Pandemic - Board Game Analysis 2

This week me and my group played another board game and here is the analysis of that game.

The game we chose was Pandemic. It’s played by 2-4 players. The goal of the game is to fight diseases and find cures for them. When all cures are found you win the game. This is done together with the other players where you help each other fighting outbreaks around the world. You play on earth and can move around to different cities in the world. The cities in the world are colored in four different colors. Each color also has a disease with that same color. Before the game start some disease cubes are randomly placed on the board on locations on the infection cards that are drawn before start.

How it’s played

The characters

Each player randomly gets one type of character card describing your special abilities at the start of the game. Those are the scientist, medic, researcher, dispatcher and operational expert. You can see their special abilities in the pictures. So a player can’t choose the role he or she is most comfortable with. This makes the game fair in the way that all get the same chance to play a certain role.

One turn

It’s a turn based game and you have four actions per turn. You can choose to use your actions how you wish. You can move in different ways, fight disease in an area, build a research station, discover a cure or share your knowledge (share cards with other players). How you can play these actions depend on the cards you hold and also your special abilities.

After you have done your actions you draw two player cards which can contain three types of cards, a city card with a color connected to that city, a special event card that basically is a special power card that can be used one time and the epidemic card.

If there are no player cards left in the pile the game is lost.

Then you draw a number of infection cards (depending on the infection rate) The cards show a city and a color and you place one new disease of that color in that city for each card.

If there not enough cubes left to place on the board the players lose the game.

 

City card

The city card has a color and a city name of it. By using this card a player can fly to that location using an action point or the card can be saved for creating a cure for the disease of cards color later on. You can also give these cards to other players. 

Special event card

The special event card can be used any time even if it isn’t your turn and they are all different. With one you can create a research station anywhere in the world, another let you fly a player to any city in the world and so on. 

Epidemic card

If you get the epidemic card some special things happen. First the infection rate is moved one step which might result in the players having to draw more infection cards every round. You then draw a card from the bottom of the infection card pile and place three disease cubes in that city and you then reshuffle all the played infection cards and place them on top of the infection card pile. This will make it so the played infection cards will soon be played again resulting in disease cubes popping up in same cities once more.  This together will easily lead to outbreaks. 

Outbreaks

Outbreaks occur when a disease cube needs to be added to a city and the total amount of cubes in that city exceeds three. Then the disease spread to all adjacent cities with one cube in each of those cities. If one of those cities also exceeds three you get a chain reaction of outbreaks. That’s bad and can make you lose the game quickly because if you get more than seven outbreaks totally in a play through everyone loses the game.

Cures

You can create a cure if you got five cards of the same color and you are in a city with a research station. (The scientist only needs four cards) That disease can after it's been cured be removed by the medic without using action points. When all cubes of that color is removed from the map that disease will never be able to come back and is cured forever.

To win the game you have to create the cure for all four diseases. All disease cubes don't have to be removed though.

The Core system

The core system of this game is moving around the board and removing disease cubes. New disease cubes are placed on the board depending on the epidemic cards and the infection cards. Your job is to treat the infected areas as soon as possible to prevent outbreaks at the same time you need to find a way to create a cure for that disease.

To find a cure you need to constantly have a dialog and work together with the other players. You need to share cards of the right color by being in the same location or maybe build a research station close to a scientist so he can create a cure there. And as a dispatcher you can move around other players so they can meet up in the right place and so on. All the actions a player can do in a turn is shown on the pictures below.

The Good

The balance of the game is amazing. It’s really nerve wrecking. We played a bunch of times and we only won one time but we almost won all other times. Most of the times we were basically only one turn from winning the game. We all found the game entertaining and well balanced. If the game would have been too easy I believe we would only play once or twice and then get tired of it but because it’s so difficult it makes you want to play again and again. You want to beat the game.

When we all learned how to combine our strengths the game got easier and alot more options and strategies were available to us. 

The Bad

This is a tough one. I like the game as it is. I think that the game is very well balanced and I like the core mechanics and how the players need to interact with each other. If I need to think of something that is bad I would say that the player cards are a bit boring. There is not much that happens when you take two player cards except for the epidemic card. I think as an improvement to the game they could add some spice by adding some more random events and story to the player cards or maybe just some more special event cards.  

Interesting system

For me the most interesting system is the randomness of the player characters and the ability to find a cure together. The different attributes of the characters and the way the players constantly need to keep talking strategies to each other to be able to find a cure in time makes this game really interesting. You also need to constantly adapt to the situation. Do I choose to remove some disease in the city where I am or do I help my fellow player the scientist by meeting up with him and sharing knowledge so he can find a cure so the medic in his turn can cure an area from disease. The game is a nice social gaming experience. The cooperative game play is really a breath of fresh air compared to most other games out there where you compete to win against the other players.

To be able to beat this game you need to really learn how to use the strengths of your characters and work together and I believe this is what makes this game so interesting. After playing a few times we saw solutions to certain problems in other ways then just individually moving to a place and removing the disease in that city. The dispatcher for example is really powerful when you learn how to use him in the correct way. He can move other players around the world so they can meet and share cards and so they come up with a cure just in time before the game ends.

Target Group

On the box it says 10 years and up and I believe that’s quite fitting. For young players this can be an educational experience and also at this age I believe the children can start to understand the cooperative parts of the game. I believe that this game aim for a broad group of players at all ages. This is not the game for the competitive person but more so for people who are more of a socializer that likes helping others instead of always winning.

Summary

The game is quite easy to learn and setup. You learn to play it instantly but it takes time to master. It’s when you realize that the more you work together the better the results will be and the higher the chances are for you all to win. Adding so the characters can’t be chosen but are drawn to give some randomness makes you rethink your role in the team. Some players who might have played one role know how to play that good. When they are given another role they then need to rethink when playing. This adds replayability to the game, this and the difficulty level. When you win the game you can increase the difficulty by adding more epidemic cards into the player card pile. This game is nerve wrecking and you feel you are about to win when you suddenly get a chain reaction of outbreaks just messing up your plan and making you all lose the game just before you were about to win. A game takes about 45 minutes to play and I would recomend this game to people who want to try something different.