Pandemic

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+

I got this game to give my wife and I something to play cooperatively rather than competitively. Everyone plays on the same side - you either all win or all lose. To that end, it's awesomely different.Quality:My wife was skeptical based on the product images she saw. When it arrived, however, we were blown away by the quality. The colors are fantastic and the set pieces are well machined. The disease cubes look so good they almost look like shiny candies on your game board. The board is solid. The cards are not flimsy. The game box provides sufficient protection and is thick enough to protect everything inside. Fantastic.Play:There is a lot of variety to this game. The inclusion of multiple roles, which you assign at random, creates a variety of play styles and strategy.The game also supports three difficulty modes (represented by the quantity of certain cards you mix into the deck). Once you get the hang of the rules, it's fairly easy on the lowest difficulty level (until you get the hang of all the ways you can lose, however, you'll find that you'll only win about 75% of the time). Ratcheting up the difficulty satisfyingly makes the game more challenging. It's not a given that you'll win, which makes it more appealing for replayability.Maxing out the number of players also makes the game more difficult, because you have less rounds by which to complete your objectives and win the game.Fun:I've played this game with family and friends, and everyone immediately wants to play another round. That's partly because it really takes playing a round to get the hang of the rules, but mostly because it is really different from the normal game. The cooperative aspect allows for a lot of group discussion, strategy, what-if scenarios, and so on. As soon as you've seen it in action - win or lose - you'll want to play again just to see what happens if different decisions are made or different roles are selected.Long-term, I'm still addicted to this game. My wife no longer is, and only feels like playing it every once in a while. It's still a welcome break from Settlers of Catan, which has been the game that I typically measure of my games against.Ease of play:There are a lot of rules to this game, which feels kind of overwhelming when you first play it. You absolutely do have to play at least a round to get the hang of the rules. Once you do, however, they don't feel all that bad at all. I've actually played this game successfully with younger children (since it is cooperative, you can do most of the thinking for them, yet still make them feel like they contributed and made decisions). At least one of my friends has purchase the game for himself and his kids after playing with me.Summary:Overall, this game is different. The cooperative element alone is worth the price of admission. Stay for the fun and the challenge. And the build quality makes it feel like it will last a long time in your possession.

This game is an absolute blast. And it is reasonably easy to learn (now this is not Sorry or Chutes and Ladders, but for someone that plays role-playing games like D&D, Munchkin, Pathfinder, etc., this is fairly easy), and yet definitely takes some time to master strategy which leads to good replay value. It is a great game for a 10 year old. She learned about geography and maybe a bit about disease, certainly good for problem-solving skills. We love that it is cooperative and we don't have to worry about hurt feelings (we can be a bit competitive with competitive games). The quality of the board, cards and pieces is high. There are a lot of small pieces (the disease cubes, about 7 x 7 x 7 mm) so be warned if you have a baby/toddler around (or a cat like ours that likes to jump on the board while we play), that this could be a definite choking/scattering/getting lost hazard. I would highly recommend this to anyone who thinks an intelligent, cooperative board game would be fun. And again, probably 10 years old plus and it is for 2-4 players. It does seem a bit harder with 2 than 4 players to be honest. Games take about 30-45 minutes and player number does not seem to affect that. You do lose or fail to save the world sometimes, but difficulty seems very appropriate after playing 5 or 6 times. You can adjust difficulty by putting in less epidemic cards (per rule book) or even tweakin rules a bit (allowing cards to be exchanged just by being in same city instead of same city and having card of the city) at first while you learn or with younger players. We tried this game with a 7 and 8 year old and, at least for those two, I do think this game was a bit too advanced.