Bored? Game! – Pandemic

As part of a disease-fighting team, the aim of Pandemic is to work together in order to discover the four cures before time runs out. Pandemic takes the playerss around the globe building research stations, sharing knowledge and utilising the strengths of each character involved.

The game starts with the infection of nine cities which you choose after shuffling the Infection Deck and taking out three cards. On each card is a city with a chosen disease which you then have to add the three corresponding disease cubes to. You then repeat this process but then only add two disease cubes to each city, then repeat again and add one cube.

After shuffling the character cards and choosing your character, you take the corresponding pawn and a reference card. Depending on the number of players, you can have up to four cards from the player deck. This doesn’t include taking one of the Epidemic cards. A research station is placed in the city of Atlanta and then you shuffle the remaining player deck with four, five or six epidemic cards. The more epidemic cards used, the more difficult the game. With all diseases in place its time to see if you and your team can save humanity.

Now when choosing from the player deck, you may get a Epidemic card. When this happens you have to do these two things, first up the infection meter by one. Second, draw a card from the bottom of the infection deck and place three of the disease cubes on the city it states. This is not done only if the disease has been eradicated. Now a city which has up to three disease cubes would be classed as being infected. If you have to then use a fourth cube the disease turns into an outbreak. Each city can only have up to three cubes, so in the event of an outbreak all connecting cities which share the same disease are given one disease cube. The outbreak meter also goes up by one. Once all required actions are completed then its the next player’s turn.

If there are not enough cards the game ends and humanity dies because of you. Nice thought, right?!

Each turn is split up into three parts: perform up to four actions, draw two player cards, and infect cities. The four actions you can perform can be anything from moving between cities, building research centres, sharing knowledge or discovering a cure. Bear in mind the characters can perform special actions, such as being able to have five actions instead of four, so make sure you read up on what your character is capable of. Once done you then take two top cards from the player deck. However, if there are not enough cards the game ends and humanity dies because of you. Nice thought, right?!

With my sparkly assistant, we set up the game and gave it a shot. As we were trying to get our heads around the rules, the first game had taken about an hour and a half to complete. Unfortunately, even with my poor attempts at cheating, we did not save humanity. However the game as a whole was quite enjoyable. We were both used to playing board games competing against each other so co-operation was a little weird at first but as the game went on we spent more time, (more than we probably should have) on discussing what would be best to try and contain each disease to prevent an outbreak. Once we got used to the rules and were remembering the actions we could take, Pandemic turned out to be ok.

Designer: Matt Leacock
Mechanic: Curing diseases
Number of players: 2 – 4
Length of Game: 60-90mins
Complexity: Medium/Hard