Pandemic review
Pandemic review
The first time I played Pandemic, we lost.
We, too, have not been destroyed or lost with great advantage, which is probably one of the most irritating things I can remember about it, and why I still remember it well. All in all, we actually did pretty well. We cured 3 of the four diseases and monitored the last disease, but ... I think we can call it bad luck, bad cards and some bad decisions in the early games that made everyone at the table scratch their heads. We had three turns before we ran out of cards, and one of the remaining cards was an epidemic.
We knew we couldn’t win. And yet ...
It was still one of the most fun games I’ve ever played. It was exhausting, but I remember they all worked together right away. Every special ability was used from each role and each person excelled. See our full pandemic overview below.
- STRATEGY GAME: Players must participate in their ...
- GAME COOPERATIVE: Only by working in groups will you keep ...
- ACT TOGETHER AND SAVE HUMANITY: Four diseases threaten ...
A brief overview of the pandemic
Several viral diseases broke out all over the world at the same time! The Apocalypse threatens the security of the world! Cities are quickly flooded with an infection that disrupts life as we know it. Can you and your team work together to stop the spread before it is too late?
In Pandemic, your team will set up a crisis response team to deal with the simultaneous outbreak of 4 separate diseases. Cooperation is key! You’ll need to take full advantage of each player’s role, make smart, strategic decisions about the move, and figure out how to stop the tide before things get out of hand. As in a real crisis response, your response to pressure will determine your success or failure.
The pandemic has quickly become a modern classic and is credited with the pressure of cooperative social play in the modern era. So let’s take a look at what’s all going on in our review of Pandemic board games.
Variations and extensions
Pandemic has many amazing versions, extensions and standalone games in the series. To see the best and best order of the game, check out our in-depth review of the Best Pandemic Extensions here .
Unpacking the pandemic
Pandemic has a very elegant design. The board is very clean, without much clutter.
The design for the rest of the game also follows the clean design. I highly recommend separating all the components in small bags or containers. Some travel makeup containers are great containers for board game components, especially disease cubes. If you tear the bag, I highly recommend that you look for a replacement container. They are easy to lose and anyone who is lost only makes the game harder.
How to play a pandemic
roles
The basic game has 7 roles.
- Scientist
- Quarantine expert
- Medic
- Dispatcher
- Operations Specialist
- Researcher
- Action planner
Basic actions
Players will have 4 actions in each move. Each movement, treatment and action in a special role burns one of your 4.
For example, if you wanted to pull a disease cube out of town, it would cost 1 campaign. If there were three disease cubes in the city and you wanted them all gone, it would cost you 3 campaigns.
- STRATEGY GAME: Players must participate in their ...
- GAME COOPERATIVE: Only by working in groups will you keep ...
- ACT TOGETHER AND SAVE HUMANITY: Four diseases threaten ...
Outbreaks
Outbreaks are one of the many ways you can lose a game. An outbreak occurs when you need to put a disease cube in place and there are already 3 disease cubes of the same color on it.
The outbreak then spreads to any site associated with it.
For example, if Atlanta has 3 blue disease cubes and you need to place a fourth, instead move the outbreak marker along its path and add 1 blue disease cube to each attached location. Washington, Chicago and Miami would get 1 blue cube in their space. Note that although Miami is a yellow space, you would still add 1 blue cube instead of yellow.
The worst thing about outbreaks is that they can trigger chain reactions. If the Atlanta eruption forced you to place a dice in Chicago and Chicago already had 3 dice, the eruption would also be triggered in Chicago.
There have been a lot of games where everything on the board looks fine, and then a chain reaction of outbursts undoes all your hard work.
Treatment of disease against disease eradication
Treating the disease is much easier than completely eradicating it from the game.
To cure the disease, you will need to have 5 of the same colored cards and spend the campaign at the disease treatment research station. Once the disease is cured, players will be able to remove all the spaces from the cured paint with all the cubes with a single action.
For example, before the red disease is cured, you should remove 3 disease cubes. Once you heal, remove all three disease cubes, just as a doctor’s role could do. The doctor can then simply walk around the room and remove any cured disease cubes. They do not remove the cured disease.
You can eradicate the disease by first curing it and then removing all disease cubes of that color from the plate. This makes the game easier for you, but it’s a lot harder to run than it sounds. Once the disease is eradicated, there is no need to worry about it. Every time the color of an eradicated disease appears on an infected board, you can completely ignore the card, which gives you some much-needed space to breathe. If the disease has been cured and has not yet been eradicated, you will still need to add disease cubes to the plate.
- STRATEGY GAME: Players must participate in their ...
- GAME COOPERATIVE: Only by working in groups will you keep ...
- ACT TOGETHER AND SAVE HUMANITY: Four diseases threaten ...
An epidemic
At the end of each turn, players will draw two cards from the playing deck. In most cases, there will be nothing wrong, there will be bad cards for epidemics hidden on board. The number can vary depending on the setting (2, 4 or 5. The game gradually sharpens with each epidemic card and is resolved in several stages.
Increase —-> Infect —-> Intenzify
In the increase phase, you will move the epidemic marker once in your path. The number on the track indicates how many places you will infect at each turn. There are only two at the beginning of the game, but when more epidemics are played, 3-4 cities will be infected.
The Intensify phase is probably Mat Leacock’s most diabolical creation. In the reinforcement stage, you will take each card in the discard of the infection, shuffle the pile of discards, and place it directly on the infection plate.
It does several horrible things at once. The place where the three disease cubes have just been placed now has the option to be redrawn immediately, and if you haven’t been able to overtake the constant spread of the disease, you need to take care of disease outbreaks now.
He wins and the game is over
A pandemic is not an easy game. There is only one way to actually win the game, but you can lose in several ways. When any condition for defeat is met, the game ends immediately.
# 1: If you have to play the disease cube on the board and there is none in stock, it means that the disease has spread too far and the game ends with a loss.
# 2: If there are too many outbursts and the outbreak mark reaches the end of the track, the game ends with a loss.
# 3: If the playing deck is empty and the player cannot draw 2 cards at the end of the turn, the game is over.
There is only one way to win, and that is to successfully find a cure for all 4 diseases.
As a co-op game , you have to work together to win. Communicating with your team and teammates is crucial to the game. If everyone is not on the same side, it will be very difficult to win.
Your first pandemic game
Setup
For the initial setup, all the players will start in Atlanta, where in real life there is an actual disease control center. Atlanta starts with an already built research station.
The disease is spreading
Next is the initial spread of the disease. Stir in the infection.
Draw 3 cards. Place three disease cubes of the appropriate color in each of these first 3 places.
Draw 3 more cards and place two disease cubes in each of these places.
Draw the last 3 cards and place 1 disease cube in each place.
- STRATEGY GAME: Players must participate in their ...
- GAME COOPERATIVE: Only by working in groups will you keep ...
- ACT TOGETHER AND SAVE HUMANITY: Four diseases threaten ...
Epidemic cards
Separate all epidemic cards from the playing circle, shuffle the deck, and distribute the starting hands to each player. The number of cards depends on the number of players.
2-players : 4 cards
3-players : 3 cards
4-players : 2 cards
Choose your difficulty
Now comes the really interesting part: choosing problems. You can actually change the difficulty of the game by choosing how many epidemic cards you want to play.
4-epidemics: Beginners (not easy)
5-epidemics: intermediate
6-epidemics: advanced
Choose your role
For the first Pandemic game, I warmly recommend random role selection. Each is extremely useful and can save the game. Random selection will force you to think outside the norm. Most players will immediately go to a medical or quarantine specialist, but I strongly recommend that you try less obvious decisions, such as an surgery specialist or researcher.
This will force you into a role that will make you look at all the moving parts instead of just 1. If you choose a quarantine specialist or a doctor, you will spend most of the game wandering around and walking around disease foci. curb the flow of outbreaks. It’s important work, but perhaps not the most exciting in the first game.
Role strategy
The nuance and strategy in Pandemic can be lost during grumbling if you opt for medicine or quarantine. My suggestion is to look at the roles and choose the one you think “sounds” the most useless. You will soon find that every role is very good in your situations, and you will be forced to look at the game from a perspective you would not normally.
Advantages and disadvantages of a pandemic
Advantages:
I say this a lot in our reviews, but one of my favorite aspects of board games is the shared story attached. The pandemic offers countless opportunities for social interaction and storytelling that happen at the table (and after the game).
All the roles are very strong in their own way. This is definitely the power of the game, but it’s harder to appreciate in practice. It’s not easy to watch Medic medically heal two sites in one plant while playing an Operations Specialist whose ability makes it easier to build research stations.
- STRATEGY GAME: Players must participate in their ...
- GAME COOPERATIVE: Only by working in groups will you keep ...
- ACT TOGETHER AND SAVE HUMANITY: Four diseases threaten ...
Weaknesses:
The game can be challenging, especially if each player chooses their own. Even if your group is involved, you can get a series of bad draws and lose the game. The difficulty of the game is not a bad thing. It adds some very tense moments to the game, but it depends on whether you’re still having fun, even if you lose. I know I know, but I also know a lot of people who would be very disappointed because of that. This is an advantage, but you will know what your gaming table likes more than me.
Pandemic FAQs and tips for beginners
Don’t burn too many cards early. It can be very tempting to throw away movement tickets early, but you never know when you’ll need them. Remember that the goal is to cure all 4 diseases and you need 5 colors for this. If you discard too many of one color, 1 player may find it difficult to collect all 5 for treatment.
Don’t forget the research stations!
More well-established research stations can make things smoother early on. Remember that you can only travel between research stations with 1 campaign, so it pays to build one in a difficult place or in a specific disease focus.
Talk to each other.
Seriously, this is a fatal mistake made by most new players. When you play a typical strategy game, you sometimes notice a completely silent table, as each player is overwhelmed by the possible options they have. Don't do this. Talk to each other.
Listen to each other.
Another problem that arises with any collaborative game is the tendency for an experienced player to pair everyone else. Listen to each other too. Explain why you think these are good ideas. If it’s louder, the man is always wrong, and some of the best moments in the game come from working together and getting that “Ah ha!” a moment when everyone is talking and suddenly coming up with a winning strategy.
Pandemic overview (TL; DR)
- A pandemic is a shared board game where you and your team need to stop the spread of 4 virulent diseases before it’s too late.
- Difficult in strategy, collaboration and teamwork.
- If you don’t communicate with teammates, you will lose.
- High repeatability, 3 difficulty levels.
- 7 individual role cards, each with its own unique abilities in different situations.
- Tons of themed extensions so you can play for years to come.
Conclusion: a verdict?
There is a reason that the pandemic has been placed at the top of almost every list of games. He has been an innovator and trend setter since he first appeared on the board game scene.
One of the biggest innovations that Pandemic deserves is participation in board games. Cooperative board games before the pandemic were usually too complicated or quite simple compared to this. The installation took forever and the rules were extensive. The pandemic can be set up and played in about 45 minutes, making it much more accessible to casual players and more likely to reach the gaming table.
- STRATEGY GAME: Players must participate in their ...
- GAME COOPERATIVE: Only by working in groups will you keep ...
- ACT TOGETHER AND SAVE HUMANITY: Four diseases threaten ...
We hope you enjoyed our review of Pandemic and that it was able to shed light on a new engaging game. Have you played Pandemic before? Have you tried any of the extensions yet? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think of the Pandemic!
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