A word of warning - this review is a subjective take of Pandemic as a game suitable for playing with your non-gaming girlfriend (or your non-gaming wife, boyfriend, roomate, mom, fishy-looking neighbour, houseplant etc.) with not really much info about the rules or the game itself. I gather a lot of other reviews cover that quite nicely. I have color-coded the "important" info in blue, so you may decide to read just that and be done with it. Also, I have devised an abbreviation NGF, which I guess means non-gamer friend but can be substituted to any of the above.

From time to time a discussion opens on the subject "What is the perfect game you can play with your girlfriend/wife". This discussion is mostly based on the cliche that most gamers are male, and most of their girlfriends/wives aren't really that nuts about boardgaming in general. Sadly this cliche more often then not turns out to be true (unless you clicked with your significant other on some gaming convention where odds are you are problem-free on this regard).

Anyways, I have long struggled to find a game I can enjoy playing with my girlfriend, but it really is difficult. It's not that she doesn't like boardgames (she does), but rather the usual gamer vs non-gamer mentality issue. I like to play competitively, to search for killer strategies and to always try to make the optimal move. She likes to enjoy the game, pure and simple, winning is optional. Result? Either I always win, which makes the game unenjoyable for her, or I make suboptimal moves, which makes the game unenjoyable for me.

People often quote Lost Cities as a true "girlfriend-friendly" game. I've decided to try it out. Well, my girlfriend liked it. Kinda. I also liked it. Kinda. But playing Lost Cities for us is like watching a documentary on TV - it's mildly enjoyable, it's useful to pass the time, but it's hardly a memorable experience or something you might talk about afterwards. You place cards. You look at nice artwork. You open your computer and pull out an Excel sheet to calculate scores (yeah, like I would calculate those scores by hand). Not really thrilling all that, and Lost Cities soon moved from honorable place under the table to the closet, and finally to the boardgames graveyard under the couch (where it enjoys a nice company of Monopoly, Diplomacy and Risk). So, to put it in one sentence, while I share the opinion of many BGG-ers that Lost Cities is pretty "gf-friendly", and a nice compact 2-player game useful to pass the time with, I still think it isn't truly an engaging or fun experience.

It seemed the boardgaming is dead in my house...but a glimmer of hope appeared on the horizon, when my friend borrowed us a copy of a strange-looking game, called "Pandemic".

To tell you the truth, I didn't think of it much, at first. I didn't like the cheesy cover art, the box looked too thin to hold anything resembling a "real game", the board reminded me too much of Risk (which my gf hates) and it was deemed a "co-op" game. I've never really had much interest or chance to try out such a game - as I gathered they almost always required many players (while I preferred games playable with 2), they often included role-playing (which I kinda dislike) and the entire concept seemed silly... hey, if I had to play against a game, I'd rather that it is a computer game with clever AI then some card-drawing random algorithm.

As luck would have it, that day the episode of "House M.D." was particularly good. It put me and my gf in kind of a medical mood, so we decided to play doctors - and what better way to do it then with a medical-themed boardgame?

I opened up the box - examined the components (ooh, cubes), reread the rules a few times and we gave it a shot.

My girlfriend was initially irritated by the basic actions, which are dealing with movement. To tell you the truth, I also didn't find them very intuitive. But then I told her that there are basically two choices - moving slowly or "teleporting" via player cards and this clicked. During the game I introduced the research-station-jumping but I've left out the last option (charter flight) out for the first game until the dust settles. This worked fine.

This is my first gripe with the game. The rules, while clear and simple, still can look a bit clunky from a ngf perspective, especially the nuances about how you can move around the board. You might want to simplify them a bit if your ngf looks overwhelmed - mostly because he/she expects the rules will be more complex then they really are. The reference card is neat, but it CAN cause a wrong first impression.

I have also made a small mistake and chose the roles randomly, so I got the Medic and my gf ended up with the Ops Expert. She didn't really know what to do with him and felt that I was "having all the fun curing the diseases". After a few moves I've decided to let her exchange the Ops for the Scientist and this turned out to be great - she enjoyed the fact she could find a cure more easily and she felt she was actively participating in the game. Which she actually was, and that was great.

So, if you want your ngf to like his/her first game, be sure to give her an easy-to-use role like a Medic or a Scientist. Other roles aren't really newbie-friendly and can easily feel underpowered and/or confusing. You might also opt for the non-role game, because it will be easier to teach (but harder to win, which is also a good thing because it can induce a let's-play-one-more-I-want-to-win syndrome).

My gf and me have found the theme quite suitable and really nicely implemented. Once you get in the game and epidemics start appearing, things really start to heat up. From time to time I've had impulses to start instructing her what's in my opinion the best course of action but have resisted the urge, because I didn't want to turn this into a one-player game where my gf just follows instructions.

I think this is important - resist the urge to control the game, even if your ngf makes bad choices. If he/she asks for advice, you give it, but always encourage independent decisions. It's better to lose the game then to turn it into a one-man show. After all, if you like to optimize (like me), sometimes it's fun if the other player messes up things a bit, it can make the game more challenging.

We lost the first game, but my gf wanted to play another right away. This is really a good sign, but the fact that the game plays fast also helped a bit.

The game is short but plays fast, with low down-time, and becomes more and more exciting as you play. This is great because it's easy to become more and more involved and the game will most often end before you have time to lose interest. Compare this with Lost Cities which, although also short, comes to a dead halt each time you count scores and rarely feels exciting and/or engaging, if ever. HOWEVER, Pandemic isn't perfect in this regard - sometimes it's obvious that the game is already won or lost way before the winning/losing conditions are met. I don't find this to be a huge issue, but some folks probably will.

In the end, we played three or four games and only managed to win the last one. Strangely, winning felt less satisfying then losing, and it felt a bit wrong that the game is "won" even though the entire world was drowning in disease cubes.

My second gripe is that losing is more fun then winning. Winning condition - collecting 4 cures - can feel abrupt and "wrong". I think that if you want to "hook" someone on Pandemic, it can be rewarding to lose a few games first. You might try to be a "traitor" when you teach this game to someone, and don't be scared of using more Epidemics then suggested for the "introductory" game . Also, be absolutely sure you are playing the game the right way - some rules are easy to misinterpret and you can make the game too easy by accident, which is usually bad.

Anyways, Pandemic is returned to my friend but I already ordered the reprint copy and can't wait for it to arrive.

To sum up, I find that Pandemic, being a short co-op game playable with 2-players is a great gf-friendly game, much more so than Lost Cities. It is especially rewarding if you are by nature much more competitive then your gf because now you can play together, not against each other. However, bear in mind that if you want to "infect" your ngf with it, you might want to be a little bit careful and sneaky, because Pandemic - at least in my opinion - doesn't leave such a great first impression but rather grows on you after you try it out.

In the end, I just want to say that for some it can perhaps seem funny how one has to use so much effort to "sell" a boardgame to his gf. Personally, I think it's just the way people are - we cannot all be enthusiastic about same things, and boardgaming IS a niche hobby, and one not really highly regarded. But if I can put in some effort and lay some groundwork for another activity my gf and I can later enjoy together, I don't see anything wrong with it.

Anyways, this is my 0.02$. Forget Lost Cities, get Pandemic (if you can grab a hold of a copy). You might be surprised.

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Well...

Hey, when you play doctors with the help of a boardgame, at least there's no danger you'll end up playing House.

Amen for small favors!

Is the movement really that hard?

Move ONE SPACE along a red line (drive/walk/camel/whatever)
Move TO the space on a card (and discard the card)
Move FROM the space on a card (and discard the card)
Move BETWEEN two research stations

It seems annoying on first blush, but really, it boils down to the above.

It's not hard, it's just not intuitive.

One space: Okay, I'm taking the car.

To the space: Uh... what are these cards I'm holding in my hand? One-way plane tickets?

From the space: Oh, they're plane tickets I can only use in this city? What airline is this, anyway?

Between: We have teleporters now? Why can't we cure diseases if we have teleporters? And why are these research stations so long? Do they stand upright so it's easier to teleport?


aka. Washu! ^O^

one way tickets indeed.
Many air carriers have city hubs where they fly in and out of, and sometimes to singular destinations (especially small municipal services like continental express). Puddle jumpers and commuter flights are a godsend for small communities.



With great power comes great responsibility.

Teleporters would bring speed to assistance, but would also assist in spread of the diseases. For reference, read the short story "Flash Crowd" by Larry Niven. Not precisely the same situation, but it gives a good idea of what would happen if we really had teleporters and why it could be "a bad thing(tm)".

Now, the rules say this is a "shuttle" ... which in my head for some reason reason evokes the imagery of personal space shuttles taking off and landing between the research stations. Those scientists and their huge research budgets

This one is the most unintuitive and problematic, in my opinion. It's easy to understand that a player ticket is a "one-way ticket" to the pictured city but once you come to the fact that it is also a "one-way ticket" from the city to anywhere else, things become a bit iffy. It's not really hard but to someone who is only used to a good old roll-and-move mechanic all this can appear overwhelming and not really fun.

I prefer to leave this fourth option out in the first game - it does restrict player's options a bit, but since it's the introductory game it isn't that important.

This is a review I enjoy reading so much more than a dry summary of rules. Thanks.

My fiance and I played Pandemic last night, and something happened that's never happened before: she asked to play again! Then something else happened that's never happened before: I said no!