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

We love this game. We will get into a groove of playing it several nights in a row. Its so much fun to play a collaborative game. This games mechanic is perfect--it seems like every time we play it comes down to the wire for us, whether we win or the game wins. Because you can be different characters and the starting board changes, its never the same game twice. I like that you can adjust the difficulty. Some nights I just want to save the world, so we adjust the difficulty to make it easier. This is just an super fun, intense, well-designed game that is easy to learn and addictive.

The game is a great one to play with friends, it’s cooperative so you’re all working together as opposed to trying to beat one another. The combinations are random and so they’re endless and you can scale up and down your difficulty easily! A lot of fun!

The kids are always pretty skeptical of new games. They get attached to the ones they already know. And they can be brutal with games they dont like. For example they hated exploding kittens and it just sits there gathering dust. So when I finally convinced them to try Pandemic I was relieved that they loved it. We hadnt tried any other cooperative games before so they talked a bit about the experience of all of us winning or losing as a team. I think it builds communication skills.

This game is awesome!! We were very overwhelmed with reading the instructions, but once we started playing, it all made sense. First few times playing, we kept the instructions handy for reference. We also love have small condiment size bowls for the disease cubes instead of playing with them in the bags. It’s my favorite board game by far, I’m excited to try an expansion soon!

My wife and I have gradually gotten more into board games, because were old and lame and thats ok. Shes a bit ... competitive, however, so even playing a game like Settlers can put me on the edge of the seat a little bit if Im winning. Some of you know what Im talking about. Board games kept popping up in my Amazon recommendations, and I kept seeing this one (nice work, Amazon ad algorythms). Cooperative? Sounds good! There went that Sunday. I even stopped watching football, BECAUSE CHILDREN ARE DYING IN ISTANBUL OR CONSTANTINOPLE. We played several games. We lost our first few, then kept winning. Our kids were annoying us with petty stuff like, Daddy, Im hungry and Mommy, my toe fell off but sometimes you just have to tell your kids that now isnt a good time, because Daddy is building a research center and then has to fly to meet Mommy in Milan, and there is leftover ham in the refrigerator. I do question whether the game will keep its challenge. Weve won our only two games on the hardest difficulty, but it felt suspenseful and like we could have lost, so I think itll still be fun to play. Regardless, weve already gotten our moneys worth out of this game. I think my daughter (six) will be able to learn it now or shortly as well, which will be cool and we can monitor her toe situation better.

I got this for my brother for Christmas. He was so excited about it. It’s a little difficult to learn, and we did watch some YouTube videos to figure a few things out, but overall we enjoyed it.

I love this game. My favorite part is that youre playing cooperatively, so if you have ultra competitive players, they dont get mad at each other. Which is also good if youre playing with kids. My daughter is 9 years old, and she was able to play it with no problems. I will say though that if youre playing with really assertive people you need to make sure that they arent bossing everyone around. You need to talk to everyone to strategize, but quieter players can get overlooked if you dont give them the chance to talk. My only criticism is that you can only play with up to 4 players. I want to play with more! I would say we win the game about 50% of the time playing with 5 epidemics and 4 players. Fewer players and more epidemics makes it harder.

I played this with a few of my close friends one night, and we ended up playing the game until 3am. Im not a huge fan of competitive games, so it was great to finally play a cooperative game where youre working together to cure diseases. Each player gets 4 moves per turn, and those moves can be discussed as a team before moving on to the next person. You need to collect cards to cure diseases, so you need to meet up with someone who has a card that you want, but there are rules around how and where you can meet up. There are different roles for each person, so the Dispatcher could fly another persons pawn to a certain city to help them collect cards, or to get them to a research center before another outbreak occurs. The Medic can cure diseases in cities without using an extra turn, if the cure has been found for that disease. Each role is important, but since there are more roles than there are players, the gameplay is different each time you play. For instance, if you decide your end goal is to cure AND eradicate the diseases, not having a Medic could be the deciding factor in whether you win or lose. This game is heavy on strategy, so if you dont normally like those types of games, you may want to find someone who has the game and see if you like it before you buy it. But so far Ive only found one person who didnt care for the game, and we ended up just deciding her moves for her. As a sidenote, the game will also be available on the iPad in a few days (Oct. 3, 2013), so that could be another option to try it out before buying the board game. However, while I will definitely get it for my iPad, I personally prefer physical game boards for a game night with friends and family.

I got this for my family to play during the pandemic, and its been a real gem. Even though it took awhile for us to grasp all the rules and the nuances, the kids figured it out quickly, and after maybe 10 games, I think we started playing it correctly. We love this game, and especially love how its cooperative. My youngest loves playing this of all our games because she doesnt have to compete with anyone else, so this really is the perfect game for families with young children. Having said that, I have a real gripe with the instructions. I think the instructions are really poorly laid out, and cramped. When situations with nuance arise, its not at all clear how to take action. Cue the gamers who say read the manual. I did many times, and after maybe the third time, and after playing a few games incorrectly, you begin to internalize the rules, and start to pick out the nuances. Dont think it should be like this- there should be an area in the instructions that specifically calls out edge cases so that nothing should be inferred. It feels like the game creators did their absolutely best to cram what they thought were the minimum viable instructions into as few pages as possible. Cant say I understand or admire the effort. All in all though, I and my entire family absolutely love this game- weve played it for months on end with no drop in interest. Highly recommend it, even despite the inadequately laid out instructions. You can always go online to forums to see how others interpret the rules (ridiculous that you should even have to, but lemonade and all) highly recommend this game, and looking forward to getting the expansions. Im particularly interested in pandemic legacy, which Ive heard even more praise for.

Fun game, very challenging. Apparently you need others to care to stop global pandemics. Huh, who knew.