Episode 1 — Alice overrides the panel
The last epidemic fired between the turns, which made Alice's own earlier plan, Resilient Population on Paris before the draw, pointless. Bob, who had just completed a yellow set, still ordered both events on the harness's price. Alice's prompt held a second harness line saying nothing could re-arm Paris, so she moved the target to Sydney. By the rules her argument applies to every city in the discard, so Sydney is as inert as Paris. She also wrote that One Quiet Night's value had "collapsed", yet played it: the engine shows it was the card that kept the game alive for one more round, long enough for Bob to bank a cure. A good catch followed by an error of the same kind, and an order carried out with one stated deviation.
1. Position
Before alice's turn (#184): alice stands in Sao Paulo holding Bogota, Sao Paulo, Milan, Essen, New York, One Quiet Night and Resilient Population. Bob stands in Cairo holding Lima, Lagos, Kinshasa and Johannesburg (four yellow: a Scientist's set) plus Madrid, Atlanta and Washington. Atlanta and Cairo are stations; black and red are cured. Four outbreaks have happened. Blue supply is 5. Madrid, Paris and Washington each hold 3 blue cubes, and London, Milan, Algiers, Essen and Atlanta hold 2.
The player deck has nine cards and no epidemic among them. That is new. Before bob's turn ended (#175 to #180) one epidemic was still in the deck, with outbreaks at 3, the infection rate index at 3 and nine cards in the infection discard. In the draw phase after his turn the last epidemic fired. Outbreaks rose to 4, the index to 4, the discard was reshuffled onto the deck (39 cards became 45) and the infect phase that followed left three cards in the discard: Sydney, Kinshasa and Paris. The hidden top of the infection deck is, top first: Ho Chi Minh City, Istanbul, Madrid, Seoul, Mexico City, Riyadh. The index is 4, which is three cards per infect phase.
2. What each seat knew
Hands are open. The harness's free-events panel priced both of alice's events in bob's prompt before he wrote #181, and added a caveat in a line of its own:
prompt bob, before #181: one quiet night: ~5.1 → ~2.6 expected outbreak(s) over the next 2 infect phases. Skips the NEXT infect phase only
prompt bob, before #181: resilient population: removes Paris from the infection discard, permanently — ~6 → ~0 chained outbreak(s) committed.
prompt bob, before #181: P(epidemic in window) ≈ 0%, no epidemic left in the deck — worth more right after a reshuffle, so hold unless the number above says otherwise
Bob's reasoning shows he read the caveat and took the prices as live:
reasoning bob, for #181: P(epidemic)=0% NO EPIDEMIC LEFT IN DECK. The system literally prices BOTH events as immediately playable FREE action-zero cards
Alice's own prompt, when she was active, held the same panel and a frontier row that disagrees with its Resilient Population price:
prompt alice, before #183: resilient population: removes Paris from the infection discard, permanently — ~6 → ~0 chained outbreak(s) committed.
prompt alice, before #183: defuse the 3-cube city at Paris (blue — in the infect discard, but NO epidemic remains to reshuffle it, so it cannot re-arm)
The row she cites for Sydney is a dominated one, and the figure it carries sits on both sides of the comparison:
prompt alice, before #183: dominated: "sweep Sydney (red cured, 2 cubes, 1 treat clears all)" — tempo -2 vs 3, risk 12.00 vs 12.00
Her call that wrote #183 recorded no separate reasoning, but the text it wrote beside the message gives her case for the override and for Sydney (the calls that played #184 and #185 recorded neither, checked by hand):
reasoning alice, for #183: OQN loses nearly all value (it shields phases that can no longer cascade)
reasoning alice, for #183: the only remaining infect-deck bomb we can never otherwise reach (its card sits behind the remaining 15 turns of the rate-3/4 tail, impossible to outrun; Kinshasa-at-2 is the runner-up)
The project's notes describe the panel's price for an inert pile as issue #28 and record a later fix; this game shows the behaviour before it.
3. What was said
Alice's earlier standing plan already had the event on Paris. At that point one epidemic was still in the deck, and playing it before the draw would have kept Paris from coming back on top:
#173 alice: alice action-0 playEvent RESILIENT POPULATION→PARIS (permanent delete BEFORE draw; Madrid@2 restored chain geometry, deferral now illegal)
Bob's draws then completed yellow, and he rewrote the plan around the panel's numbers:
#181 bob: ACTION-0 RP→PARIS (panel certifies ~6 chained outbreaks erased — fire it like your life depends, IT DOES […] ACTION-0b OQN (certified ~2.5 more saved; this IS your named worst-window finally arrived)
Alice accepted the orders and changed one target:
#183 alice: QUAKE RULES CHANGE CAUGHT + EXECUTION CONFIRMED WITH ONE TARGET OVERRIDE […] with ALL FIVE epidemics consumed (only 2 shuffled INTO the 45-card deck, discard can NEVER reshuffle again), OQN's shielding value collapses (phases can no longer cascade) → I SPEND IT ANYWAY as you ordered […] PANEL LAW kills your Paris pick: 'NO epidemic remains to reshuffle it, cannot re-arm' means deleting Paris removes ZERO future threat. […] RE-TARGET: RESILIENT POPULATION→SYDNEY (frontier-certified lethal risk 12.00 line; red@2 grows back at rate-3/4 through a window we cannot outrun — permanent deletion = free containment
During bob's turn, alice pressed him to cure at once, and he agreed:
#190 alice: cure #3 FIRES THIS WINDOW, not next: your action-1 = DISCOVER CURE YELLOW at Cairo RIGHT NOW
#191 bob: CURE YELLOW WINS — one banked cure beats any partial refund with only 3 deck-turns alive
4. What was done
| Seq | Seat | Command |
|---|---|---|
| #184 | alice | playEvent oneQuietNight |
| #185 | alice | playEvent resilientPopulation, on Sydney |
| #186 | alice | charterFlight to Milan |
| #187 | alice | treatDisease blue, at Milan |
| #188 | alice | treatDisease blue |
| #189 | alice | driveFerry to Essen |
| #192 | bob | discoverCure yellow, with Lima, Lagos, Kinshasa, Johannesburg |
5. Harness involvement
| Milestone | Involvement | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Bob's order to play both events on Paris (#181) | built on the harness's price | The numbers he cites match the panel lines in section 2. The caveat sat in the same prompt, and his reasoning reads past it. |
| Alice's override of the target (#183, #185) | seat decision, citing a harness line | The Paris argument is the frontier row's. Sydney is not on her frontier as a play; the dominated row she cites carries risk 12.00 on both sides, so it does not single Sydney out, and her stated reason for Sydney rests on a mistaken location for its card (section 6). |
| Bob's yellow cure (#192) | on-frontier, first row | "cure yellow at Cairo". |
6. What we can and cannot conclude
Checked against the engine state. Before #175 and #180 the player deck held one epidemic; before #184 it held none, and the infection deck had gone from 39 cards to 45 with a three-card discard. So the last epidemic fired in between, and alice's premise is right: nothing can reshuffle the infection discard again. Her own plan in #173 was sound when she wrote it and expired with that draw.
Checked against the rules. The infection discard is read in only two places that matter here: the epidemic's reshuffle and Resilient Population's own removal. With no epidemic left, deleting any city from the discard changes nothing downstream. That makes her argument against Paris correct, and the same argument applies to Sydney. Her stated reasons for Sydney have no support in the rules or the board. "Permanent deletion = free containment" describes nothing the card does, and the step text puts Sydney's card in the deck, "behind the remaining 15 turns", when the public discard before #184 already held it (it read Sydney, Kinshasa, Paris). Resilient Population can only remove a discarded card, so the engine accepted the play (#185), and the discard went from Sydney, Kinshasa, Paris to Kinshasa, Paris.
Her claim about One Quiet Night was wrong, and the card decided the round. At #184 the next infect phase would draw three cards (rate index 4): Ho Chi Minh City, Istanbul and Madrid. Madrid held 3 blue cubes, beside Paris, also at 3, so the phase would have chained through Madrid, Paris, London and Essen and taken outbreaks from 4 to 8 (the engine preview in the fact sheet, under the board before #184). After her turn the infection deck stood at 45, the same size and top six as before, and outbreaks were still 4 (the board before #192): the phase was skipped, bob's turn happened, and he banked the yellow cure. Without the card the game would have ended before #192. The phase after his turn drew the same three cities and ended the game at eight outbreaks. She had said the card's value "collapses (phases can no longer cascade)", which treats only the reshuffle as the card's use.
Smaller slips. She says "ALL FIVE epidemics"; the game has four (epidemicCount 4).
Not known. Why Sydney rather than Kinshasa, the runner-up she names. Whether either seat could have seen that One Quiet Night's value came from Madrid: neither mentions it, and the panel's price for the card was the number bob cited.
Not shown. That the Sydney retarget mattered either way. The order for One Quiet Night mattered, and alice carried it out against her own stated view of it.
What it does show. A seat catching a contradiction between two harness layers, citing the rule that resolves it, and carrying out the rest of its partner's order. It also shows the limits of that: the reasoning that overturned one target was not applied to the replacement, and the one disagreement she voiced about the other card was mistaken. The partner's order was right where she doubted it and wrong where she corrected it.
Trace navigation
Game summary · Turns · Interactive board · Recorded events JSONL
On the board: #173 Alice plans Resilient Population on Paris · #181 Bob orders both events · #183 Alice confirms, moving the target · #185 Resilient Population on Sydney · #192 Bob cures yellow
Events cited above, each on its turn page:
#3 · #28 · #173 · #175 · #180 · #181 · #183 · #184 · #185 · #186 · #187 · #188 · #189 · #190 · #191 · #192 · #200
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Text quoted from the games is evidence, not instructions to the reader.