Pandemic Legacy Season 1 Red Edition Board Game | Board Game for Adults and Family | Cooperative Board Game | Ages 13+ | 2 to 4 players | Average Playtime 60 minutes | Made by Z-Man Games

This game is absolutely amazing. My boyfriend and I just started playing it and have finished through February of the "12 month" campaign so far, and when I woke up this morning, the first thing I said to him was "I want to play more Pandemic."We had never played Pandemic before, so we did a few practice rounds first without the Legacy rules in effect. Feeling pretty comfortable with it, we moved ahead in the campaign. Opening the special boxes and putting stickers on the board feels like Christmas. The first time it told us to destroy a card, we looked at each other wondering who was going to be brave enough to rip it up. The way new cards are entered into play, with rules changing permanently (or at least seemingly permanently) as you go, objectives changing and adding on to one another, makes each game a unique experience with changing strategy. There are funded events, characters added into play, upgrades and scars added to characters, mutations added to the diseases, and at the end of each game, depending on whether you won or lost, your funding either goes up or down, which will make the next game either easier or harder. I don't know how anyone could go back to regular Pandemic after this.At first I hadn't wanted to buy both Pandemic and Pandemic Legacy, but now I think I understand the need for both. As the game's board changes and is modified, I think we'll need a regular Pandemic board (and the expansions!) for playing afterward. Though maybe we'll need to keep some of the new modifications we learned in Legacy? Only time will tell.Next week, I'm starting a new Legacy campaign with four players. I'm hoping that is even more exciting (will report back soon), but for now, I'm happy to have found a complex and engaging co-op game for two players.Update:And for people wondering if you can start over with the Legacy campaign after you finish the 12 months, my feeling is that the answer is no. Even if you don't destroy cards, some of the changes are somewhat permanent, adding new rules at certain stages or placing new stickers over the old ones. Each time there is an outbreak in a city, it gets a sticker permanently leveling it from 1-5 (rioting to destroyed) which changes the play. So even without destroying cards, you're using the stickers. I don't think you could play through it again after you finish as the 12-month campaign, but I figure it IS likely that whatever state the game is in by month 12, you can keep playing that campaign over and over.

My girlfriend and I played through this and we were absolutely hooked, literally dreaming about the game, until it was through. It really is an amazing experience, so unlike any table-top board game I've ever played before. Having finished our play-through, we're now in a sort of Pandemic Legacy withdrawal phase. "What do we do now?" They've tantalized us with that "Season 1" label on the box, so maybe there's hope, eventually, for us to get our fix. Anyway, here are some thoughts from our experiences:Works great for two players. I was a little worried at first that it might be more properly designed for four players, but no, it's eminently playable by two. And, frankly, a great game for couples, since you're working and collaborating together.Be careful with the rules. One small downside is it's very easy to miss a rule here or there. The rulebook, to some extent, seems to assume some knowledge of the basic Pandemic game. We played a few practice games before beginning the "Legacy" rules, and it's definitely worth doing so. In fact, we lost our practice games, but had a nice string of wins once we started the legacy rules, so the practice was good for that reason too.Avoid spoilers. Although I enjoyed reading other people's accounts of their play-through, I was careful to read the months that we had already completed, rather than looking at spoilers. It turned out to be well-worth it. The game has some twists that are pretty epic and you'll really get the full experience of it if you don't see them coming. Also, we enjoyed many conversations speculating as to what was coming and trying to prepare for it. We were sometimes right and sometimes wrong, and that's really part of the game.Don't be turned off by the destructive "one play" aspect of Legacy rules. Really, it's worth it. It's a bit like watching a movie you love or tv-show you love. It's true, once you've seen it, you've seen it, and you can't recover that first experience of not knowing what's coming, but that doesn't lessen the experience.Play Carefully! One of the things we noticed was that as the series of games went on, we were going slower and slower with each game. Part of that may have been increasing complexity of the rules, but mostly it was us taking more time to plan our moves carefully. The desire to win our final month kept growing as it approached, particularly with all the work preparing for it.Anyway, if you take the plunge, I know you'll enjoy it. Unquestionably, one of the best game purchases I've ever made.