Review Details

Pandemic

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on December 13, 2008):

I just got my copy of Pandemic recently and have played a few games of it already. The game is incredibly easy to pick up and play. The rules are simple: players have 4 actions every turn that can be used to move around the map, heal diseases, trade cards, use special actions, or research a cure. After that, the player draws 2 more cards into his/her hand and then turn over a few infection cards to see how the infection has spread.

The players win if they manage to research all 4 cures. However, they lose if there are no more player cards to draw into their hands, if they run out of cubes to show an infection spreading, or if the outbreak token hits 8. Among the player cards are Epidemic cards that are shuffled into the deck at the start of the game. The number of Epidemic cards shuffled into the deck varies depending on the difficulty level you're playing at. Epidemic cards intensifies the spread of infections by increasing the number of infection cards drawn per turn and re-introducing all the infection cards already drawn back into the infection deck, meaning those cards will be likely to spring up again and cause outbreaks.

Outbreaks occur whenever a 4th cube of the same colour is required to be placed on a city. Instead of placing the 4th cube, 1 cube of the colour is placed into each city connected to the offending city. This can cause a chain of outbreaks to occur that can make the players lose the game in an instant if they have left an area alone for too long. Luckily, each of the roles played by the players have special moves, such as requiring less cards to research a cure, being able to cure all of one colour in a city for a single action, or being able to move other people around.

The components of this updated version of Pandemic is great. The artwork is nice, but not astounding. The new research station tokens are much smaller, making the game board a little less crowded. Still, the pawns representing the players are quite large, taking up a lot of space, especially when 4 players start in the same location. However, the set is nice enough to include lots of little bags for you to organize everything in. As well, there are excellent reference cards that explains all the possible actions one can take.

Overall I love the game. I had been waiting forever for the game to come out and it does not disappoint. Variations and tweaks can be made to the rules to help the players beat the game. If you find yourself being clobbered by luck, perhaps allow face up draws from either decks. As well, do try playing with all players showing their hands and maybe allow trading roles at the cost of an action. I highly recommend this game to any gamer. It is simple and easy to learn and is tonnes of fun for everyone.