Pandemic Board Game Review

The International award winning Pandemic game is a co-operative game of strategy and team building to stop the four deadly viruses from spreading all over the world! I find that this game is very unique and fun as you are not working alone to fight against the virus. In fact, everyone works as a team of disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.

In this game, it comes with 7 role cards, 7 playing pieces, 59 player cards, 4 reference cards, 48 infection cards, 96 disease cubes, 4 cure markers, 6 research stations, 1 infection rate marker, 1 outbreaks marker, game board and instructions. It is suitable for eight and above and for 2 to 4 players.

For the first initial play, it took us at least 30 minutes to understand the instructions! There are quite a lot of steps to set up and follow through. We did have the reference cards to refer back but we still had to keep referring back to the instructions.

To set up this game, it requires plenty of space as there are quite a lot of loose cubes and other items to place around the game board. There are seven roles to randomly choose from: Contingency Planner, Operations Expert, Dispatcher, Quarantine Specialist, Medic, Researcher and Scientist. Each player needs to learn their specialists’ strengths to gain the advantage.

The game board depicts several major population centres on Earth. On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. A deck of cards provides the players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout this deck are Epidemic! cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases’ activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the “normal” spread of the infections.

Taking a unique role within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists’ strengths in order to conquer the diseases. For example, without the usual requirement of the city card, the Operations Expert can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases and which allow for greater mobility between cities; the Scientist needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five—but the diseases are spreading quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!

Watch this Z-Man tutorial on Pandemic for a better understanding of the game: https://youtu.be/JeJQWrocQnY

We all enjoyed playing the game except for Ms C. She currently finds it too difficult to understand but nevertheless she is only eight and it is not her type of game. We will definitely play it again and again. I love that this game is not an individual game and working together enables us to be able to problem solve and strategize together. It is available to buy at £36.99 from Esdevium store finder or Amazon. For more information about this game, please visit https://zmangames.com/en/products/pandemic/

Read our Blogger Board Game Club’s review here: Dobble & Splendor here!

Disclosure: We received the sample for the purposes of writing this review, however all thoughts and opinions remain our own. We have included an Amazon affiliate link to the product. If you click on this and buy, we may earn a small commission. We are members of Blogger Board Game Club.