I am interested in hearing critique on the format, or if you felt the review was thin in certain areas. Thanks, and onto the review!
Pandemic: A Light Mechanics Review
As my first discussion of game design mechanics, I have chosen a game that I recently purchased called Pandemic, a board game designed by Matt Leacock.
Overview
First I would like to give an overview of how the game works before I dissect it further.
The goal of Pandemic is to work cooperatively with your team of 2-4 players to contain and then cure the world of four diseases before they spread out of control. This is the only win condition - to cure all four of the color-coded diseases before one of the losing conditions occurs. To cure the diseases, a player must collect a set of five Player Cards of the same color and then use them on their turn at a research center location on the board.
At the beginning of the game, each player draws a role card that tells them which of five special powers they can use throughout the game - for instance The Medic can more easily heal disease cubes off the board, and The Researcher can more easily give other players Player Cards from his own hand.
The players take turns moving around the board healing disease cubes before the disease gets out of control and triggers Outbreaks that cause even more disease to cascade into adjacent cities.
Complicating matters are the EPIDEMIC cards, and the Outbreak rules. The Epidemic cards control the difficulty curve of the game - for the "easy" game, four Epidemic cards are placed into the Player Cards deck (they have the same card back graphic as the player cards), one per quarter of the deck. On each player's turn they draw two new Player Cards, and if an Epidemic card is drawn three things happen: one city gets three disease cubes (the maximum allowable per city), the infection rate rises (number of cities hit with disease each turn), and most crucially - the Infection deck discard pile is reshuffled and placed back on top of the Infection Deck. This rule effectively ratchets up the intensity of the game each time an Epidemic card is drawn because the cities that have already been hit with disease will now be hit again, increasing the chance of Outbreaks. Effectively,
disease will be concentrated around 10-14 randomly chosen "hub" cities.
Outbreaks are triggered when a city that already has three disease cubes must take another disease cube. When this happens, each adjacent city connecting to the Outbreak city receives one disease cube. This can cause a domino effect of Outbreaks. Once 8 outbreaks occur, the players lose the game. Because of the Outbreak rule, players are constantly scrambling to keep the disease cubes under control.
Mechanics Discussion
The first thing I noticed when I got to play a few four player games of Pandemic was the amount of communication happening between all of the players. From the first turn players are chattering about the most effective way to combine their special Role skills. This is very important, because Pandemic is a very difficult game to beat, and becomes more difficult with more players. I suspect this is because there is a decrease in card-playing efficiency, as well as an increased need for coordination - trading cards also becomes a necessity, which throws a wrench in the works.
During play, one player said something to the effect of, "I need to go over to Paris to stop the zombies!" There was no mention in the rules of zombies, but it got me thinking of another game in which communication is paramount - Left 4 Dead. In the L4D versus mode especially, the Infected Team must work like a well-oiled machine, combining their special abilities at the right moment in order to take down the Survivors Team.
In Pandemic, the same is true. A lot of the excitement of the game comes from the mounting pressure of the out-breaking diseases. The players are tensely working together and constantly communicating. When a great combo play by several players comes to fruition and a disease is cured, there is a palpable sense of elation. It is this constant elasticity of emotion that keeps the players hooked into the game - each time it seems they are near defeat, the players always seem to beat back the tide of disease and make a fantastic comeback. The game scales well as it is played, with the Infection Rate mechanic automatically increasing the difficulty as the players progress, offsetting the fact that the players have cured some of the diseases by the late game. Because of this mechanic, the pressure and reward is always present up until the end of the game.
In closing I would say that Pandemic is an excellent cooperative game. Every group that I have played with grasped the mechanics quickly and easily, and have had fun playing their role in the group. The game also plays quickly - under one hour for a full game, while allowing a full cooperative experience - I'd like to see you play Arkham Horror that quickly! Because of the Infection Deck's random nature, no two games are the same, but only well played cooperative strategy by the players will lead to victory!
-andersh
Posted Wed May 27, 2009 12:04 am