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

I love this game! You work together as a team! The directions are great, very clear, and has lots of pictures for help! Game can be different each time with the varying roles. I just cant say enough! If you buy the first expansion youll get little Petrie dishes to keep your diseases in. Ive also learned some geography while playing this game. Never expected that. Now on the news when they say a particular city, I have an idea on where it is! It doesnt have the countrys divided out on the board, but it has the world map on there with a lot of cities. How accurate it is, I dont know as I am not a geography buff, but the general idea is there and it is not the point of the game! But I imagine its pretty accurate as it has lines pointing to where some places are. In any case, its my new favorite game! There isnt one like it on the market.

Pandemic - a fun game that takes about an hour to play. Weve played it with two and with four. It worked well with both numbers. I particularly like the fact that all players win-or-lose together so animosity is minimal during and after the game. I have played this about 4 times at the lowest of several difficulty settings and the win-lose ratio has been equally divided. The game is complicated to set up and the moves are complicated to make but clear graphics on the board make the action more fluid. A worthwhile game to have in your game-room.

My 11 year old wanted this game for two years so I finally gave in and got it for her! I have to say it is a surprisingly fun game! A very different take as players have to work together to try to cure and eradicate diseases around the globle. My kids and I often play as different types of CDC workers and have both won and lost the game. It can be very tedious though so probably not for really young kids, but it can be really fun trying to avoid epidemics . Again, you have to work together, there is no other way, and winning feels so satisfying!

Had so much fun playing this with my other 30 year old friends. If you are looking for a good coop style strategy game for 2 or 3 players, this is a great fit. In my experience having 4 people it gets a bit crowded with debating strategy / movements.

This is by far my favorite game ever and I love playing it. The only reason I am leaving a review (because usually I dont) is because my board was slightly damaged (almost like it had been folded a bunch previously) and a lot of the blocks were chipped. I would give this product 5 stars because the game itself is marvelous and fun, its just the quality of the pieces and board that made me give this 4 stars. I would still recommend buying because its a good price for a fun game, just beware you may not get the best quality in terms of how its made.

I bought this game for a family member and we got a chance to play it last night. It was a fun game, though different than what we usually play. Its different to be working together rather than against each other. Its a complicated game to learn, but it doesnt take too long to play so we were able to try it more than once. By the third go-round, we were starting to feel like we had a handle on the rules and what sort of strategies work the best. So overall, I recommend this game, but you should be prepared to spend some time learning how to play.

The game arrived promptly, new and shrink wrapped as expected. First I will say that I love the mechanics of this game. It is a very well designed cooperative game, encouraging maximum interaction between players and complicated strategizing. That said, it is VERY difficult to win, even on the easiest setting and for players with moderate experience in strategic gaming. This doesn’t completely detract from the fun of the process, but it can definitely be frustrating and perplexing. I have not given up but have decided to research strategy tips—let me know if you’ve got any! Edited to add: After having more practice, my win rate is maybe about 70% while playing with my partner. It is much easier with just two players, I assume because it is simpler to communicate, plan turns, and strategize. This is one of my all time favorite games! And very topical during the COVID-19 pandemic, as you play as a CDC team whose goal is to cure and eradicate viruses.

If you want to get together a group of friends on a Friday night for the purpose of stressing everyone out and giving everyone anxiety attacks over drawing each cards... Then this is the game for you! I was super excited to buy and try this game, given the universal high reviews. And... well, I was greatly underwhelmed. I dont have much good to say about it. Problems: 1. Its really complicated rule wise. Like, not impossible, but you do have to read the game rules for about an hour before you can play, which is longer than 95% of other games out there. And then you have to spend an hour explaining it to everyone else. And then you have to spend an hour doing an example run through so people can figure out the gameplay dynamics. And then everyones exhausted so they call it a night. You try it again a week later, but you have to read the rules again because of how complicated they are, and then you have 2 new people in your group so you have to explain it all over to them, and before you know it youve invested about 24 hours into this game before you have a group of people with enough experience to actually play it. 2. Once everyone does start playing... its just not fun. High energy? Yes. Stressful? Yes. Anxiety-inducing? Yes. Frustrating? Yes. Fun? No. This is the board game equivalent of getting a group of friends to stand on the side of the freeway and counting all the cars that dont hit you. Sure, it can foster team unity. But at what cost? You live in constant fear of the card deck, and what its going to do to you, and if it will undermine all the work you just put in to defeating the viruses. Its just not a good time. 3. Theres no joy when the game ends. Eradicated all the viruses? Youre treated with the emotional equivalent of Thank goodness thats over. Get wiped out by a new super bug? Well that sucks. Theres no sense of victory either way, just... survival, or failure. Ive played this game about 10 times now, with varying groups of people. And ultimately, I just gave up. Its not fun, its not worth it. Finding something else better.

Weve had this game a little over a year. Our family plays a lot of similar games like Dominion, Settlers of Catan, etc. This is good to occasionally pull out for a Sunday afternoon with the family and everyone likes it, but it hasnt become one of our addictive favorites. I would still highly recommend this. Its a good game, well made and well thought out. But it just doesnt pull us in quite as much as some of our other games. As a parent I very much like the fact that this is less competitive than other games, but that also seems to take a bit of the excitement out of it.

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.