It seems many people are saying the game is too difficult with 4 epidemics or too easy with 6. Here's a list of common mistakes players might make so you can check it against your understanding of the rules:

Setup

- There should be 18 cubes on the board: 3 from 3 infection cards each, 2 from 3 infection cards each, 1 from 3 infection cards each.

- All pawns and a research station start in Atlanta (CDC).

- With 2/3/4 players, the starting hands are 4/3/2 cards.

- The epidemic cards (4 to 6) are shuffled into separate piles (4 to 6) of player cards then stacked. This is done after dealing player hands.

General

- It costs 1 action to move your pawn, remove a cube, give/receive a card, or build a research station.

- You may move adjacent to your current location (as an action), or to/from a location for which you have a card (as an action, discarding card), or from research station to research station (as an action).

- You may pass a card to or receive a card from another player who is on the same location as you if the card matches your location.

- When treating a disease, remove only a single cube (per action) at your current location. If the disease is cured, remove all cubes of a single cured color (per action).

- Building a research station costs an action and a card matching your current location.

- Curing a disease costs 5 cards of the matching color, and must be done at a research station (of any color).

- You must immediately discard the excess if your hand exceeds 7 cards. However, the "draw 2 cards" phase happens all at once. You can decide which cards to discard after drawing, and if the first card is an epidemic, you still draw the second card before executing the epidemic.

- Every turn, the current player takes 4 actions, draws 2 cards, executes any epidemics that occur, then draws the 2-4 required infection cards. Don't forget the last step after executing an epidemic.

- Epidemic procedure: Draw bottom infection card, add 3 cubes to that city (handling any outbreaks), discard that card, shuffle only the infection discard pile, put it on top of the infection draw pile, and increase the infection rate. You do not draw new Player cards to replace any drawn epidemic cards. You do continue with the Infection Phase after handling any epidemic(s).

- There can be up to 3 cubes of each color on any city.

Outbreaks

- Any time you need to add a 4th cube of any given color (infection or epidemic), there is an outbreak.

- If an outbreak is caused by an epidemic, discard any extra cubes. In other words, adding 3 cubes to a city that already has 3 cubes does not cause 3 outbreaks in succession.

- To execute an outbreak, add a cube of the same color as the outbreak to each adjacent city. If any of these cubes would be the 4th cube of that color, that city has an outbreak as well. This can cause a chain reation of many outbreaks. Increase the outbreak count for each city this occurs in. A city may only outbreak once in any chain reaction.

- Say you have a triangle of 3 red cities, A/B/C. A and B have 3 red cubes, and C has 2 red cubes. You draw an epidemic card, and the bottom card of the infection deck is for city A (rare but possible). This causes a single outbreak in A. Add a red cube to each city adjacent to A. B gets an outbreak. C gets its 3rd cube. Add a red cube to each city adjacent to B. C gets an outbreak. Add a red cube to each city adjacent to C. A, B, and C only had a single outbreak each. Advance the outbreak count by 3.

Role: Dispatcher

- As an action, may move other players' pawns as if they were his own (with permission), playing cards as necessary. As an action, may also move any pawn to any other pawn without playing a card.

Role: Operations Expert

- Builds a research station without playing a card. This still costs an action.

Role: Scientist

- Cures a disease with only 4 matching cards. This still requires an action and a research station.

Role: Medic

- When treating a disease, removes all cubes of a single color.

- All cubes of cured diseases in the same city as the Medic, including newly placed cubes, are immediately removed. This does not require an action and occurs at all times, not just on the Medic's turn.

Role: Researcher

- May give any cards to other players in the same city on his turn or theirs for 1 action each.

Eradication

- If there are no more cubes of a given cured disease on the board, then it is eradicated.

- All matching cards no longer cause cubes to be added.

- Eradication is not a condition for winning. It simply removes a threat, but usually costs extra actions to bring about.

Game End

- You win immediately if you cure all 4 diseases, even if the board if full of cubes.

- You lose immediately if you cannot add a required cube to the board, if 8 outbreaks occur, or if you cannot draw a player card (the deck is not reshuffled).

How do you get 24 cubes on the board?

3x3 + 2*3 + 1*3 = 18

Researcher can *give* any card, but must *receive* only the card of the city they are in.

Right?

Strangely, the illustration in the rules shows the starting board with 19(!) cubes.

There should be 18 cubes, but they will not necessarily be evenly distributed by color. The rules clearly state that all the Infection cards are shuffled together (Step 10) and then nine are drawn (Step 11). The colors are not segregated during setup, so there is no way to enforce an even distribution of colors in the initial infection.

Corrections made. Seems I typed it too quickly.

Wow, I'd also missed the rule that says a Dispatcher can move a pawn to any other pawn as an action without playing a card. That makes him MUCH more useful now.

They must be in the same city, though, but it doesn't need to be the city of the card, which is usually the case.

Please consider this rewording that makes clear that this ability happens all the time and that it also affects sown cubes.

- All cubes of cured diseases in the same city as the Medic, including newly sown infections, are immediately removed. This does not require an action and occurs at all times, not just on the Medic's turn.

Great overview.

All new players should be required to take a quiz on these points until they get them down. I know I should have because I missed two or three points that made the game seem easy, but,once corrected, turned the game into the hellish experience it should've been all along.

I may be incredibly dense, but the first time we played, we played that if an outbreak caused a chain reaction we still only moved the Outbreak counter one space.

After we started playing correctly, we lost the next 5 games to outbreaks.

If you expand on how to count chain outbreaks, then be clear that a single city cannot outbreak twice during the play of one infection/epidemic card.

Suppose I have completed my 4 actions and I have 7 cards in my hand. Do I draw my 2 cards together and then discard 2, or do I draw them one at a time and discard 1 after each draw?


Incidentally, kudos to Josh Cappel on the excellent graphic design and rule book. He set the standard very high with 1960 and didn't disappoint here.

So one thing that wasn't very clear to me is what happens when a city of one color outbreaks into another city of a different color when then outbreaks.

For example say Sydney outbreaks into LA and then it outbreaks. Do I exchange one of the three yellows in LA with a red one from the outbreak or do I just leave it all yellow. This is important because say I later move to LA, and I have a cure for yellow. Now if it was still all three yellows, I could completely clean it off in one action, but if it was one red and two yellows, it would require two turns.

This actually has come up a couple of times, and I usually just switched out one of the blocks so it would have both diseases and required two actions to clean it off if there was a cure for the original color as described.

You can have up to twelve cubes in a city (three of each color).

This is highly theoretical, but the three cube max. is per color, not total.