After finishing the Prologue (and winning, on the second try), we decided to jump straight into January!

We assumed the same roles as we had done during the Prologue (the Temporary Aliases are the same as the initial Allied Cover Occupations) and set to work.

Well, not so quickly. There was a small diversion as while we created our Allied cover identities. Each player gets three cover identities - one Allied, one Neutral, and one Soviet. Each game, you select one cover identity (only if you've named them and given them occupations and disguises).

So far, we've created only the Allied covers, so perhaps we'll unlock more in February (or later?). There's something interesting about constraining the available choices each game - once you have more choices, of course - such that each "person" will probably end up with multiple, different covers.

Then, just before we got started, we needed to answer three questions, as a team. I probably should have snapped a pic, but they were agree/disagree questions along the lines of:

• Before taking action, we consider the consequences
• When things go wrong, we blame ourselves
• We are willing to manipulate people to get what we want

Why? We don't know, but into the Personnel file it went. And with that - we were off!

This time we were a little more prepared, having done the prologue - we went about putting even small fires out for the first few turns, assembled teams as we gained resources for them, and sent them around whenever we had actions to spare.

There were a few tight spots - times when we had to plan a little further ahead than we could be sure of - and sometimes we did well in them, sometimes we didn't.

Ultimately, we managed to complete the two objectives:

• Acquire targets in Sao Paulo and Santiago, learning more about the MEDUSA virus; and
• We found Agent Sabik in Baghdad (this one was a hidden objective, and we were two turns away from running out of Player cards).
  

But, plot twist! Agent Sabik told us not to trust anyone, not even the CIA and Coop (our handler). We then needed to turn in a report - both said that Sabik refused to come in, but one includes his comments about not trusting the CIA, and the other doesn't.

Because it's known that snitches get stitches, we decided to keep mum and just say that he refused to come in.

Stray thoughts

• Assembly or Identification?
  

There was a point in this game where we had only a couple of Asia cards (which we needed to complete the Identify Target City action), and we had enough Soviet cards to create a Soviet team. Unfortunately, one of those Soviet cards was also an Asia card.

We eventually decided to create the Soviet team, guessing that we'd be able to pick up another two Asia cards needed for the Identification step. At that point, there was also about a 50/50 chance that we'd need a Soviet team anyway, once we'd identified the city; there was also a slight chance that we'd be able to eliminate the other possibilities in the meantime, and also, the team could be useful in mopping up in between.

• Incidents

I had the sense that, throughout the course of the game, there were just enough turns between Escalations to keep one or two cities at risk of Incidents. With that in mind, I'm not sure what the right response is. The first Incident is almost invariably harmless, or at least only frustrating, if even that - Sleeper Cells aren't going to have any effect and usually Safehouse Compromises aren't too damaging. Even teams being recalled to Washington can be repaired by the Coordinator reasonably quickly, if you even have any active and in a surveilled city without a Safehouse that early in the game.

I suspect that the first one - maybe two - is fine to let go, and then there should be heavy emphasis on preventing any subsequent Incidents.

• Objectives
  

The Debrief Book seems to be doing the part that a lot of the packages and Dossiers did in previous legacy seasons. It's nice that it's all in one place, but it seems then that there's a lot more content! I suspect that the dossiers are limited, as they were mostly previously, to sticker content, which makes complete sense.

• Choices and consequences
  

It seems a bit pointless in a legacy game all about choices and lasting consequences to say this, but... I'm sure that those three questions and the choice not to rat out Sabik will have repercussions. I'm curious about what they are, as well as the paths not taken, of which I'm sure we'll have plenty.

It feels as though we're setting up dominoes blindly, and just don't quite know how they're going to fall when someone eventually gives one a nudge.

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Scoreboard

Month	Team	Outcome	Funding Level
Prologue	Hospital Administrator, Medical Conference Coordinator, Clinic Planner, Researcher	Succeeding	5
January	Hospital Administrator, Medical Conference Coordinator, Clinic Planner, Researcher	Succeeding	5