Pandemic Legacy is a co-operative campaign game, with an overarching story-arc played through 12-24 sessions, depending on how well your group does at the game. At the beginning, the game starts very similar to basic Pandemic, in which your team of disease-fighting specialists races against the clock to travel around the world, treating disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.
During a player's turn, they have four actions available, with which they may travel around in the world in various ways (sometimes needing to discard a card), build structures like research stations, treat diseases (removing one cube from the board; if all cubes of a color have been removed, the disease has been eradicated), trade cards with other players, or find a cure for a disease (requiring five cards of the same color to be discarded while at a research station). Each player has a unique role with special abilities to help them at these actions.
After a player has taken their actions, they draw two cards. These cards can include epidemic cards, which will place new disease cubes on the board, and can lead to an outbreak, spreading disease cubes even further. Outbreaks additionally increase the panic level of a city, making that city more expensive to travel to.
Each month in the game, you have two chances to achieve that month's objectives. If you succeed, you win and immediately move on to the next month. If you fail, you have a second chance, with more funding for beneficial event cards.
During the campaign, new rules and components will be introduced. These will sometimes require you to permanently alter the components of the game; this includes writing on cards, ripping up cards, and placing permanent stickers on components. Your characters can gain new skills, or detrimental effects. A character can even be lost entirely, at which point it's no longer available for play.
Part of the Pandemic series
Buy Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 on Amazon
Tabletop game themes across the hobby are increasingly diverse, but there’s one area that’s conspicuous in its absence. Join Meeple Mountain as we ask - where...
Meeple Mountain is thrilled to bring you the top secret details behind the final Pandemic Legacy game, Pandemic Legacy: Season π. Spoilers ahead, you've been...
Our third collection of board game haiku explores some stone cold classics as well as some recent smash hits, all in seventeen syllables!
More than a decade after its release, this board game is still going strong. Read why Pandemic is a game we love.
Ten years is a long time in board gaming! Join us as we look back on the smart, influential, weird and crazy things that emerged from the last decade of games.
I’m an adult now; at least, I’ve aged enough to classify me as an “adult”, even if I don’t know what that classification means. I pay bills, I’ve made...
One of the most rewarding parts of the board gaming hobby is getting to share it with the people around you. Whether it is friends you’re showing Pandemic for...
Have you ever had to try to describe a game in a single phrase? Here’s a satirical look at some honest game descriptions of our favorite (or least favorite)...
Here at Meeple Mountain we know that gaming tastes are decidedly subjective. Let's combine that with just about the only thing that is more subjective--music...
Legacy is the new buzzword in the board gaming industry. Want to learn more about legacy games and how they work? Join us as we take a closer look at three...
Time to start shopping for holiday gifts! Whether you are a gamer hoping to bring someone else into the hobby, a parent looking to get the family around the...
Pandemic Legacy has quite literally "changed the game". Read on to see why I think it is one of the most important games of all time.
In this edition of Meeple Mountain interviews, we talk to Randy Hoyt of Foxtrot Games about the smash hit Lanterns and the newly released Kickstarter darling...
