Board Game Review: Pandemic by Z-Man Games

Pandemic is a 2-4 player European style co-op game by Z-Man games that plays around 45 minutes.  You and your friends take on the role of specialists working to treat four diseases quickly sweeping the globe.  Unfortunately I heard the game was currently OOP (out of print) though you can still find it at many FLGS or online.  The game is quick, challenging, and frustrating…

First up the contents are solid.  The board is a simple, thick cardboard map of the world with cities color coded to disease types, infection rate track, outbreak track, four “cured\eradicated” markers and slots for the two decks of cards used in the game.  Other parts include the five character type cards, the deck of disease cards, epidemic cards, the scientist deck, four or five action cards, little wooden bowling pin things for each scientist type (again based on color), a bunch of wooden markers for the diseases, a few research center markers, outbreak and infection tokens, and the four “cured\eradicated” tokens for each disease.  The contents of the game are pretty simple and straightforward, much like the game play.  This is a typical euro style game, so no mini’s here, just wooden blocks or bowling pins.

I have to give credit to Z-man games, this is my first game by them, so I’m hoping this is the trend with their company, but the rules are very well written with only a smidge of confusion around certain extreme instances which may arrive with the scientists abilities, but in all those instances we’ve found common sense was the solution.  The rules are somewhere around four whole pages, in full color, and mostly consisting of nice big illustrations…I like pictures…When I look at this rule booklet next to say, Fantasy Flights rule set for Mansions of Madness or Arkham Horror…yeah, Z-Man for the win.

There are five scientists you can play in the basic set, though there is an expansion Pandemic: On the Brink, that allows for more character types.  But in the basic set there are:  The Scientist, the Dispatcher, the Medic, the Researcher, and the Operations Expert.  All of these guys have special abilities that essentially break some of the following rules.  And trust me, you’re going to need it.

The actual game play, it’s pretty simple.  There are three parts to a player’s turn, the action step, the drawing cards step, and the infector step.  Every player has 4 action “points” they can use, or not, each turn.  There are basic and advanced actions, like moving to a connected city on the board, treating a disease and removing a coordinating cube from the city, trading a card to another player in same city, chartering a flight to another city, etc. all cost one action point per choice. For instance, I could move two cities (two points) and then treat two cubes of disease on that city (two more points) and that would be my action turn.

There are four ways to move your pawn around the world.  You can move to neighboring cities for 1 action per move.  You can take a direct flight to another city by discarding the corresponding card of either the city you are in or the city you are going to.  You can charter a flight from one research center to another research center elsewhere.

The other actions require are more location depended.  To treat a disease, remove a cube per point spent, you have to be in a city that is infected.  If you want to trade cards with another player, you and that player need to meet up in the city listed on the card you’re trading, this can be a slow process.  You can find a cure, which requires you to first be on a city with a research center and second to have five cards of one color type, and then you can cure the corresponding color’s disease.  And finally you can build a research center in the city you are in as long as you also have that cities card in your hand.

Now there’s been a lot of mention of city cards and what not.  Well that’s the next phase, the drawing of cards.  Each play begins with a predetermined amount of cards in their hand from the scientist deck.  If you have two players, every on gets four cards.  Three players, everyone gets three cards.  Four players, everyone gets two cards.  These cards all have a city listed on the card along with a color of the disease that affects that area.  You need five of these, unless you’re the scientist, to cure a disease, or can use them to travel, trade, etc.  Every turn you draw two cards and can’t at any point have more than seven cards in your hand.

Here is when you run the risk of drawing an Epidemic card.  These little buggers cause the infection rate to increase, which dictates how many cards you draw in the infector stage.  It also requires you draw a card from the bottom of the infector deck, place three cubes on it, possibly triggering an outbreak, and then taking the discard pile of the infector deck and shuffling it, place it back on top of the infector pile.  Yes, that means all those cards you just went through are now up top again, increasing your chances of outbreaks…goody. What’s an outbreak you ask?  Just wait, it’s coming…it’s always coming.

Next comes the infector stage.  The player draws the number of cards dictated by the infection rate track and places one cube on each city listed on the cards.  Now the outbreak is a huge issue here.  Any city that would have a fourth cube placed on it of one color disease will outbreak.  This causes the city not to get a fourth cube but to instead place a cube of that color on each surrounding city and move the outbreak track up by one.  So what happens if a neighboring city already has three on it?  Oh, that’s just a chain reactions…more cubes, and another bump up the track.  Thankfully the same city can’t outbreak twice in one chain reaction.  After that the turn passes to the next person.

So how do you win?  Easy just find a cure for all four diseases, sounds simple right?  Trust me it’s not.  We’ve played around fourteen times; guess how many times we’ve won?  Zero.  Zilch.  Zip.  That’s right.  Not once.  I have never come in contact with a more challenging, and thereby fun game, as Pandemic.  So why do we lose so much?  Simply.  Things are stacked against you from the start.  You can lose by having eight outbreaks, you can lose by running out of cards in the scientist deck, and you can lose by running out of any disease’s cubes.  And we’ve lost because of all those reasons…multiple times.

Pandemic…Awesome game.  Even if you’re a dungeon crawler, this is a very good game. And it’s relatively cheap…if you’ve played it and have a secret, please, for the love of God. Tell me how to beat it, my gaming group would appreciate it.

Euro game or American, what’s your preference?