Pandemic Board Game (Base Game) | Family Board Game | Board Game for Adults and Family | Cooperative Board Game | Ages 8+ | 2 to 4 players | Average Playtime 45 minutes | Made by Z-Man Games

This is a game that requires you to plan and think ahead, much like a game of chess. Its also co-operative, so instead of working against each other, each player must work together toward a main goal of curing each disease. Each game is new and exciting with all the different Hero cards which have different skills to help you out during your turns. Im not entirely sure if younger kids (under 12) might be able to fully understand and appreciate this game because there really is a lot of strategy involved. But if youre playing to teach those skills, this would be the perfect game to use.

We love this game. Its quite easy to learn and the cooperative play is extremely engaging since everyone is working together to beat the pandemic. A great family game and uber-gamer game.

Fun for the whole family. The collaborative gameplay is great for overly-competitive plays... We win or lose as a single team! Good replayability, with random role cards forcing us to adjust strategy, and using additional epidemic cards to increase difficultly.

I love this game and have gotten several of the expansions for it. It’s different every time you play and you can make it as easy or challenging as you like. I love that you play as a team and not against everyone else.

I loved it. I played it with 2 people that are admittedly not gamers. They love it. the learning curve is low, but the difficulty is steep. This was first co-op game that I had ever played. It took a little getting used to the fact that I wasnt playing against other people, but rather the game itself. And the game is a mean little monster. But even if you lose, there is a sense of camaraderie, as it is a shared loss. And the fun when you win and everyone shares in that victory, makes the game worth it. There are cons to the game, like even after curing all the viruses, losing because there arent enough cards in the deck to give you the few extra turns to clear out the outbreaks. The other cons are more player cons that game cons. If you get a person that is a micro manager, they can boss the other players around for the good of the group. Age is a factor. I wouldnt recommend it for under 12. Not that it isnt fun, but the attention span wanes and the strategy aspect can be difficult

Pandemic is a rare board game in that (1) it is cooperative and (2) you can play with as few as two players. The cooperative aspect of the game is a great way to break up the monotony of some of the race to the finish/get the high score aspects of most other board games. Also, if your household is plagued with an overly competitive person who tends to ruin game night, Pandemic is a great game to encourage teamwork rather than an extended effort to beat your opponents into the ground (Risk and Monopoly are the two main culprits, in my mind). All players work together to cure four diseases that are constantly spreading across the globe. The game board is a map of the world, diseases are represented as plastic cubes of different colors, and each player is assigned a character. Each character has special abilities and many of the abilities complement each other. There are several ways to lose the game, but only one way to win. On a given players turn, the player will move around the map, treat disease in different cities, build research centers (where diseases can be cured), and cure disease. The game, especially on higher difficulties, places players on the defensive rather than offensive. By that I mean that most of the game is spent containing the spread of the diseases rather than curing the diseases. I personally love the defensive aspect, as the team is always in jeopardy of losing, but some people I have played with felt the game was too much of a chore. The game shines when you are playing with three or four players, in my opinion. You are never sitting around waiting for your turn, because on every turn the team debates about what the best moves are, what special abilities can be used to achieve the goal efficiently, and what problem areas need to be dealt with. Two players generally works very well, but if one of the players has a much higher skill level, the game turns into a solo affair where the less skilled player just follows instructions from the more skilled player. The game is not terribly complex, though if you are planning on playing with a child, I would say that a 10 year old could pick up on it. A more simplistic game with very similar rules is Forbidden Island, if you are looking for a cooperative board game but think Pandemic might be a tad too advanced. Other reviews have mentioned the misprint on some of the boards. Mine did come with a misprint and I contacted Z Man Games via email for a replacement. It has been several days and I have not received a response. I will update this review once I follow up on my email. However, I could easily solve the problem by drawing in the missing connection, so even if customer service support turns out to be lacking, it is hardly a deal breaker for me. If you are on the fence about whether or not to get this game, I find that watching the game in action is a much better way of deciding whether or not you want it than reading reviews. I would suggest checking out the web series Tabletop, which did an entire episode on this game. UPDATE: Z Man Games sent me a replacement board about three and a half weeks after my initial email. Apparently, they arent responding to emails, but they are replacing the boards. Just keep this in mind when you read other reviews bashing the customer service. It exists, and the response time is decent, though not great.

This game is very addicting. Our family has not beat it. It the game versus the players. You are playing together to beat the infections in each city.

I have played so many co-op like games, from zombicide, and mysterium, and dead of winter, and I think this is probably my favorite one. The set up is easy once you play it multiple times, although I do have trouble remembering how to play if I dont play it in say 2 months. However, it is pretty easy to rejog my memory and the game is all easy to play again. There is so much tension every time I play. I mean, you are playing to save the world! Every move counts and each game is completely different. I love how there are so many roles to recycle through that even after playing this game 50 times, it still feels fresh because there is so much different strategy you can play like just because a different role is in the game or not.

We play games as a family once a week, this game has been added to our rotation and we love it. It is a co-operative game, meaning either everyone wins or no one wins. There are several ways to lose and you really have to talk and work as a team to plan your game or you will lose. Even when we lose everyone has a great time. This game has some great dynamics that keep it fresh and entertaining every time you play it. The only bad thing i could say about this game is it appears they have changed the playing cubes from wood (in earlier editions) to plastic, while i can understand the need to keep costs down, it did disappoint me some not knowing in advance.

Hmmm, I’m conflicted because this game is such a cool idea and I do like it, but it is very confusing at first! The instructions are a bit confusing and we had to reread them several times. It was a little less exciting when we first got going because it took like 45 minutes to figure everything out. I think that once you know how to play it can be a lot of fun, but for a fun game night with friends I don’t know if we’d break this out simply because it would take too long to explain....