading your strain early. I was a bit slow in developing my strategy as I was trying to understand the game play and I ended up coming in last. Mark and Nicole seemed to catch on more quickly and scored more quickly. In fact, Mark ended up running away with the victory.

We rated this game a 7.5 on Board Game Geek. I want to play this game some more before I make a final decision on it. I'd like to try some different strategies and play with more of the event cards. Overall though, I'd say it's a fun game and I'd happily play it again!