Pandemic: An Illustrated Review

Image from BGG user: Zman

Year Released: 2008
Designed by: Matt Leacock
Published by: Z-Man Games (among others)
Number of Players: 2-4

OVERVIEW OF THE GAME
Pandemic is cooperative game where players assume the role of characters who are trying to find the cure for epidemic diseases before contagion spreads out and takes over. The character roles available in the game are: medic, scientist, researcher, dispatcher and operations expert.

Image from BGG user: basilmichael

WHO I AM
My name is Guilherme, I live in Brazil with my wife Michelle and I'm 24 years old.
While I've owned most board games released in Brazil for a long time, I've only gotten into board gaming seriously in 2008, acquiring and reading about American and European games.

MY EXPERIENCE WITH THIS GAME
While I’ve played Pandemic only once, I have read many reviews and discussions here on BGG. I’ve also read the rulebook at least twice before we actually played it. In the game we played, which was the Introductory Game (with 4 epidemic cards only), our team won.

GAME COMPONENTS
Pandemic is, overall, a beautiful game.
The game box is pretty small and it comfortably fits all of its components.

Image from BGG user: Grimwold

The board itself represents the world. Like someone has already said, it resembles boards from Risk-type games, with the exception that instead of being divided in regions, the various cities in the game are connected through multiple colored lines. The artwork in the board is very good and effective.

Image from BGG user: Zman

The game uses colored cubes that are placed on the boards to represent the diseases that are in effect in the cities. These are the staple cubes from euro games, but even so in this game when they are placed in the board, which features the same colors in the different areas of the world, the combination works very well and contributes to the visual aspect of the game.

Image from BGG user: hrc333

Aside from the board and the cubes, the game brings many cards.
There are a few types of cards: Role cards, Infection cards, Player cards and Reference cards. They are of a good quality and like the rest of the game, feature good artwork in them.
Lastly, the game brings a few cardboard markers, wooden cylinders that represent Research Centers and 5 pawns.

Image from BGG user: l10n0fjudah

I rate the components 4/5


GAMEPLAY
Pandemic is tense game!
Here’s a basic-one paragraph overview: in each player’s turn, he/she will take 4 consecutive actions, which he/she can use to move around the world, cure diseases (with varying effectiveness depending on the role played), build a research center, try to find a cure or trade cards with other players. After he has finished his actions, he draws two cards and gets to play the infector by drawing infection cards and placing cubes where the diseases are nor spreading.

The object of the game is to find the 4 cures - not eradicate them. Even so, the game gets very tense easily! The main factor that complicates matters are the Epidemic cards, that are shuffled among Player cards and when drawn, that player has to draw a new city from the bottom of the infection pile (which ensures that it is going to be a city that hasn’t shown up yet), place 3 disease cubes in it and then pick the discarded infected cities, shuffle them an place them back on the top of the infection pile. Now this is where things get ugly! The cities that are now on the very top of the pile that each player will have to draw after his turn contains the cities that have already had cubes placed in them and so there is a very high chance that cities will have outbreaks of diseases, and sometimes chain outbreaks might happen!

Although there is one way to win the game, there are three ways to lose it: by running out of cubes of any color, by running out of Player cards or by having 8 outbreaks. Players have to be constantly watching out for all these conditions, managing their actions and team decisions so that they can find the cures before the too many cities get infected or else things will quickly escalate and get out of control.


Downtime and Playtime
In the game we played, downtime was almost never a problem. All the while a player was taking actions, everyone was discussing their next moves and deciding as a team what would be best. Obviously these plans change and have to be adapted every time a player finishes his/her turn as new cubes are placed in the game. There wasn’t much opportunity for analysis paralysis and the game flowed very well. We were all very interested in what was happening throughout the game. I will however have to play this game more times to see if I’m wrong in this aspect.

Playtime is one of Pandemic’s highlights. You can easily finish a game in one hour and still, feel like you’ve played a great, tense and complex game. I absolutely love the fact that the game is so quickly resolved and yet it packs so much tension in that one hour.

I rate the gameplay 4/5


MY THOUGHTS/CONCLUSION
As you can see, I loved this game. I’m a sucker for cooperative games and Pandemic proved to be a quick yet very tense option. I like the game and how well it is integrated into the game. Players will come out of the game usually talking about that one time when the Epidemic showed up and messed everything up and what best strategy could be used next time. It is a funtastic game!

I rate Pandemic 8/10!



Image from BGG user: nnjed

Image from BGG user: kilroy_locke

Image from BGG user: Zman

edit: adjusted rating

You know, the first few times we played Pandemic we felt just like you do. After several plays, we began to formulate a strategy that maximized the chances of winning. After that, the tension was completely gone.

The decisions in Pandemic are fairly obvious after a while. All you can do is maximize your chances of winning and hope for the best. The decision process is similar to Klondike solitaire. In both games, there is so much hidden information that it's impossible to know the correct solution.

When you lose, you might think "if we'd done X instead of Y, we would have won." The problem is there's generally no way to know if X or Y is better. You might as well flip a coin.

Let me put it this way: I could write a program to play Pandemic that would have the same win percentage as I do. The decision tree is pretty straight forward. Where's the tension? The strategy is simple, and once you've figured it out you're just going through the motions.

This is a really good feedback, Brad, because I wondered if this would happen. I unfortunately don't have the game with me, but I will try to get to play it again, at least a few times to see if this happens to me and my group too.

I have a question though: even in the Heroic difficulty, does the game still run on automatic mode for you? I thought that the drawing of cards from both top and bottom of the infection pile would add randomness and enough challenge that groups would have to adapt quickly to what happens in the world, but maybe those mechanics aren't enough. I've heard plenty of times that Pandemic gets really hard on Medium and Heroic settings, and I thought that that was good for a cooperative game, so that challenge can be maintained.

The different difficulties don't fundamentally change the game. It's much harder to win on Heroic, but that's not because the strategy is any deeper. It's because there's more chance you'll draw a card that hurts you. This makes it less likely you'll win, but how can you change your decision making process to compensate?

You're not presented with any additional information, so you can't. Easy and heroic both give you the exact same information. The probabilities change, but your ability to predict what might happen does not change.

I should add that I had fun with Pandemic for a little while; it's not a bad game. I just feel that, in a way, it's too simple. The best course of action is easily discovered, and after that it's pure luck. Still, it can be fun, particularly with a new group.

I agree in many aspects. I especially don't like the fact that the most experienced player will almost always find the game frustrating - he will either have to play "alpha player" which turns the game into a solitaire experience and dealienates the other players OR will have to keep his mouth shut and endure watching all those "wrong" moves on the board which will up the chances of losing the game.

As I said in other threads, that's why I wait for that "bio-terrorist" role and am eager to see how it plays out (I hope that's a secret role). However, I'm not really sure how do you "subtly" play against all the other players in Pandemic and not get spotted immediately, especially if you're an experienced player..

Yup, that's exactly what it's like for me playing with new people.



I hadn't thought of that, but it's a good point. With the current cards, all you could do without being spotted is lie about your hand. That's obstructionist but not really sabotage. Anything else would be obvious.

EDIT: Actually, my guess is the bio-terrorist is not secret. Maybe that player openly plays against the others. That obviously makes it a competitive game from the start, but I think it would be a better game too.

My son and I have played it numerous times. When we began beating the game much more often than losing, we decided to introduce some new factors.

We created a variety of capabilities for each role (including that of a bio-terrorist) and added a selection of different things to affect the behavior of infections, epidemics, and outbreaks. Then, I created a web page which includes random number generators to control it all. Each role can only be used once until they are all reset (which occurs automatically when all of the roles have been used or when there are insufficient roles remaining unused to fulfill a requested number of players).

Additionally, there can only be one player of each type of role - there will not be two medics or two bio-terrorists, etc. However, that may be changed by the universal abilities (see below).

To use the page, indicate how many players there are by simply entering a 0 (to reset all the roles) or any value 1-6. The roles (and explanations of each player's new capabilities) are chosen and displayed.

Additionally, there may be "universal" abilities - which are shared by all players with the exception of the bio-terrorists. This is also controlled by a random number generator.

Finally, a change to epidemic/disease/outbreak behavior may be displayed,

This all takes place in approximately .1 second per call. The more people using it, the slower it'll go - but it should be fairly quick regardless.

If anyone wants to test it out, feel free. You can reach it at: https://verybusyserver.com/itw/pandemic.asp

Note: You may get a warning that the security certificate wasn't issued by a "trusted authority", but since you won't be buying anything, typing any personal information, etc.; you can ignore it.