My boyfriend and I are always on the lookout for good cooperative games. Especially when it gets to the point where he continously beats me, and then I don't want to play any games for a while.

Contents

1 8-Page Colour Rulebook
1 Folding single-side Gameboard
5 Role Cards
5 (wooden) Pawns (one colour for each role)
6 (wooden) Research Stations
96 (wooden) Disease Cubes (24 for each colour disease - black, blue, red, yellow)
6 Markers
1 Infection Rate Marker
1 Outbreaks Marker
4 Cure Markers with "Vial" and "Sunset" sides (one for each colour disease)
59 Player Cards
48 City Cards
6 Epidemic Cards
5 Special Event Cards
48 Infection Cards
4 Reference Cards

Recommended Players

Pandemic is a 2-4 player game. I have played it with 2, 3, and 4 players.

Setup

The number of players determines the number of cards each player is going to get. If you have 4 players, each player gets 2, if you have 2 players, each player receives 4.

There are 5 different role cards available to play (dispatcher, scientist, medic, researcher, and operations expert). How we decide which player is going to play what is to shuffle the cards, and have each player draw one card. Each card will have a corresponding pawn.

A research station, and all corresponding pawns are going to will be placed in Atlanta (home base).

The next step will be to infrect some cities. You will want to shuffle the infection cards, and draw the top 9 cards. The first 3 cities will get 3 cubes, the next 3 will receive 2, and the final 3 will receive 1 cube. You will place the matching cube color onto each city.

Depending on the level of difficulty you want, determines how many epidemic cards you put into the draw deck.

How to Play

There are 3 steps to each turn, and must be played in the following order.

1. Take 4 actions
2. Draw 2 cards
3. Take on the role of the Infector

Take 4 actions

There are quite a few different actions you are able to take in this section .You have the option of moving from city to city in the direct path for one action each. You can play a card from your hand, and go directly to that city. You can move between research stations already built.

Other actions you are able to do is to build a research station, discover a cure (5 of the same color, except the scientist is able to discover a cure with only 4), treat a disease, or share knowledge (pass cards to another player).

Draw 2 cards

The next step will be to draw 2 cards from the draw pile. Inside the deck of draw cards, you will find other city cards, special event cards, or even an epidemic card. You do have a hand limit of how many cards you can hold. As soon as you go above 7, you will have to discard down to 7. This is also true when receiving cards from other players.

You will want to try to avoid the epidemic cards, as it will produce a whole new step in the game.

Epidemic

There are 3 steps to an epidemic situation.

1. Increase the Infection rate counter 1 space

2. Infect - Draw the bottome card of the Infection Pile and add 3 cubes to the city pictured on the card, then place in the discard pile. If a city were to go over 3 cubes, you produce an outbreak.

Once an outbreak hits, you will move the outbreak counter 1 space down on the outbreak counter, and each city beside it will get an additional color of the cube. This will continue until no other cities get outbreaks.

3. Increase the intensity of infection - Take the discard pile and shuffle them, then place them on top of the remaing infection draw pile.

Take on the role of the Infector

The number of infection cards that get revealed depend on what the outbreak counter is currently at. If the counter is at 3, you will draw 3 cards, and place a cube on the corresponding cities. If an outbreak occurs, you will need to complete the outbreak action.

How to Win

If a cure is found for all diseases (it doesn't need to all be wiped out), the players win. If the outbreak counter reaches 8, or if we run out of drawable cards, the game wins.

The Good vs The Bad

Once the game gets a little easier, place another epidemic card to make the game a little harder.
Easy co-op game new gamers are easily able to pick up
not all roles are able to be used in the game

Survey Says



I always enjoy playing pandemic. It gets a little frustrating at times, especially when you set off many outbreaks with a single card, but it allows unity in the game, instead of trying to fight one another. When playing this game with new comers, they are always excited and want to play more.

This was the first game I played with my wife, and although she made me guide her a lot on the first game, she enjoyed it enough to try it again, this time with less direction. This is a great gateway game and coop means you don't have to be mad at anybody

As for the chain reactions, those are definately our FAVORITE part. Yeah, they're devastating, but sooooo darn cool!

-v

Nice review. My wife is much better at strategy in Pandemic than I am. I try to follow her lead, since my ideas seem to make the cubes multiply like, uh, the plague.