14 Feb 2021. My copy of Pandemic is the first version, so it's not as pretty as the current version in print. One of the modules in the On The Brink expansion is the Bio-terrorist challenge. I have played it twice before. This time I brought it out again mainly to satisfy younger daughter Chen Rui's thirst to play the evil mastermind, carried over from our Betrayal Legacy campaign. She did not play as much traitor as she had hoped, and even in those games when she did play traitor, they were not satisfying enough. It sounds like I'm raising a supervillain here. Chen Rui played the terrorist, and I seated her alone at the north side of the map, while Michelle, Shee Yun and I sat together along the south side of the map.
At game setup, the black disease was rather concentrated. It was in India and the Middle East. We knew this would be a high risk area.
When drawing roles to play, I shuffled all five basic roles with all expansion roles and drew three at random. All three turned out to be expansion roles, thus these three unfamiliar colours at the CDC in Atlanta.
The Bio-terrorist pawn is black. At game setup, Chen Rui had two infection cards in hand. The terrorist draws infection cards instead of player cards. Infection cards can be used for remotely infecting a city and also for traveling around the map.
The location of the terrorist is normally kept secret, and is recorded on a sheet. The location of the terrorist is only revealed when a normal player happens to be at the same location. The normal player may spend one action to capture the terrorist. Mainly this forces the terrorist to discard all her hand cards. A captured terrorist can easily escape. She only needs to draw cards, then play a card to escape to the city depicted, after which she can continue to wreak havoc.
The good guys need to find cures for all four diseases, just like in the base game. The terrorist spreads a fifth disease. The good guys need to either find a cure for it too, or fully treat it, leaving no cube on the board. The Bio-terrorist variant is certainly harder than the base game and not just different, since there is now an additional disease to contend with, which is controlled by a malicious player.
The terrorist has more turns than the players. She takes a turn after every normal player turn. However the terrorist only performs 3 actions on her turn, compared to the 4 actions of normal players. Also one of the terrorist's action is reserved for movement only. In the photo above, the terrorist (black) is on the board because she happens to be at the same location as the blue player. So she is exposed. She has been spreading the purple disease in Karachi, and it is now on the brink of an outbreak (3 cubes). The good guys must treat some purple disease to prevent the outbreak.
The purple disease situation in the India and Middle East area is temporarily defused, but the black disease is spinning out of control now. The terrorist has gone to Paris and now Paris is on the verge of a purple outbreak. This is a major headache for the good guys.
The cure for the purple disease has been developed. Near the bottom of the map, there is a purple vial placed over the purple disease icon now. To find the cure for the purple disease, you can use five cards of any colour, but one of the cards must depict a city which currently has a purple cube. If the terrorist has spread the purple disease far and wide, it may be easier for the good guys to find a cure.
A purple outbreak has now occurred in Paris, and there is only one purple cube left (see petri dish on the left), which means the good guys are near losing by running out of purple cubes. There are only 12 purple cubes in the game. When a purple outbreak happens, the good guys will be forced into a bad situation and will not have much breathing space. The terrorist can keep threatening to use up all the purple cubes, and the good guys have no choice but to keep treating the purple disease. This means they are being forced into a reactive mode and they do not have much flexibility. They will have less time for handling the other four diseases.
Eventually it was the black disease which caused us good guys to lose the game. We had a chain reaction of outbreaks, and we ran out of black cubes.
13 Feb 2021. Han, Allen and I met up (online) to play Yokohama again. This time the board setup was very different from our first game. The production locations were dispersed. The silk farm was at the top right, which made it hard to get to. The employment agency was at the top left, the other harder-to-reach location. This meant it was more costly (action-wise) to recruit assistants and to buy buildings.
I (green) managed to be first to complete two of the achievements (top left). The bonus for being first isn't really that big, just 2 Victory Points. Being able to complete achievements is helpful. The points are decent. The first achievement required having 5 copper in hand. I noticed an opportunity and completed this achievement quite early. All of us already started with 1 copper. At the copper mine, if I was able to place 4 Power, I would gain 2 copper. Placing 4 Power also allowed me to build a shop, and one of the shop slots gave exactly 2 copper! This was just perfect! I had to rush for this before the others noticed.
This game I used the same general strategy as before - fulfil as many orders as possible. I (green) completed the most number of orders. However I didn't have as many techs as the others. Three of my orders gave me imported goods. At one point I had 4 imported goods, and I ran to the Customs House to trade them in for 22VP. Being able to claim that most lucrative slot was a huge boost for me.
Allen (red) and Han (blue) were more aggressive in constructing buildings. Both of them had trading houses (large buildings) - 3rd row 2nd location (blue), and 3rd row 3rd location (red).
The third achievement required building presence in four commercial locations, which was not easy. Allen (red) managed that and scored 10VP for it.
I still kept to the more conservative strategy this game. I should explore something different next time.
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