Game Type: Cooperative
Players: 2-4
Pandemic is a game unlike most games. Instead of all the players competing against each other to win, instead all the players are struggling to beat the game itself, so you all win or you all lose. The game sets you as a team of individuals flying around the world trying to keep 4 different viruses in check as they attempt to break out in epidemics and infect the world. The goal is to find the cure of all 4 diseases before one of them spirals out of control or you run out of time.
The diseases are represented by cubes on the board (red, yellow, blue and black), and each time a city is infected you add 1 cube to it. If a city gets a infected after having 3 cubes placed on it, it will outbreak meaning that one cube of that colour will be placed on each city that is connected to it. Each turn you will get to perform 4 different actions. These can range from moving around the board, to building research stations, to treating a disease, to curing it, and trading cards to other players. After that you draw cards from the player deck which help you travel around and cure diseases, and then draw cards from the infection deck - which infects more cities.
The game truly comes into its own when Epidemic cards are drawn. When these come out of the player deck, you immediately draw a card from the bottom of the infection deck (each city is represented in the infection and player decks once) and infect it with 3 cubes. You then take the infection discard pile (i.e. pile of cities that has already been infected once), shuffle it and place it back on top of the infection deck. This means that whatever cities were infected, will be infected again and it adds a certain urgency to the game as you rush around trying to find cures to diseases while trying to prevent them from running rampant.
Each player has their own ability to help the team win, though. The Scientist can find cures with fewer cards, the Researcher can trade cards easier, while the Medic gets to remove all the cubes off of a city instead of just one. There are special cards in the Player deck as well which assist in curing diseases, moving players around, or even temporarily stopping the rate of infection and do not cost an action to play (which is extremely helpful given that there are only 4 actions per turn)
Pandemic is by no means an easy game, although the difficulty level can be changed to suit by altering the number of Epidemic cards in the deck, but many people find that even at times when they lose the game, they still have a ton of fun playing it. This, of course, makes it all the more satisfying when you win the game.
Dicetower Review
Tabletop Playthrough
Expansions
Pandemic has 2 expansions. On the Brink adds a lot of replayability to the game with a number of new roles and special cards. But it also adds 3 different ways to play it. You can add a 5th disease (purple) to the mix which behaves differently to the others; or you can play with one disease acting aggressively and mutating each time an Epidemic card is drawn; or you can play with one player as the Bioterrorist, seeking to stop the players as they cure diseases. In the Lab also adds new role cards and special cards but includes a new way to cure the diseases.
It should be mentioned that there are 2 versions of Pandemic and they are incompatible with each other. In the Lab is only compatible with the 2013 version of Pandemic (whose pictures I have provided). The 2013 version of Pandemic also includes some roles that make it a bit easier.
