Looking for a cure to your Boredom?

Imagine if you will you are part of an elite team that is part of the Centre of Disease Control in Atlanta. Now imagine four new viruses have emerged from all corners of the globe and are spreading like wildfire (remind you of anything?)

Grab your hazmat suit and your antibiotics as we take a trip around the world to combat the spread of mysterious viruses

Welcome to Pandemic

Story

There is a sudden outbreak of 4 different diseases across the globe. You are an elite agent whose job it is to stop the spread of these viruses

Game Mechanics

Action Point Allowance System

Cooperative Play

Hand Management

Point to Point Movement

Set Collection

Trading

Variable Player Powers

Number of Players

2-4

Play Time

Up to 1 hour. When my family and I play we usually last about 45 minutes if playing one role each. If we play 2 we're usually done in about half an hour

Down Time

Deciding how best to spend your action points and how your teammates can spend theirs. There is a lot of AP planning in the mid to late game

How Does It Play

It's plays brilliantly. With the game being a co-operative game you aren't scrabbling around for points. You are all trying to beat the game before the game beats you. There is a sliding scale of difficulty in the game based on how many epidemic cards you want to include in the player deck. Feel like a casual game then play 4, want some pressure then play 6.

Your turn consists of using your 4 actions to make the best moves possible to win, drawing 2 cards from the player deck, and then taking the required number of cards from the infection deck and placing the cubes that match the required disease in the required location. It's that simple.

However, be careful! The epidemic cards do 3 things; they infect a random city on the board with 3 cubes of disease, they raise the infection rate, and reshuffles the infection discard pile and puts them back on top of the infection deck. This adds to the difficulty of controlling the game because if you have 3 cubes in a city and draw that city from the infection deck it creates an outbreak. An outbreak will infect the cities connected to the city in which the outbreak occurs.

With a game like this there are multiple ways to lose. If you have 8 outbreaks; you lose. If you run out of disease cubes and need more; you lose. If the player deck runs dry and you can't draw two cards; you lose.

There is only one way to win; discover a cure for all 4 diseases. You don't have to wipe the disease of the board, just find a cure for it

Game Components

Board - The board is simply a map of the globe with different cities dotted around, each city connected to surrounding cities via white travel lines. The board also contains spaces for the infection deck and player deck. There are 2 trackers on the board as well (Outbreaks and Epidemics )

Disease Cubes - There are 24 of each colour of disease cubes on the board; yellow, blue, red, & black. Part of the fun of the game is naming the diseases.

Role Cards - There are 7 role cards, each comes with their own special abilities and a pawn to go on the board. The assignment of a role in the game is meant to be random, however my kids did not get the memo and insist on being either the medic or the dispatcher

Player Deck Cards - These are your tickets to curing diseases. If you manage to collect 5 of one colour you can take them to you local research station and cure that colour. There are event cards in the deck that can help you with along the way, but watch out for the Epidemic cards

Infection Deck - This is filled with all the locations in the game.

Tokens - The game comes with 6 tokens. 4 for diseases (double sided for cured and eradicated), an infection deck token and n outbreak token

Research Station markers - There are 6 research station markers to be built where the players feel is the best place to build one

Theme

The theme of the game is a race against time to find a cure for four new viruses

Replay Value

Tons. There are no real different approaches to the game, especially as there is only one way to win. However, the fun is in the game. It brings family members together and get's people talking and discussing. It also helps children learn to plan and create strategies. Of course there are a number of expansions for the game which just add to the replay-ability

Favourite Part

The co-operative game-play. I don't have to compete with other people. The mechanics of the game encourage people to get along and work together

Least Favourite Part

Some of the Roles' special ability don't help in a 2 player game if one of you isn't the medic

Expansions

This game comes with a few expansions such as On The Brink and In the Lab. It also comes with some redesigns such as Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu and Pandemic Iberia. There also Legacy Games and a re-implementation in the form of Pandemic Contagion

The Bottom Line

I love this game. It plays in a relatively short space of time, I don't need to spend a fortune on extras for it, and it's simple to learn.

10/10 Viruses

Game Designers: Matt Leacock

Game Artists: Josh Cappel, Christian Hanisch, Régis Moulun, Chris Quilliams, Tom Thiel

Game Publishers: Z-man Games

Images courtesy of BoardGameGeek