I want to talk about one of my favorite board games.
It’s not my favorite because of any one thing I normally use to appraise my games, but because the combination really makes it stand out.
Pandemic from Z-Man Games
Pandemic is about a group of people trying to prevent a global pandemic from wiping out humanity.
Quick Primer
Pandemic is a generally abstract game in which the disease is represented by wooden cubes. At the end of each player’s turn, a deck of location cards is revealed one card at a time to reveal where the infections are spreading. Players take turns moving around the board curing cubes, collecting location cards, and trying to get together enough research to develop a vaccine for each of the four diseases.
The cooperative nature of Pandemic is awesome, making for a real bonding experience unlike some more famous games on the market. The difficulty can scale from easy to ‘legendary,’ allowing all skill levels to enjoy it. Due to the random nature of the game, with both roles and the infections themselves, the game is great for replaying.
In Pandemic, the rate that the infection spreads is determined by an Infection Rate, which starts at two. So at the beginning of the game, you only reveal two new infections per turn. In the player deck there are a number of Epidemic cards (From four to six, or eight with the expansion) that when they are drawn do some fairly significant things. The first is that they draw the bottom card from the infection deck and place three cubes on that city. Then, they shuffle the infection discard pile and place it on top of the deck. And then they increase the infection rate tracker.
This creates a rising tension. As the game goes on and you get closer to your goal, the game starts getting harder. The viruses spread faster, the board slowly gets congested, and the player cards start to run low. I’ve even see players panic and fall apart during a game, making the climax turn into a death spiral of bad choices.
Another mechanic I love is the roles. Each role has a special ability that only they get to use. This allows strategists to appreciate the game a bit more, but also adds to the overall ‘story’ of the game. For example, how a medic, researcher, and scientist deal with the board is quite different from a generalist, dispatcher, and operations expert. To a creative mind, a whole series of stories could be developed out of multiple games of Pandemic.
Sounds like an intense game. I like the idea of each role having special abilities. That definitely adds a whole other dimension to the game, huh?
The roles are definitely a big aspect of it, and something that exists in most cooperative games. The new Star Trek one each member of the bridge crew has various abilities, for example. A lighter weight game from the designer of Pandemic is Forbidden Island, which also has roles, but much simpler game play. I think I’ll write about it next week, actually.
I totally missed this. I have played this game, and enjoyed it, specifically for the coop nature. I am not terribly competitive, I just enjoy the game when I play, so it was fun to try one where the goal was to work together.
We were awful at it, but it was really fun.
I’ll be watching for your game posts – my brother owns a couple hundred games (without a box of monopoly or Life in sight) so I’d love to see which ones you pick in the future.
Pandemic is definitely high on my list, but I need to get the expansion for home before I’m happy playing it regularly again. Thanks for stopping by.
I just discovered the games category on your blog, and I’ve read all the reviews now. They’re my favorite part. I jotted down a couple of the games you reviewed. My husband has a birthday coming up and these are exactly the kind of thing he would love.
I’d love to hear more about Star Trek and Star Wars games.
As soon as I get some more time with Encounters (Or the next one coming out, Trek wargame) or once the Star Wars games come out, I will definitely talk about them more! (I also have a project that was originally inspired by Star Wars, it’ll see some news here soon.)