Z-Man Games Press Release - In The Lab – Solo Game

From the Z-Man Games Website

In The Lab – Solo Game

One new aspect that you will find in In The Lab is the possibility of playing a solo game of Pandemic. Let's explain how this is done. In the solo game, you are teamed with the CDC and you must try to save the world on your own. The setup of the game is the same as a two-player game except for a few changes: - There are some roles that you cannot use in the solo game, such as the Dispatcher, because their special abilities are useless in the game. All roles that should not be used are written in the rulebook. - The same goes for certain Event cards, such as "Special Orders". - Before shuffling events into the Player Deck, shuffle the city cards and deal a certain number of them varying from 8 to 16 (depending on the difficulty level you have chosen for the game) into a discard pile. If when dealing the cards there is more than six cards of the same color, reshuffle until no more than six cards are the same color. - The CDC card acts as the second player in the game and will have its own set of cards. How does it work? Once you are set up, you can start the game normally. The CDC is there to help you, but it does not have its own turn. After the Infection phase, the CDC gets one action. There are no player cards drawn by the CDC after its action, and no Infection cards are revealed. You cannot Share Knowledge with the CDC. OK…so how is the CDC useful? Here are the actions that can be done by the CDC: - Move a player: using usual movement actions, or by discarding a card for a Direct Flight or Charter Flight. - Reassign Role: If you are at a research station the CDC may replace your role card with another. However, your old role is removed from the game and no longer available to pick with this action. - Exchange Data: If you are in a research station, the CDC can swap one card from its hand for one from your hand. The color of the card taken from your hand must match the color of the city you are in. - Draw Card: Draw one card from the Player Deck. Standard hand limit rules apply. - Discover a cure: The same “discover a cure” rules are applied. So there you have it. That’s how to play a solo game of Pandemic, with a little help from the CDC that you will find in the new In The Lab!

Z-Man Games Press Release - In The Lab – Lab Challenge

From the Z-Man Games Website

In The Lab – Lab Challenge

In this new challenge you will find in In The Lab, you must find cures differently. Viruses must develop in the lab and be tested there before a cure can be found. To discover a cure you must first Sequence and Characterize the disease. You will then be able to test it and hopefully find a cure. Each Sequence card (seen below) depicts the structure of a disease.  Before you can start the search for a cure, you must first Characterize the sequence card, by deciding which color disease you will treat. You do this by placing a card of the corresponding color in the Characterize spot. Sometimes, you don’t have a choice (Card 1), other times the choice is simple (Card 2) but other times, it may get more complicated to decide which color to chose (Card 3). You must choose a color that is shown on the card in the top right corner.       You will then have to get samples from all the cubes of the depicted colors on the characterized card. They do not need to be done in a specific order; you just need to have all the cubes. You are now ready to start looking for a cure! As you can see, there are 5 petri dishes depicted on the lab board. Here’s what they represent. Dishes 1-2 are Sample dishes. That’s where you can place cubes you remove from the map board. Dish 3 is a Centrifuge dish. You can take all the cubes from one of the first two bowls and place them in this bowl. However, only one color can survive. You must choose the color of cubes you wish to keep in this dish and the others are returned to the supply. For example, if you have 3 Yellow cubes and 2 Blue cubes that you transfer into the Centrifuge, you can only keep 3 Yellow OR 2 Blue. Dish 4 is the Separator.  You can take all the cubes from one of the first two bowls and place them in this bowl. However, you can only keep one cube of each color, and the others are returned to the supply. For example, if you have 3 Yellow cubes and 2 Blue cubes that you transfer into the Separator, you can only keep 1 Yellow AND 1 Blue. Dish 5 is the Growth dish. Here, you may move cubes from either the Centrifuge or the Separator; in doing so, you double the number of cubes of each color transferred. Finding a cure Now that you have cubes in your Centrifuge, your Separator, or your Growth dish, you can start finding a cure by taking cubes and adding them to your Sequence card. However, if you choose to take cubes from the Centrifuge (for example) you must take all the cubes that are in the dish. All unusable cubes are returned to the supply. Once there is at least 1 cube on a Sequence card, you can test the disease by adding one card of the cure color on the board in the reserved spot. Once all spots of the Sequence card are filled, you must discard 3 cards of the cure color to cure the disease! So that’s it. That’s the Lab Challenge you will find in In The Lab!