Pandemic | Cheerful Ghost

I got this game for Christmas and I finally convinced some

I got this game for Christmas and I finally convinced some people to sit down and play with me. (Side note: It should really not be that hard to convince people to try something new!)

This game is awesome! We had so much fun even though it was our first time playing and we lost pretty bad lol.

The premise of the game is that four diseases have broken out in different parts of the world and the players work cooperatively to treat the diseases and eventually find the cures for them. On the players turn they have 4 actions they can spend either moving around the map or treating cities that have been infected. Your objective is to discover all four cures before one of the... Read All I got this game for Christmas and I finally convinced some people to sit down and play with me. (Side note: It should really not be that hard to convince people to try something new!)

This game is awesome! We had so much fun even though it was our first time playing and we lost pretty bad lol.

The premise of the game is that four diseases have broken out in different parts of the world and the players work cooperatively to treat the diseases and eventually find the cures for them. On the players turn they have 4 actions they can spend either moving around the map or treating cities that have been infected. Your objective is to discover all four cures before one of the various losing conditions are met. Each player is also randomly dealt a special "role" for the game, which grants them a special ability or trait. For example: you need 5 cards of the same color to discover a cure, but the Scientist only needs 4.

After a player has spent all their actions and drawn their player cards, they have to take on the role of the Infecter before the next players turn. First you draw a number of infection cards based on the current infection rate, which increases as the game goes on. Each card drawn adds one disease marker to that city. If a city already has 3 markers on it then an "Outbreak" occurs and that disease now spreads to all the surrounding cities. This is where things get crazy, because this can set off chain reactions with the surrounding cities if they also have three disease markers. This is how we lost our first game. :)

Hidden in the player cards are a certain number of Epidemic cards (you choose how many to put in there depending on how difficult you want the game to be). When one of these cards are pulled it increases the infection rate and also immediately places 3 disease markers on a city. You then have to shuffle the infect card discard pile and place them back on top of the deck.

It's game over if one of the following occurs: You need to place a disease markers but are out of that color, you have no more player cards in the deck, or if a total of 8 outbreaks have occurred.

Once a disease is cured, it becomes easier to remove markers from the board. If a disease is cured and you successfully remove all the markers of that color, the disease is eradicated and you no longer have to place any markers of that color on the board.

What originally got me interested in this game is the cooperative nature of the game. Either all players win or all players loose and it really does take a lot of coordination among the players to keep the various diseases in check while trying to find cures. All the different roles the players can be assigned work very well with each other and create a sort of synergy with the players if used right.

The games seems more complicated than it really is. No one in my group had ever played this before but we all picked it up pretty quick. All in all we had an awesome time playing this game. It's very intense and things spiral out of control very quick, but in a good way. :) I would highly recommend this to pretty much anyone who likes board games, but especially someone who wants a very different type of board game. I give it a big two thumbs up! d (^.^) b

Travis Admin wrote on 05/04/2012 at 12:54pm

I have only ever played the flash games based on this board game, where you try to infect the world. Madagascar is such a troll.

But this game sounds amazing! How many players does it require? That's always the hardest thing for me, finding enough people to play some of these amazing games. My wife and I usually settle on Trivial Pursuit, since you can do that easily with two.

jdodson Admin wrote on 05/04/2012 at 02:37pm

Heard great things about Pandemic for a while now. I think I'll pick it up in the future. I dig co-op board games. I've a few co-op dungeon crawlers now and they are wicked fun!

Timogorgon Member Post Author wrote on 05/04/2012 at 06:03pm

I've heard several people mention a flash game called Pandemic. Are they related or do they just share the same name? The game is for 2-4 players. However, there are 5 "role" cards for the players, so I don't see why you couldn't add a 5th player if you have the people. So far I've played two games and both times we had four people, (we won the second game but just barely!)

jdodson Admin wrote on 05/05/2012 at 04:32pm

http://www.gamingdelight.com/games/pandemic.php

Maybe its loosely based on the Board Game?

Travis Admin wrote on 05/06/2012 at 05:33pm

It is. It only takes the infection parts, not preventing them. You just try to take out the world with your virus/bacteria/parasite/whatever.

Madagascar is a bitch to infect. So much that a meme was created. http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shut-down-everything

jdodson Admin wrote on 05/06/2012 at 07:44pm

SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING! Funny.

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