Unlike some players, I’m not overly strict about my tabletop games. I don’t expect players to be in a hermetically sealed environment while cards are swathed in layers of plastic. Ok, most people aren’t that extreme, but you get the idea. That said, there’s one idea I just can’t wrap my head around: legacy games.

If you’ve never heard of them before, legacy games are games where you permanently change the board and the game itself. Risk: Legacy, for example, has players putting stickers on the map, or tearing up certain cards. Suffice to say, that idea freaks me out a little. Ok, more than a little. The only legacy game I’ve ever toyed with playing is Pandemic Legacy, based on the original cooperative game Pandemic.

Pandemic is one of those ridiculously difficult games where there are many, many ways to lose and only one way to win. As an elite group of a disease control team, you travel the globe treating infections and preventing outbreaks that threaten to overwhelm humanity.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 starts out much like the original, but takes it up a notch. Containing a story arc set over the span of a year, players engage over twelve “months”, with each new month bringing new objectives, tools and strategies. You also only get two chances to win a game before having to move on to the next month, so the clock is permanently ticking!

Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 will engross players in a harrowing tale of survival. Set 71 years after the events of Season 1, society has pretty much collapsed. It’s up to you to save who you can and hopefully, save humanity as we know it. Maintain supply lines, explore the globe and find the answers to cure the world.

Although it’s set in the Pandemic universe, Season 2 will be a completely standalone game. Z-Man Games will be offering a sneak peek at Gen Con 2017, with an eye on an Autumn (or Spring, in the southern hemisphere) release date.

The world is on the brink of total collapse. Already devastated by a terrible plague, much of the globe has gone dark. Small groups of survivors struggle to keep the world alive, but their efforts are no longer enough. The world needs leaders to rise up and find the way back from the brink of extinction. That task has fallen to you. You must find a way or nobody will. You are humanity’s last chance.