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

After playing more and more board games recently, such as Munchkin, Last Night on Earth, Betrayal at House on the Hill, I thought I would like to find even more games to play. I much prefer coop games rather than ones where I feel alone and have to take on the world. They are kinda fun, like when I win. But most of the time, I do not and everyone but the winner feels like poo. Anyway, this game is a good challenge for up to 4 people. Everyone must work together to stop the pandemics from taking over the world. We found it to be pretty straightforward with the rules. Everyone takes 4 actions, gets 2 cards, and then infect certain cities. We enjoyed playing and trying to solve it together. A few things with it though, we noticed that we would only go through 1/4 of the infection cities because epidemics would occur. This meant we would basically keep 1 person near those cities to heal them and send everyone else out to clean up a bit. Made it a little less exciting. Secondly, the game seems like it isnt very difficult if you get through the epidemic cards. You just need to have enough cities colors to cure each of the diseases. Epidemics are what cause a lot of outbreaks to occur, which can lead to losing the game. We never ran much risk of losing cubes, as of yet. Weve played about 3 games already. I think we may need to change some of the rules to make it even more challenging. Apparently, the 2nd editions sold on amazon as of 2/10 were still 1st print. This means, as mentioned in other reviews, that you will have a misprint in it. There should be a line between Sao Paulo & Lagos. The manufacturer seems more than happy to send a replacement to me. You can email them at [email protected] ***UPDATE*** I got the fixed board from the manufacturer. It looks proper. The customer service was very nice. However, it took 3-4 weeks to get it in the mail. A long time for the fixed board, but worth it.

I bought Pandemic on the premise that it was one of the higher rated co-op games and Ive never played it before. That being said the rules are incredibly easy to follow and it was slightly challenging but highly dependent on what characters you got and the order of the Pandemics. Finding a cure can range from being incredibly difficult to extremely easy. There really isnt a reason to eradicate a disease with the base set, just set up a route to get a cure as fast as humanly possible. Maybe my group is too smart for this game but I think people are giving this game too high a rating. In the hands of gaming experts, it was a nice change of pace but I wouldnt buy it if I had to do it over again. We will just stick with Agricola, MTG, Twilight Struggle and Revolution for our core 4. tl;dr Let someone else buy it.

Favorite game that we purchased for the holidays. As a 2-4 player game it was very fun for our family and with friends. Some of the role cards can be confusing, but the popularity of this game is so high that finding resolutions to the rules was super easy online. We are buying the expansion pack.

Pandemic is a truly cooperative game. The game really makes you work together in order to win. Each player is randomly dealt one of seven role cards at the beginning of the game. Each role has its own unique special abilities. Before playing, I didnt think I would like the role selection being random, but I really like it now. If in each game you have a different subset of roles in play, you have to keep thinking of new overall strategies (how you will use combinations of different roles to good effect). Your common enemy in the game is the four diseases, which are controlled randmoly by an Infection deck and 4-6 Epidemic cards scattered throughout your player deck. Your goal throughout the game is to travel around the map, treating the diseases and trying to get enough of the right cards (either by sharing cards with each other, or drawing the from a player deck) to cure the diseases. When you cure all four diseases (even if the diseases have not been treated everywhere) you win the game. The randomness of the disease mechanics keeps the game interesting every time. Because it is random, you might sometimes have a game with an impossibly difficult deck. That might bother some people, but I didnt mind too much. We lost the game, and then set it up to start over again. Theres no bitterness, because when you lose, you all lose together; there is no one to accuse of playing unfairly. Other than an occasional bad deck situation, the difficulty of the game is not too bad. My wife and I have only played the easy mode (which uses 4 epidemic cards) so far. You can scale the difficulty up by adding more epidemic cards in, but so far we havent seen the need to. The game is not too hard, and it is still fun. However, its nice to know that if we get to the point where Easy mode is too easy, we can always up the challenge. Speaking of upping the challenge, there are expansions to this game (sold separately) that add new elements into gameplay to spice things up. I havent played any of the expansions, but I look forward to trying them out in the future.

Took a little while to learn and be able to strategize but a lot of fun once you have it down! It’s nice to be working with other players instead of against them.

Great game! Doesnt take too long to play. It does have a bit of a learning curve, but by game 2 or 3 I was hooked. The coop nature of the game is great and the difficulty is good. Its a good challenge but not impossible once you start learning some good strategy with your team.

We have been playing this while quarantining during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is a great way to pass the time. No two games are the same, and I love that its all about collaboration. My husband and I love this game, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes board games.

This latest edition is great. Cooperative games are great for keeping folks united for a common goal. Its hard to beat the game. As for preventing someone from becoming a domineering leader, we implemented a communication troubles rule where the sat phones go down due to a variety of possible reasons determined at random and triggered by game conditions.

I just received this the other day. I want to say I am impressed with the quality. Starting with the box itself, I am very impressed. Ive never got a board game before that was such heavyweight chipboard box. Then the photo paper covering the box is very detailed, and rich full of color. Lovely texture and coating on the box. Super impressed. The board quality itself is really nice, looks, great! I like the clear plastic disease cubes, they are pretty crystal clear and to me its more exciting and not as monotonous as the wooden ones that came with the first edition. I wouldnt of minded wooden pawns but I am not complaining.. they are fairly heavy plastic and polished a bit -- same with the research center tokens. Card quality is very nice. Air cushioned and seems like theyd hold up. Ive already sleeved the player deck. I might not sleeve the infection deck. If it ever becomes a problem (I can always sleeve them later).

Im a huge fan of pandemic the game so I love everything about it. This particular copy of the game came scuffed on the corners.