Pandemic by Z-man games first arrived on shelves with its first edition in 2008. Definitely at that time, it was an anomaly as far as board games were concerned. It was a cooperative game, rather than a competitive game. Everyone in the game to win it all, together rather than I am going to defeat all of you and claim victory as all classic board games were designed before.
With what I consider to be a REAL resurgence in board games in the last couple of years, Pandemic has perfected cooperative game play. Zman games has released a new version:
Pandemic Legacy and so I thought it was appropriate to write a review for the game that I believe spawned this fever: Pandemic: A New Challenge, published in 2013.
Do you remember the movie Outbreak released twenty years ago starring Dustin Hoffman? In short it was a movie based on an outbreak of an airborne virus in a California town that threatens civilization unless a group of researchers can quarantine and eventually eradicate it. Pandemic channels it's inner Outbreak.
Synopsis: Pandemic is a game where a series of four virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously throughout the World! You and your team have a specified amount of time to cure the diseases (which is before the pile of cards representing player cards runs out, or a specific disease - represented by colored cubes is completely dispersed or if more than seven outbreaks happen) or Humanity is lost.
Roles: Each player has a role. You have the Contingency Planner, Operations Expert, Dispatcher, Quarantine Specialist, Researcher, Medic and Scientist. Each role has a specialty they bring to the team and its your job as a team to utilize these roles to the benefit of humanity.
Gameplay: You lay the board out, give each player a reference card to help them navigate through their actions and have them select one of the aforementioned role cards randomly. While doing this, have another player Separate the cubes (diseases) out and place the research station along with all the players pawns (represented by their role) in Atlanta. After all, CDC's home base of operation in real life is in Atlanta. Next you place the outbreak markers and cure markers "Vial" side up. Then, give each player a reference card to help them navigate through their actions as well as 2 player cards (if playing with 4.) Now, take four epidemic cards out if new to the game (Trust me, it's plenty hard enough) and shuffle the player deck. Finally, place the Infection tracker marker out and infect 9 cities. You are now ready to Go!
The player with the highest population in their city goes first. Each player has has four actions which can consist of moving, playing an event card, building a research station or removing a disease cube. Your role can make some things easier for your team. So for example, the goal is to cure all four diseases, but to do so, you must be in research station and have five color related city cards. A Operations Expert can build a research station in any city without actually having that city card in their hand.
A typical beginning might be to move to an adjacent city if three cubes are there and remove one or two. So, we'll say that in the initial setup of the game, Montreal was hit hard with three cubes of a specific disease. An Operations Expert could go from Atlanta to Montreal as two moves and for the next two moves remove a cube(one per action unless they were a Medic), ending his/her actions. He/she would then pick 2 player cards, hopefully cities and not an Epidemic. Finally they would infect cities which is calculated based on the infection tracker (so if your on a level 2) you pick 2 Infection cards (also represented by cities) Let's say one was Chicago. (If the player had not previously removed any cubes, this would given it 4 triggering an outbreak, which gets you one closer to death and populates the surrounding connected cities with the disease making your task much harder.
Remember I told you I hope they were NOT epidemic cards. Here is why.
Epidemic Cards: Epidemic cards are just that: Epidemic: a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time. These cards do Three parameters: INCREASE: Raise the infection marker meaning on every ensuing turn you will infect more cities. It has an INFECT parameter which asks you to pick a bottom card of the infection pile and immediately put three cubes on a city putting you on high alert and INTENSIFY: Shuffle the discard pile and put it on top. So, the city that was just infected, could get infected on the next turn which could alter your original plan on the following turn.
Pandemic is an excellent cooperative game with lots of strategy, suspense and replay ability. Do you have what it takes to save humanity?
I give this game 4.5 out of 5 Stars.
Gameplay: So, you have thirteen dice which are colored green, yellow and red. Each dice has three pictures: Brains, Foot prints or Shotgun Blasts. Depending on the color depends on the number of pictures. So, for example the Red Dice have more shotgun blasts and the Green Dice have more Brains. On your turn, you take three die out of the cup and roll them. If you get brains, you move them to the side. At anytime you can stop, count your brains and pass the cup. So let's say on your first roll you roll one red dice and two green dice. You roll one brain, one footprint (known as runners) and one shotgun blast. You would move the shotgun and brain to the side. You cannot re-roll shotgun blasts. So, you would pick up the runners and add two more dice to your hand and roll again. This time you get two brains and a shotgun blast. So, you put all three dice to the side. Presently you have 3 brains and 2 shotgun blasts. If you get three shotgun blasts on any one turn your brains you have collected during that turn are voided because you have died. So, do you roll again in hopes you get more brains? Or do you stay, collect your three brains and not take the chance of getting another shotgun and forfeiting your loot!
