Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 rules refresher

Read the refresher

Each month of the campaign is its own game, and your group wins it by marking every one of that month's objectives Complete before the game ends. You do that by collecting City cards to assemble teams, moving an active team into each target city, and taking the Acquire Targets action, all while neutralizing Soviet agents and protecting the cover of your aliases.

Before you set up, draw from the Legacy deck one card at a time. Read each card aloud and follow both sides until you reach a card that says PAUSE or STOP. The Legacy deck is a one way trip, so even if you are repeating a month, never put Legacy cards back. Those cards tell you how to prepare the month's objectives. Then pull any reserve cards the month needs. For an objective with an unknown target city, remove all the City cards listed on it from the Player deck. Place one of them at random face down under the Objective card without looking, and shuffle the rest back in. Put a safehouse on every city with a permanent safehouse, which at the start of the campaign is only Washington. Put the Threat Level marker on the leftmost space of the track. To seed agents, flip three Threat cards and put three agents on each of those cities, flip three more for two agents each, and three more for one agent each. All nine cards go face up to the Threat discard pile. For the Player deck, choose Event cards equal to your current funding level and shuffle them with the City cards. Funding starts at five in January and ranges from one to ten. Deal four cards each with two players, three each with three players, or two each with four players, and keep hands face up. Split the rest into five face down piles as even as you can, with the smaller piles on the right. Shuffle one Escalation card into each pile, then stack the piles so the leftmost ends up on top. Each player takes a character's pawn, Reference card, and passport and picks which alias to start with. If all of a character's aliases are burned, that player uses a different character or a temporary alias. Every pawn starts in Washington, a random player goes first, and follow any rule stickers your group has added to the book.

Once you're set up, play goes clockwise, and each turn has five steps in order. First you check surveillance. Then you take up to four actions. Then you mop up, draw two Player cards, and finally draw Threat cards. After the Threat cards are resolved, the next player takes their turn. Everyone can give advice, but the active player decides.

Now the details, starting with surveillance and cover. If you begin your turn in a city with surveillance symbols, you lose one cover for each symbol, up to three, unless there's a safehouse in that city. Losing cover means scratching off the leftmost space on your current alias's cover track, and you resolve any icon underneath. One icon makes you discard a Player card if you have one. The handcuff icon means that alias gains a liability: you choose a Liability sticker and put it on that alias only. The flame means the alias is burned. Put a BURNED sticker over its name and photo, and it can't be used for the rest of the campaign. You also discard all your cards, lose any remaining actions, move your pawn to Washington, and return the passport to the reserve. On your next turn you pick a temporary alias for the rest of that game. A temporary alias has no cover, so whenever you would lose cover, you discard a Player card instead.

For movement, Drive or Ferry moves you to a connected city. Commercial Flight depends on affiliation. You can reveal an Allied City card to fly there and keep the card, or discard a Neutral City card to fly there. You can never use Commercial Flight to reach a Soviet city. Unrecorded Flight means discarding the City card that matches your current city to go anywhere, Soviet cities included. There is no shuttle flight between safehouses.

Several other actions work on the board and your cards. Neutralize Agent removes one agent from your city. Share Intel lets you give or take the City card matching your city with another player in that city, if you both agree. Build Safehouse means discarding the card matching your city to place a safehouse there. It lasts the whole game, each city can have only one, and if none are left you may move one from another city. Identify Target City works while you're at a safehouse: discard three City cards of your region to reveal the unknown target city of that region. Assemble Team also works at a safehouse: discard five City cards matching your city's affiliation to place a team of that affiliation there. If all teams of that affiliation are already out, you may relocate one. Drive or Ferry Team moves any team to a connected city. You don't need to be with the team, several teams can share a city, and teams ignore surveillance except through certain Incident effects.

Teams only work when they're active. A team is active only in a city that matches its affiliation, so an Allied team works only in Allied cities. Lay an inactive team on its side.

Acquire Targets is how objectives get done. For a known target, have an active team in the city on the card, take the action, mark the objective Complete, and read its debrief entry. Some objectives need several active teams in one city, or one in each of several cities. For an unknown target, whenever anyone draws a Player card from that target's region, that city is ruled out, so mark it with a tracking token. When you're ready, place active teams in whichever candidate cities you can, take the action, and reveal the hidden card. If an active team is in that city, mark the objective Complete. Otherwise mark it Failed. Either way, read the debrief entry right away.

After your actions comes Mop Up, which removes every agent from each city that has an active team. Then draw the top two Player cards together. Your hand limit is usually seven and applies at all times, so discard or play Events whenever you're over it. If you draw an Escalation card, don't keep it and don't draw a replacement. Instead, do three things in order. First, move the Threat Level marker one space right. Next, draw the bottom card of the Threat deck, put three agents in that city, and discard the card. Last, shuffle the whole Threat discard pile and put it face down on top of the Threat deck. If you draw two Escalation cards, do all three steps twice. Then discard them.

Last comes the Threat step. Flip Threat cards from the top one at a time, as many as the current Threat level, placing one agent on each city shown. Agents never spread. Instead, if a city would get a fourth agent, an incident happens there. Place an Incident token in that city, and any players there lose one cover unless there's a safehouse. Then draw the bottom Threat card, apply its incident effect without placing an agent, and put that card in the Game End area rather than the discard pile. If that effect would put a fourth agent in one or more cities, each of those cities gets an Incident token, but you draw only one more bottom card for the next effect.

Event cards cost no action and can be played by anyone on any turn. The only exception is between drawing a card and resolving it. You must be able to resolve an effect completely in order to use it.

The game ends immediately, even mid turn, as soon as any of these happens: - Every objective has a Completed or Failed token. - You can't draw two Player cards because too few remain. Never reshuffle the discard pile. - You need to place an agent and the supply is empty. - You need to place an Incident token and the supply is empty.

After the game, mark any unfinished objectives Failed and read their debriefs. - If everything is complete, you're SUCCEEDING: funding drops by one and you move to the next month. - With one failure you're ADEQUATE: funding rises by one and you move on. - With two or more failures you're FAILING: funding rises by two. On your first try you repeat the month. From May on, objectives you already completed start Complete on the repeat. On a second try you move on anyway.

Record your evaluation and funding on the calendar on the back of the Debrief Book. The first time funding would go above ten, open Door fourteen.

Before cleaning up, do the remaining after game steps. Add one Surveillance sticker to every city with any Incident tokens, up to three per city. Check the Legacy deck for a PAUSE card, and move any cards in the Game End area to the Threat discard pile. Then spend budget: you get one unit per player, plus one if every objective was completed, and unused units are lost. You can buy these upgrades: - Assets for any created alias's empty asset slots. - Permanent safehouse stickers. - Counter surveillance stickers that cover a surveillance symbol.

Then clear the board; only stickers and other permanent changes carry forward. The campaign ends after December, and your final score is based largely on your monthly evaluations and the final state of the world.

A turn, played out

You start your turn in an Allied city where you built a safehouse last round. The city shows 2 surveillance symbols, but the safehouse protects you, so your cover track stays untouched. Your hand holds 5 Allied City cards and 1 Neutral City card. One open objective is a known target: an Allied city 2 connections away, holding 2 agents. For your first action, you Assemble Team. You are at a safehouse in an Allied city, so you discard all 5 Allied cards and stand an Allied team in your city. Your Neutral card can only fly you to its own city, not to the team, but you don't need to be with it. So your second and third actions are Drive Team, twice, moving the team along the connections into the target city while your pawn stays safely put. The target is Allied, so the team stands upright and active. Your fourth action is Acquire Targets. You mark the objective Complete and read its debrief entry aloud. Now Mop Up: the target city has an active team, so both of its agents come off the board. You draw 2 Player cards. One is a City card. The other is an Escalation. You don't keep it or replace it. The Threat Level marker slides one space right. You draw the bottom Threat card, a Soviet city, put 3 agents there, and discard that card. Then the whole Threat discard pile, that card included, is shuffled and placed on top of the Threat deck. Now the Threat step. You flip as many cards as the new level shows, and the very first is that same Soviet city. A fourth agent can't go there, so an Incident token does instead. The player to your left flew in on an Unrecorded Flight, and there's no safehouse, so they scratch off their leftmost cover space. The icon underneath makes them discard a Player card. Then you draw the bottom Threat card, apply its incident effect without placing an agent, and set it in the Game End area. You finish flipping, and play passes to your left.