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

Pandemic constantly tops everyones lists as the best game ever, and I suppose I can see why. Its a game that comes from Matt Leacock, who churns out some great titles, including a favorite of mine, Forbidden Island. This game has gotten a lot of expansions, and Pandemic: Legacy is currently #1 at BoardGameGeek.com. Surely, when I got my copy, Ill have a blast with it like everyone else, right? Sadly....no. I am very sorry to say that despite the hype, I only have a so-so opinion of Pandemic. Let me explain why. This game has a lot of similarities with Forbidden Island. Down to the mechanics are basically the same. However, I felt that Forbidden Island improves on said mechanics, especially when it comes to what I personally believe is severely flawed in Pandemic - the Exchange System. In FI, you can exchange your gear once you meet a teammate. In Pandemic, you can only exchange a City Card with a certain player once the both of you are in said city. This greatly hampers efforts to put, say, 5 cards into a player who may be in a great position to cure the Blue Disease Cubes, because unless the Co-Ordinator is there, you have to wait until his turn to meet you in another city to take your resource. I often ignore this and depend on what I draw, because its easier. I can forgive that, however, if beating the game didnt feel like such a disappointing anti-climax. In FI, you are desperately running towards a helicopter, the island crumbling and sinking around you. When you make it, you feel awesome. Like youve accomplished something. When you cure the last disease in Pandemic, its like Boop. Well, thats it. Really? I had to play this over and over again just to see if I was missing out anything, because I could not believe the game could have ended that easily, on such a Meh note. I have played this game with kids and adults from my group. The reactions were mixed. Some liked the game, others felt completely bored out of their minds. I should point out that Im an open minded guy, and I can deal with people liking this game for what it is. But if you want my personal opinion, I think Forbidden Island/Desert is a much more worthwhile series to invest in. Now granted, there ARE expansions to Pandemic, and to its credit, is a beautiful game (well, with the exception of the pieces, which oddly has three shades of green.) I honestly dont feel thrilled playing this game. The experience was only a shoulder shrug from my end. If you want to get it, go ahead. But dont use it as a gateway game.

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.

Pandemic is a great game with tons of replayability. My wife and I have played a round almost every day since we got it, and are loving it! Because of the cooperative nature of the game, its easy to bring new players in, since everyone is working to the same goal. We took it to our familys New Years party, and ended up finding 4 people who wanted to play. But its only 2-4 players! you exclaim. I ran the board and managed turns and game flow, while my wife and I advised the four people actually playing, and it felt just like we were playing it ourselves. I even managed to play a round with our 4 and 6 year olds, and the three of us one without me curing a single disease! This is a great family game, with excellent replay value.

This has been my favorite game since the kickstarter version. I have all the spin-offs, but didnt have the original (lost it in my last breakup). So I finally bought it again and am so happy! Now that weve beat it, I need the expansions!

I love this game... no wait, I hate it... no actually I love it! Pandemic is a stress inducing fun time. You want to win so badly, but often times the spread has other ideas for you. On average, out of 10 times playing, my team (friends/family) usually only beat it 3-4 times. But... we always come back for more!

This game is a great cooperative board game for up to four players. It takes a little bit of time to learn how to play it, but once you do, it is a great experience. Everyone I have taught how to play it has enjoyed it and enjoyed playing the different parts in trying to stop the pandemic.

This is a great cooperative board game to play with your friends or gaming group. Ive played this with many different groups of people now and every experience was positive and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves very much while playing. Having a great cooperative game in your rotation is a good way to get people who dont like the competition aspect of games to be able to enjoy themselves too. The game itself is fairly easy to get the hang of after a few turns and allows for great strategy sessions where you work together to eradicate the various diseases on the board to trigger the win condition. Playing at maximum difficulty will generally be pretty challenging and will require good planning and communication with the other players in order to succeed. This is one of those games that is tough to win, but tends to make people want to play just one more time, I know well get it this time. Its that enjoyable. This one tends to be a favorite in our board gaming group, and we keep bringing it out time and again. The only issue that I have with the game set is that the instructions arent the easiest to read if you want a quick summary of win conditions and such. I had to read them a couple times to figure out some of the more nuanced game rules and situations that tended to come up quite a bit more than expected. No other issues to this really fun game. Highest Recommendation.

Pandemic is such a fun game. I pretty much make everyone play it whenever they come to my house. It works for people to who love to play games and for people who are new to gaming, so it is great for mixed groups of players. I love that you cooperate together to win.

Daniels wife speaking: My husband and I played this with a friend and learned to love it. We bought one for ourselves and later bought one as a gift for someone. We enjoy playing it with friends since we get to work together with them instead of against them. I think this works for a variety of people. Those who like strategy can put those skills into action. Those who dont can take in the input of others and allow them to take the reigns. You all win or loose together, so skill level isnt as big a deal in this game, something I like :)

I have been playing more and more board games over the last year and Pandemic has been the best addition to my slowly growing collection. Working with my friends and family instead of against them was a great change of pace after years of royal rumble style board gaming. This game is just as fun to play with 2 people as it is with several more and no two games of Pandemic are the same. It is just as easy to lose this game as it is to win and losing only makes me want to play it again. I have begun to purchase the expansion sets and each new update only makes the game more entertaining and fun. That being said, the original game is extremely replayable and worth every penny. For the dedicated tabletop player, or the family looking to play infrequently, this is a must buy game!