Pandemic Board Game (Base Game) - A Cooperative Battle to Save Humanity, Strategy Game for Kids and Adults, Ages 8+, 2-4 Players, 45 Minute Playtime, Made by Z-Man Games

The media could not be loaded. If anyone has read my reviews and/or answers on questions you will see that in the past year my family has gotten really into the Ticket To Ride (TTR) games. Well, while purchasing one of my latest TTR expansions I stumbled upon the Pandemic games; which are similar to the TTR ones in that you start with a base game, get the foundation for rules and game play and then you start moving on to expansions with additional features. I purchased Pandemic and with Amazon Prime it was delivered in less than 24 hours, no kidding! As is my usual custom I read the instruction manual and then because I am a visual learner I went to You Tube to watch some videos. ZManGamesOfficial does a 9.5 minute brief tutorial. WatchItPlayed does a wonderful job walking you through the game prep for a 2-player game including where all pieces, cards, etc. go. This was very helpful as there are specific instructions on how to shuffle and stack the Player Cards. My niece and I had this video up while setting up the first game. Finally, I watched Geek & Sundry do their TableTop version of the game where you actually get to see the players play. They have an abbreviated video and then a 1.5 hour extended game play. So, these are just tips that helped us get an understanding of the game play and we had a blast!Pandemic allows you to travel from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta and you travel throughout the world trying to cure and eradicate 4 diseases. The instructions make it sound so easy but oh boy; it is not. Game play can be learned in about 15-30 minutes. The difficult part and it is not the actual game-play; is trying to come up with enough strategies fast enough to cure and eradicate the diseases before you and your team die! Yes, team...unlike TTR this is not a game 1 player wins. It's a collaborative game in which all players work together...you discuss how you can unite forces, share your special roles, your cards, etc. But be careful of an alpha player who may start bossing people around, telling them what to do and takes charge of the game. If you get an alpha player just let them have the game board, pawns, etc. and tell them to play the game by them self but as if they were many players. In the end if it's your turn you can listen to others, even the alpha player, but what you do is totally up to you. If you don't have a good strategy everyone loses...my niece and I call it dying because we have succumbed to the disease.So, why is it a race against the clock? Well, no matter how well your strategy, your team can "die" IF you: Have 8 outbreaks before curing/eradicating all 4 diseases, you run out of Disease Cubes or Player Cards. Note: You don't have to eradicate all 4 diseases to win; you just have to cure all 4. First game we cured all 4 diseases and eradicated the yellow ("Crazy Banana Disease") but we got 8 outbreaks...we saved the world! 2nd game; yes, we played another because we were feeling lucky! We cured all 4 diseases, didn't eradicate any and once again we saved the world. We named our diseases the Black Zombie Plague, Purple People Eater (Blue cubes), Angry Bird Virus (red) and of course the Crazy Banana Disease (yellow) because my niece named it while infecting Miami.During your turn you can play up to 4 actions, draw 2 Player Cards but you cannot be holding more than 7 at any given time and then you MUST infect cities! The Infection Rate starts at 2 cities per player, per turn. But every time a player draws an Epidemic Card they have to move the Infection Rate marker and it slowly increases the Infection Rate from 2 cities up to 4 cities. The Epidemic card also requires you to draw 1 city from the bottom of the Infection cards and you must infect that city with 3 disease cubes; 1 more cube of the same color and you have an outbreak, oh my! Finally, the Epidemic Card requires you to "intensify" the Infection Cards. That means you must shuffle all the Infection Cards (cities) that have been played since the last epidemic, including the city card you just drew from the Infection Card pile and then put them back on top of the Infection Card pile so they now go back into play. See the intensity? With just my niece and me playing we didn't have as many cards to reshuffle so we kept infecting the same cities; which in essence was then producing outbreaks faster. I "think" you may have a longer game play with more people because then the other players will also be contributing cards.An outbreak occurs if/when a city accumulates 4 of the same color disease cubes. When this happens you must put a disease cube of that same color in every city that is directly attached to the city that the outbreak occurred in, thus, the epidemic. Note: It's possible that you have infected a city with more than 1 disease so IF you have 4 or more disease cubes but they are different colors you do NOT have an outbreak. The outbreak is only when you get 4 of the same color in the same city but the 4th cube (same color) will not be placed on the city. So watch those disease cubes and treat and cure so you can prevent the outbreaks.Now when you play up to 4 actions during each turn you have an option to treat a disease. You treat by removing 1 or more disease cubes from the city you are in (each cube being an action) that you have used your actions and/or role to get to. I was the Medic during first game and one of my roles allowed me to remove ALL disease cubes from the city I was in or traveled to! The Dispatcher can move players from city to city with their permission so once again...If you have a Dispatcher in the same game with a Medic you can move the Medic to the city that needs to be treated and get rid of all the disease cubes. IF the disease has been cured (see above pic...the disease markers are solid colors and moved above the disease logos) then you get to remove ALL the disease cubes in that city EVEN IF you aren't the Medic. To eradicate the disease you must remove ALL disease cubes of the same color from every city on the board. When you have eradicated the disease you flip the disease marker over to reveal the little log for eradicated. Note: Cities can still be infected if the disease has been cured but NOT if it has been eradicated.Back to the outbreaks. There's also an outbreak chart with marker and each time an outbreak occurs you have to move the marker. If you have 8 outbreaks the game is over and there is no winner because everyone has died. You also have Research Stations and these are nice because there is one action that allows you to shuttle from station to station and that can get you closer to an infested area to have a chance to treat, cure and/or eradicate several or all cities. There are also Role Cards and pawns to match the color of your role. Each role has special duties that only that player can perform (see above with Medic and Dispatcher). You don't get to choose your color/role. Pandemic is for 2-4 players and there are 6 Role Cards so you won't have all 6 roles in game play at the same time. There is another extension that adds a 5th player.I know there is a lot more that can be said and I or someone else can try to answer your questions. I just played for the first time last night (4/13/19) and while playing the 2nd game I came to Amazon and we read descriptions for some the expansions. I immediately ordered Pandemic: The Cure--Experimental Meds and then about 2 hours later I ordered Pandemic: State Of Emergency (this introduces diseases/infections from animals). So as you can see this is how pleased I was with Pandemic and yes, we are still playing TTR...I will be posting some more reviews on those as well because I currently have 9 versions.I think I got infected with a board game virus but hey, what can I say; my family/friends still love games the old-fashioned way...totally unplugged, board games and card games around the table. On a side note I must share what happened during our game. My daddy called and my sister held the phone out so he could hear my niece and me playing. We had one part of the map covered and ready to explode with black Disease Cubes. My niece was trying to tell me how I could (as the Medic) take care of all the blacks. She said, "Auntie, if you just get rid of all the blacks we won't die! Can you just take care of all the blacks over there?" and she pointed to the area that was well infected AND we were trying to treat/cure some the disease so that we could remove some the black Disease Cubes off the board and continue game play. Later I dropped a Dorito on the map and I told my sister, "Shay-Bo, I think I just killed everyone in Moscow because a large UFO has landed on them." We are a Christian family that doesn't drink, smoke, etc. We just like to have good clean fun but I told my family if anyone was a fly on the wall during our game play they would have been questioning our integrity. We have already planned our next family game day for Good Friday and yes, it will be good!!

Okay, to start out, I love love LOVE Pandemic! I admit it, I'm a bit competitive. I hate losing games. I'm generally fine with competitive games where the best strategist (or luckiest) wins, but I really dislike games (like Settlers of Catan) where some players can gang up on others. You pretty much don't have a chance when every other player is specifically playing against YOU. Pandemic is fantastic because you cooperative with the other players and you all win or lose together. I just absolutely love sitting at the table talking about all our options and strategizing together.My son introduced me to Pandemic several months ago, and I was hooked. We've spent several afternoons/evenings playing again--and again--and again. On many occasions when I am home alone, I play all by myself (playing two roles), and we've also played four players on several occasions.With two players and four epidemics, we win every time. With five epidemics, we win about 70% of the time. We've tried six epidemics a couple times, but have not been able to beat that game yet. Still trying! Ugh! As you increase the number of players, the game gets more difficult. With four players we've only played with four epidemics, and we win probably a little over half the time. I honestly think it would be impossible with four players and six epidemics, but someone has probably proven me wrong.We've even discovered another way to lose the game, which is not listed in the rule book! It says you can lose by having too many outbreaks, running out of disease cubes, or running out of player cards. We've lost in all those lovely ways. However, a couple of times, we've had only a few outbreaks, had plenty of cubes of each color left, and plenty of player cards. Three diseases cured, with only one to go. One of those times, we'd even gotten through all the epidemics, so there were none left in the infection deck! We've got it made, right? Uh, no. Turns out we discarded too many of the same color city cards, and there were only four left total, including in our hands and in the player deck. Neither of us was the Scientist, so that was an automatic loss. This is a danger when you get dealt a nice hand at the beginning, say two or even three of the same color. You decide to collect those, so when you discard, you are discarding the other colors. If you happen to keep drawing you "discard" color and it takes too long to collect the color(s) you want, you've now discarded too many of the other color and you don't have enough left at the end to cure the disease. Beware.We have also managed to lose the game on the very first turn. We were very unlucky drawing the infection cards when setting up the game: three on Karachi and Delhi, and two on Kolkata. Our first player did not have any way to get to that location to do even a little treating, and the first card drawn from the player deck was an epidemic. After resolving the epidemic, the first card drawn was Delhi, which caused a double outbreak (Delhi/Karachi) and put the third cube on Kolkata. The second card drawn was Kolkata, which was a triple outbreak (Kolkata/Delhi/Karachi) and lost us the game as there weren't enough disease cubes. Yep, lost on the very first player card drawn and there was not a single thing we could do about it.One slight change we sometimes make in the game is to draw 10 cards at the beginning instead of 9. The first nine infect the cities, and the tenth is where we place our player pawns and the first research station. It adds a level of difficulty to the game to not always start in Atlanta. We were noticing before that we always seemed to get in trouble with black and red, and we believe it was because all our players started so close to blue and yellow so those cities were easy to get to and treat. Now that we can start anywhere on the board, blue and yellow have become equal opportunity killers.There are a few things it is easy to get wrong. When the infection rate moves up, it's easy to forget to start drawing three cards (or four) since you're so accustomed to the lower number. It's also easy to forget to discard, not noticing that you have more than 7 cards in your hand. One scenario we've encountered a few times involves having 8 cards for literally a second. You meet another player on top of a research station, and share knowledge by pulling that city card from her. You now have 8 cards in your hand, but 5 of one color. Your very next action is going to be curing a disease, which will leave you with only 3 cards. But, before you cure that disease, you have 8 cards, so we think you have to discard one even though literally on your next action you will be discarding 5 cards. This is a little frustrating, but the rules specifically say that if you EVER (my emphasis) have more than 7 cards in your hand, you must discard (or play an event card).We were also a little confused by the role of the Researcher the first time we played. To be clear, when the Researcher shares knowledge, she and the other player must be on the same city, and the card can only go FROM the Researcher TO the other player (on either player's turn, as an action). She cannot take a card from the other player (and they cannot give one to her), unless it matches the city they are sitting on.It is also extremely easy to forget to infect cities after resolving an epidemic. You've spent a bunch of time resolving, then strategizing based on where the board stands now, and you completely forget that you still have to infect before going to the next player.Lastly, you are not supposed to choose your roles. We played with one person who had played before, and he said they always choose which roles they want. I suppose you can play that way if you want, but the game would be far less interesting because people would probably tend to choose the same roles every time. The instructions say to shuffle the role cards and deal them to each player -- that means they're supposed to be random. It's far more interesting and challenging when the roles change every time. A good part of the strategy is figuring out how to maximize the advantages that each role gives you in any given game.Pandemic is basically figuring out exactly how much effort you have to spend in each game sharing knowledge in order to cure diseases versus preventing outbreaks, all while maximizing the strategic use of whatever role you are playing. Spend too much time on one, and the other will get you. Sometimes you just have to say "oh well" and let an outbreak happen, even when you could have prevented it. It may just be more important to get to that one city in order to share knowledge than to get to the city where the outbreak is about to happen in order to prevent it. However we do try hard to prevent double outbreaks because things can get very bad very quickly when that happens.Okay I've rambled enough. If you're on the edge, buy this game! It's awesome. Every game is different and it never gets boring. It is equally fun with two or more players, although the more players, the more challenging it is. You can control the difficulty level by player with fewer or more epidemic cards. A+