 |
"Pandemic"
was a game that held very little appeal for me from reading the back of the box, until I got it home and gave it a whirl. Like most people, the idea of board games means competition - I win so that you lose - and although I have played many video games where players cooperate to beat the computer, I had never heard of such a concept being applied to a board game. And how could playing against a board be any fun?"Pandemic" involves the spread of four diseases (represented by different-colored cubes) into major cities across the globe. Players take on the roles of specialists from the CDC in Atlanta, each with their own special ability, to travel the world curing diseases in an attempt to come up with a cure for the four diseases before a catastrophic outbreak occurs.
The goal is simple- get five of the same-colored cards and trade them in at a research station such as Atlanta to cure that disease. Cure all four diseases and the game is won. On each player's turn, players can charter flights across the map to treat diseases in cities that are teetering on the brink of an outbreak, meet up with other players in cities to give or receive cards, build research stations, or play special event cards. Information about what cards players are holding can and should be shared with the other players and players really need to use teamwork and cooperation to reduce the spread of disease as quickly as possible while trying to amass enough cards to cure a disease. It's also helpful once a disease has been cured, to eradicate it - a complicated step - in order to contain it an stop it completely from spreading about the board.
The challenge comes from how quickly the spread of disease begins to overtake the board. At the end of each player's turn, cards are drawn from the "Infection Deck" that reveals which cities diseases have occurred. Also, players run the risk of drawing an "Epidemic" card from their pile which causes all of the Infection cards to be shuffled and placed back on top of the deck, guaranteeing another infection in the city and increasing the chance of an outbreak to adjacent cities which occurs when a city is infected with more than three of the same-color infection cubes. Cities can outbreak to other cities, thus causing chain reactions that can escalate how quickly the game can overtake, and defeat, the players.
The recommended Age of 10+ is appropriate, though the game mechanics are relatively simple, planning out the strategy for how to come up with a cure quickly and avoid the infections overtaking the board takes some savvy - even for adults. Thankfully, the creator of Pandemic recently released an even more family-friendly game that uses the same mechanics - Forbidden Island
is not only cheaper, but easier for younger kids to play and enjoy."Pandemic" is a fantastic game that scales well with two to four players. In fact, the more people playing the game, the more difficult it becomes as each player starts with less cards in their hand and there are greater opportunities for diseases to spread. Additionally, the game has three difficulty settings, so if the "Beginner" setting is too easy for your game group to beat, you can always throw in another Epidemic card to spice it up.
Thankfully too, the game is expanded with the "On the Brink" expansion set that incorporates a whole lot of new play mechanics, character roles, and even the ability for one player to play as a Bio-terrorist, actually causing the chaos that the other players have to try and stop.
What I thought would be a boring play mechanic turned out to be one of the most intense games I have ever had the pleasure of playing. Each time a card was overturned, more tension built as I was sure the game would beat us.
Often it did... But we kept coming back for more.
Highly, highly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment