Pandemic – cure diseases! Fight infection! Get frustrated at how difficult this game is!

Pandemic came highly recommended by a lot of different people. It appealed to me because it’s cooperative, so I thought, why not? We picked up a copy and started playing.

As I read through the rules, I became increasingly suspicious that this game could be quite … challenging. There’s only one way to win, but three ways to lose. Hmmmm.

It turned out that I was exactly right (bother) but also that I didn’t see how awesomely fun the game could be anyway (woohoo!).

Suggested ages: 8+

Number of players: 2-4

Playing time: 45 minutes

My rating: 8/10

Pandemic’s theme is – surprise surprise – a global pandemic. There are seven roles you can play, each of which has special abilities. Your role gets drawn randomly, and the rest go back in the box. Then, you and your team mates work together to try and beat the game.
You start by infecting some randomly chosen cities, and picking up player cards. Then you have to decide, on a turn, how to use your resources – treat disease? Move to a different city? Build a research station? Find a cure? On your turn, you will also pick up player cards (which allow you to move around, build research stations and find cures), and infection cards, which force to you infect more cities.
Curveballs are thrown frequently in the form of epidemic cards, which worsen the spread of disease by making you reinfect the cities that are already sick. The game is won when all four diseases are cured. You lose if you run out of disease markers, there are eight outbreaks, or you run through the player card deck before all diseases are cured.

I really enjoyed Pandemic. The playing time is short, which means that after our first run through (a bitter loss), I was really keen to jump back in and have another go. It’s highly random, so the dynamic changes every time. Sometimes you’ll have clusters of outbreaks that trigger each other. Sometimes, everything will just be really nice and easy to manage. The different roles also ensure that you play differently every time. You are forced to change up your strategy. The game is also cooperative. Everyone works together, rather than against each other. That’s a heap of fun, and completely different to a competitive game. There’s an authentic sense of rising panic when it becomes clear that you’re on the losing side of the fight against disease.

Pandemic is quite complex; it has to be. It works as a relatively good model for disease spread in that it has features like outbreaks (if a city already has full disease load, and then gets reinfected, the disease is dealt onto surrounding cities instead). I would recommend that you skim read the rules to begin with, set up and play a game while checking the rules, and then afterwards go through the rulebook closely to see if you missed anything.

Make no mistake, though. Pandemic really is quite hard. What makes it hard is the conditions needed to win: one player needs five cards of the same colour to cure a disease – but can only hold seven at any one time. It’s difficult to pass cards between players. You must cure all four diseases before time runs out (indicated by the player deck). And you’re not just curing disease – you have to keep moving around to treat the infections that are already spreading.

I had an idea that it might be easier with more players. So we gave that a shot and I was thoroughly disproved. It only becomes harder. Someone on the internet did say that they reached the stage where they just clicked to how to play it best, and hopefully I am reaching that stage. Fingers crossed.

The redeeming feature is, though, that Pandemic is just a heap of fun even when you’re losing spectacularly. Gameplay is great, and it makes you think. Each game is different. You won’t get bored even if you play three or four games in a row. This is just brilliant.
If you are one of those people with a pathological need to win, this may not be the game for you. Having said that, I am one of those people, and like Wil Wheaton says in that video, I’ve had more fun losing Pandemic than I have had winning plenty of other games. So do at least give it a shot.

 

Where do I buy it?

Toyco stocks it for $69.99 – buy online or pick up. Mightyape also has it for $64.99. Expansions, as always cost more on top of the base game cost (On the Brink is $55-$65 and In the Lab, harder to find, is $65 at Mightyape).

There’s also a separate game called Pandemic: Contagion, in which you actually play as a disease trying to eliminate humanity. So, that’s novel.

 

‘Tabletop’ is a class of games including board games, dice games, tile games, pen and paper games, etc. While tabletop games might make you think of bitter Christmas feuds over a Monopoly board, I love them, and I like to think they’re making a comeback (having said that, I’ve not played Monopoly for years). Not all of them are aggressive, and some of them don’t even have players competing against each other! What they do have is a plethora of ways to play and strategise, depending on the type of game you’re playing. That’s exciting, no?