Pandemic Solitaire Report
I played solitaire Pandemic with one pawn, on the lowest difficulty setting, having randomly dealt myself the role card of Scientist. The Scientist has the special ability to discover a cure with four cards of the same color intead of five. I discovered the cures for all four diseases, which ends the game in victory. I decided to go on playing and attempt to eradicate all the disease cubes on the board, a feat not provided for in the rules. For instance, exhausting the Player Deck before discovering all four cures is a victory condition for the Pandemic (meaning humans lose), and that deck does not last long enough to eliminate all disease cubes. I had only eradicated two diseases and was on the verge of a third when the Player Deck ran out, but I decided to shuffle it and keep going to see if I could clean the board before the occurrence of the eighth and final Outbreak. An Outbreak is an event when a city needs a cube added but has its full compliment of three cubes, so each neighboring city gets a cube instead. In the event of an eighth Outbreak before discovering all four cures, Pandemic wins, humans lose.
Finally only one disease remained: the scarlet fever, in Asia. Since I shuffled the Player Deck, there were four more Epidemic Cards in there, and they increased the infection rate until I had to pretend there were two "5" spaces on the infection rate track. That meant five cards drawn from the Infection Deck on every turn, exceeding the game's "Ultra Legendary" difficulty setting.
During the Infect stage of an Epidemic Card, the bottom card is drawn from the Infection Deck and the city depicted on the card gets three cubes. I drew Hong Kong. It went in the discard. Immediately following that stage is the Intensify stage, in which the Infection discard pile is shuffled and put on top of the Infection Deck draw pile. That is intended to ensure that cities which were recently drawn and infected will be drawn soon and get infected again. My bad luck was the Hong Kong ended up on top of the shuffle, and came out so it immediately overflowed with cubes-- an Outbreak. Hong Kong has a whopping six neighbors, all of which got infected. I had just got done cleaning them up.
That was my eighth Outbreak, so technically I had encountered two defeat conditions after my victory, but they are only defeat conditions if they happen before the fourth cure is discovered. With this rationalization in hand, I decided to keep going and see if the infection rate was past the point that I could ever contain it. I had four actions per turn, and the Pandemic drew five cards per turn. I drew a "Resistant Population" card from the Player Deck and used it to remove the Beijing card from the Infection Deck and the game.
With five Infection cards drawn per turn, Asia became high-speed Whack-A-Mole. I was very close to running out of red cubes-- the third and last defeat condition. The good news was that it turned out all the Asia/scarlet fever cards had been near the top of the Infection Deck, so having drawn and discarded them, all I was getting were other continents/colors, which were extinct diseases. If another Epidemic Card had come out of the Player Deck, the Infection discard pile would have been shuffled and put on top of the Infection draw pile, and all of the Infection cards of Asia would have started coming out again. I think I would have lost. By that time, my hand was full of seven Asia cards from the Player Deck, which I used as plane fare in a careful sequence to mop up the last scarlet fever at opposite sides of the continent.
The bottom line:
1. Defeat condition one: I proved it is possible to clear the board without running out of cubes in the reserve pile.
2. Defeat condition two: I think it is possible to clear the board without reaching eight Outbreaks, with expertise and a little luck.*
3. Defeat condition three: I think it would be a miracle for even the most expert player to clear the board before the Player Deck runs out, but if it can be done, I would like to see it.
* Edited to add: I did it on my second try.
Comments
sorcycat on Sep. 22, 2009 1:10 PM
We found that once the plagues were cured, the combination of the dispatcher and the medic is phenomenal. We liken this to Jesus walking the lands to cure plagues. :)
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