This past weekend, Gwen and I finally tried out the "Heroic" difficulty level in Pandemic .  I had been very relucatant to make this jump, mainly because the rules say to do this only after you've "mastered" the normal game.  Seeing that we regularly get our heinies handed to us on a plate in the normal game, I never felt like a true master of the Pandemic arts.

Anyway, we played a normal game to start the evening last Saturday and won pretty easily.  We both seemed relatively well-rested (for having a 7-week-old in the house anyway) and were working together well, so I suggested adding in that dreaded sixth green Epidemic card.

For our first try, we actually chose our roles instead of trusting our fate to chance, with Gwen playing the Medic while I chose the Dispatcher.  Having the perfect "board-control" combination, we were able to keep things quiet for the whole game with little difficulty.  Of course, I think the most important thing we did for this to happen was to sunset the black disease, which ended up saving us from two of the epidemic cards that came up later.  We were close to running out of cards, but managed to cure the fourth disease for the win!!!

Feeling giddy with our success, we immediately tried again with Gwen as the Researcher and myself in the role of the Scientist.  Being a the ultimate "card-control" combo, we were curing things left and right, but the board was slowly slipping away.  In the end, we lost to a black chain-reaction when we drew two Epidemics just two turns apart.  What's worse is that I had the cure for the last disease in hand and was sitting on a research station when it happened... just 1 action point short of victory!!!

As usual, we couldn't stop on a defeat, so we shuffled up again and reset the board.  This time, we drew randomly (okay, semi-randomly, since we removed the woefully underpowered Operations Expert).  We pulled the Medic and the Researcher, and this turned out to be one of th easiest games of Pandemic that we've ever played.  By turn 4 or 5, we already had two diseases not only cured but eradicated!  Cards came up just perfectly, and being able to ignore half of the cards in the infection deck let us waltz our way to an easy win!

So, as of right now, our record for Heroic games is better than for Normal games.  My solution, never play another Heroic game!!!