Pandemic Board Game

I love Pandemic. I originally picked it up because I got Pandemic Legacy for a very, very good price, and in the directions they tell you to play a few games of the original first to get your feet wet, so I bought it. This is probably one of my favorite games. I play anywhere from 1 to 4 players, while playing alone I'll play 2 rolls.Be warned, you won't win. Out of 17 games, I have a 29% win ratio on it. The game normally wins, but that is part of the fun of the game, when you win as a team it feels more of a victory.This is a co-op game, all players are on the same team and work together, and because of that, you can get the Alpha-Gamer in the group that tells you how things should be done, so just be aware of that. I've never had that occur, we all gives our onions and if needed vote.It is highly recommended that you also pick up thePandemic on The Brink Expansion Board Game (2nd Edition)with this copy. It adds nice storage, better rolls, smaller tokens, along with more ways to play. Even if you don't play the expansion what it does add to the main game is nice.

We love this game even if we aren't very good at it we've actually yet to beat it but every time it's the table we have a great time and I'd highly recommend it to anybody looking for a great co-op game

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...

Took a few games to get all the rules. Ended up youtubing a tutorial. After learning, it's a great way to bond with your spouse! Love that you have to work as a team.

A very challenging game with so many ways to lose the game but only one way to win it.It's great for team work and communication and even then it's a hard task to win the game occasionally.It's definitely an advantage to have the role of the medic with you - which you can choose. However every time we play the game we shuffle the role cards for each player and you then have a choice of two cards and you might end up not having the medic in the game.It's definitely one of the best games I have bought recently. Looking forward to try one of the expansion games of this game.