Review 7: Pandemic

This is the first co-operative game review that I have completed and in truth I couldn’t wait to complete it.  This game is brilliant to put it bluntly.  Any game that you can play as a team against the game itself, where you are all the winner or the looser gets a big thumbs up from me:

Name: Pandemic

Players: 2-4

Playing Time: 60 minutes

Suggested Ages: 13 and up

Awards: Numerous – most notably 2009 Spiel des Jahres Nominee & 2010 Australian Games Association Game of the Year

Game Setting:

Each player takes on the role a specialist who is trying to save the people of the world from four deadly viruses that are spreading through the major cities of the world.  Working together as a team the players must use their abilities to treat the viruses, share knowledge on how to find the cure and finally discover the four cures and save humanity.

 After the players have chosen their character cards are used to place cubes to represent the level of infection in certain cities around the world. 

The players are then dealt a hand of cards that form the starting point for finding the cures. 

Game Play:

On a players turn the first thing they do is take up to four actions.  These include moving around the board, either by moving directly between adjoining cities, taking a flight to a city from a card they hold in their hand, taking a flight to any city in the world from the city that they are at and matches a card in their hand or by travelling between research stations.  Each one of these costs an action.  As well as moving, players can carry out a number of other tasks for one action.  They can build research centres; find the cure for a virus by handing in 5 cards of the same colour, share knowledge but giving or taking a card from a player in the same city as them or treating the virus and removing a cube of the virus from the city that they are in.

Once the player has completed their four actions they then collect two cards and add it to their hand.

Finally the player completed the infection phase by seeing which cities are going to continue to be infected by their virus.

The players win Pandemic in only one way, they discover all four cures.  The players lose Pandemic in three ways!  The first is that there are no more cubes of a certain virus left when they need to be added to the board following the infection phase.   The second is if they have no more cards to draw from the supply deck to add to their hands.  The third is when there have been eight outbreaks of the viruses on the board.

During the part of a player’s turn when they are drawing cards to place in their hands, there are occasions when an ‘Epidemic Card’ is drawn.  This is what makes the game more challenging.  When this even occurs the player reviews a new city that is going to have three cubes placed on it.  Also the deck of cards that have been growing during the infections phase are then shuffled and placed back on top of the pile of infections cards.  The last step is to increase the infection rate.  The infection rate indicates how many cards are drawn from the infection deck when adding a cube to the board during the infection phase.

When a city has three cubes on it and a fourth is required to be added, an outbreak of that virus occurs.  All adjoining cities that received one cube of the virus and the outbreak marker is moved down one space.

To counter balance the difficulty of the virus each player’s character has a unique ability.  For example the Medic can remove all the cubes of one virus type in a city for one action rather than one action for each cube.  The Scientist by comparison is only required to hand in four cards at a research stations rather than five to discover a cure.  The Operations Expert can build research stations for free and Dispatcher can move other players as if they were their own.   Using these abilities effectively can make the difference between failure and success.  

My Score:

Game Play:  4/4

Components: 2/2
Replayability: 2/2
Theme: 2/2

Total: 10/10

 

My Comments:

This is firmly one of my favourite games.  Now that the artwork has been updated in a reprint this year the game, my opinion, now looks as good as it plays.  The reprint also comes with more characters given even more variants to the teams that can be set up.

What makes this game so good?  A host of reasons really.   The game is played as a team and so there is no feeling of any one person knowing that they are always going to lose.  The games is modern, it’s not set in the past, it doesn’t involve dragons or elves, castles or trains and so it has a setting  that most people can relate to.  The game has a great theme; who wouldn’t want to be part of the elite team that saves everyone from four deadly viruses spreading across the world? 

It’s a completely balanced game.  Even on the ‘introductory’ level where only four ‘epidemic’ cards are dealt into the player deck you’re not guaranteed to win.  I’ve found it’s still about a 50/50 chance of success just at this level.  The real brilliance comes when you’re sitting confidently in control of all of the viruses and then suddenly two cities outbreak and you find that while you’ve been busy in China and Japan you’ve turned your back on Washington, London and Essen where there is an explosion of the blue virus and no-one there to treat the disease.

There are three different levels of play with heroic at the top end where six ‘epidemic’ cards are dealt into the player deck.  I’ve yet to win a game at this level it’s that hard!

Inevitably you’ll get one or two people in the team who end up telling all the other players what they think needs to happen next and I’m trying to hold back from being that person (it has been known) and let the other players make the decision (even when I know it spells doom for mankind).

This is most definitely one for your Christmas list and I’m please to say that with the reprint it’s made its way into mainstream shops including Waterstones and Toys R Us.  This exposure should put it squarely into the hands of more families.  Just imagine the joy of Christmas afternoon when everyone is happy after the joys of the morning and then as a family you work together to save the world! Afterwards everyone then celebrates with mince pies and mulled wine!

If there are no other games from my reviews that you give a go, try this one.   It’s now an iOS app so you can give a try before even buying the board game (still buy the board game though – it’s far better than just looking at a screen).  Borrow a copy of the game if needs be and try it that way if you don’t want to commit, or even better, find one of us secret lot of gamers and ask us to let you give it a go with us!

Enjoy Pandemic and let me know what your thoughts are.