Pandemic Board Game Review (This Has Nothing to Do with Rona)

 

Overview

Four deadly diseases are spreading across the world, appearing in the world's major cities. A team of four specialists has been assembled to take them on and discover cures before it's too late. Can you save the world, or will it the diseases ravage it? 

Gameplay

Pandemic is a cooperative game. The players win or lose as a team. I've never played a game like that before, and I've got to say I prefer being crushed by one of my friends than being crushed by plastic cubes spreading across the board. The game revolves mostly around moving across the board and removing disease cubes to prevent outbreaks. 

At the end of each person's turn, two to four cards are drawn from an infection deck, and disease cubes are placed in the city that the drawn cards represent. The player also draws two cards from the player deck. These cards can be used to cure a disease if you get five of the same color card. If an epidemic card is drawn, one unlucky city gets three disease cubes, and the discarded infection cards are reshuffled and placed back on top of the infection deck, which means all the cities you put disease cubes in can now be infected again. If a city gets four cubes in it, an outbreak occurs and the disease spreads to all the cities around it. If eight outbreaks occur, you lose. You also lose if the player deck runs out of cards. You win if you cure all four diseases. You also get a role card, which gives you a special ability to help you and your friends win. For example, if you get the Scientist card you can cure diseases with only four cards of the same color, instead of five. 

Thoughts

Pandemic has many strengths, but it has a few weaknesses too. Collecting cards to cure diseases' is pretty random. There's nothing you can really do if you happen to not draw the cards you need. I would've enjoyed it more if curing diseases was less random. Other than that, there's really not much to complain about here. The art is good, the role cards are fun, I and my brothers quickly found our favorites, and the game has a relatively short setup time (Compared to the fifteen minutes of setting up Catan and it's expansions often take.).