Pandemic: Contagion Review

(2-5 Players; 30 minutes; Ages 13+;
zmangames.com; MSRP $29.99)

If one was to (as many have) make a list of the top 10-15 games that everyone should play, undoubtedly Matt Leacock's "Pandemic" would be on that list.

Though not the first of its kind, "Pandemic" ushered to the forefront the "cooperative" style of gameplay; with the players not competing against each other, but rather the game itself.  Players took on the role of a specialist at the Center for Disease Control tasked with eradicating four diseases that were spreading their way across the globe.  With each player's turn, the stakes became higher, the stress increased, and the time-bomb that was global disaster ticked away.  It was fun, it was challenging, and it was a wild success.

So much so that the "Pandemic" brand has spawned a card game in the form of "Pandemic: Contagion." In "Contagion," however there is no hope for humanity as players are the disease and "there is no cure" as the box proudly proclaims.

City Cards have three levels of scoring and a special effect.

In Contagion, players will take turns infecting cities with their specific colored disease by playing cards of the same color as the city, in order to place one of their infection cubes onto the city card.  Each city card has a certain number of population, denoted by a large number on the card; once the number of cubes from all players reaches this number, the city is considered destroyed.  Congratulations! You've just killed every living person in a major city and brought it to ruin, have some victory points! Points are awarded based on who has the most cubes of their color on a city when the city "pops," with only the top three players on the card scoring.  However the player who makes the city pop, gets a special effect that is listed on the city card, regardless how how many cubes he has on the card.

Scoring also occurs periodically as players turn over an "Event Deck" of cards which mark the number of rounds.  At the beginning of each round, a card from the Event Deck is revealed which changes the flow of that round - it may cause players to discard cards from their hand, remove cubes from the city cards, or allow players to pay a reduced cost to infect cities.  Additionally, "Death Toll" scoring may occur when an Event Card reveals a skull and crossbones - the player with the most amount of cubes on a city card will score points for that city.  So not only does control matter when a city is about to be destroyed, its incredibly important throughout the game in order to score massive points during Death Toll scoring.

WHO and Event Cards

Occasional rounds will begin with the drawing of World Health Organization (WHO) cards, which will
always affect players negatively somehow - either reducing the number of color cards that can be drawn or the number of cities that can be infected or some similar calamity for the diseases.  These negative effects (or positive effects for the surviving world, it's all perspective after all) can be prevented by building up your disease's resistance - a meter you manage on your player board which allows you to take hits and keep on spreading death.  The Resistance meter is one of three meters which you can choose to "mutate" on your turn in order to increase the number of cards drawn, infection cubes that can be played, or protect against the WHO cards.

Play ends at the conclusion of the last round or when only two cities are left in the world.  Points are tallied and the biggest, baddest disease is the winner.

"Contagion" takes a lot of its cues from another Area-Control card game called "Smash Up" which you can see my review of right here.  But whereas "Smash Up" had so many moving parts in it that play ground to a halt when figuring out whether a card "popped" and what it's effect was, "Contagion" feels streamlined and
smooth.  It is a very simple, very quick-playing area-control game that is easy to teach and moves seamlessly from round to round.  The choices are limited, but the constraint is enjoyable; do you draw more cards so you can infect more cities on your next turn? Do you build up your resistance to get in a stronger position than your opponents? Do you spread out your disease across many cards in the hope of controlling them all a little, or focus on one city with a big payoff? Moreover, do you convince your opponents to join you in that big city so that you can all share a little in its destruction or do they keep away so that your efforts never cause the city to pop? There are a lot of little nuanced strategies here in a small package.

(literally a small package - fitting everything back into the box can be a puzzle game in it of itself, especially if you have those cards sleeved.)

"Contagion" (not designed by Leacock) is never going to be as huge as the original "Pandemic," and likely it'll get eclipsed by the much-hyped and also recently released "Pandemic: The Cure," which is a dice version of the original "Pandemic" (and also designed by Leacock), but I consider it a sleeper-hit.  It honors its brand with being a clever game with simple rules and a great production, and well worth your time to pick it up and try it out with gamers and non-gamers alike.