Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

1 Overview

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is a cooperative legacy campaign game for 2 to 4 players based on Pandemic. Players work together to contain disease outbreaks across a world map over a 12-month story campaign. Decisions in each game permanently alter the board, the cards, the rules, and the story. Characters develop scars, cities fall, new threats emerge. No two groups will have the same experience.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is widely considered one of the greatest board games ever made. It held the #1 spot on BoardGameGeek for years. The full campaign takes 12 to 24 sessions of 60 to 90 minutes each.

2 What is Legacy?

A legacy game has permanent consequences. In Pandemic Legacy:

• Stickers are placed on the board that cannot be removed
• Cards are ripped up, destroyed, or permanently altered
• New rules are revealed from sealed boxes and dossiers as the story unfolds
• Characters gain permanent upgrades (and scars)
• Cities can be "fallen" -- permanently damaged with worsened outbreak effects

This is not a game you reset. Once played, it changes. The campaign can be completed and then the game is done -- though many groups play it twice with different decisions to see alternate story paths.

3 Base Pandemic Rules

Pandemic Legacy uses the same core mechanics as base Pandemic:

• Players take 4 actions per turn (move, treat disease, share knowledge, discover cure, etc.)
• Draw 2 Player cards after your turn
• Reveal Epidemic cards that trigger outbreaks and accelerate disease spread
• Win by discovering cures for all 4 diseases before the game ends

If you haven't played base Pandemic, play it first. Legacy adds complexity on top of a system you should already know.

4 The 12 Months

Each month is a separate game session with unique objectives revealed at the start. If you win the month on your first attempt, you get bonus rewards and move to the next month. If you lose, you try again (with the permanent consequences of the first attempt still in place). You get at most 2 attempts per month before being forced to move forward.

Early months are relatively standard Pandemic. Later months introduce story revelations, new mechanics from sealed boxes, and escalating threats that fundamentally change how the game plays.

5 Scars, Upgrades, and Permanent Changes

• Character upgrades: Earn upgrades through play -- new abilities, extra actions, special powers
• Scars: Characters can be scarred when events go badly, limiting their abilities permanently
• Funded events: Win missions to permanently add powerful event cards to the player deck
• Fallen cities: Cities that experience too many outbreaks become "fallen" -- they spread disease faster and have worse effects
• Stickers and dossiers: Story events add stickers to the board and unlock new rules from sealed compartments

6 Winning and Losing

Each month has a specific win condition (revealed at the start of the session). The overall campaign score is calculated at the end of month 12 based on your performance across all months -- funded events accumulated, cities standing, characters' condition, and final month results. Higher scores mean a better world saved.

7 Strategy

• Protect cities early. Fallen cities compound over time. Invest in quarantine early to prevent cities from falling -- the cost of losing a city early is paid throughout the rest of the campaign.
• Keep your characters healthy. Scarred characters lose abilities. Be especially protective of your most versatile roles.
• Read everything carefully. Legacy stickers and dossiers change the rules in specific ways. Missing a sticker effect can cost a session.
• Don't rush month 1. Use your first session to understand what's unique about this month's objectives before committing to a plan.

8 FAQ