Pandemic (board game)

Gameplay

The goal of Pandemic is for the players, in their randomly selected roles, to work cooperatively to stop the spread of four diseases and cure them before a pandemic occurs. Pandemic setup consists of a game board representing a network connecting 48 cities on the map of the earth, two decks of cards (Player cards and Infection cards), four colors of cubes (each representing a different disease), six Research Stations, and a pawn for each player. The Player cards include cards with each city name (the same as those on the board); Special Event cards, which can be played at specific times to take beneficial actions; and Epidemic cards. Infection cards consist of one card for each city on the board and a color of the disease that will start there. At the start of the game, Infection cards are randomly drawn to populate the board with infections, from 1 to 3 cubes for a number of cities. Players start at Atlanta, the home of the Centers for Disease Control, and are given a random role and a number of Player cards. On each turn, a player can take 4 actions, consisting of any combination of the following:

On conclusion of the turn, the player draws two Player cards, reducing their hand down to seven cards by discarding Player cards and/or immediately playing Special Event cards. If either draw is an Epidemic card, the player draws a card from the bottom of the Infection deck and places three cubes on that city, puts that card into the Infection discard pile, reshuffles the discard pile, and places it back on top of the Infection deck. After the two Player cards are drawn (epidemic or otherwise), a number of Infection cards are revealed, and one cube of the indicated color is placed on each city drawn. Should a city already have three cubes and a new cube is to be added, an Outbreak occurs, and each interconnected city gains one cube of that colour. This can create a chain reaction across many cities if several already have three disease cubes on them.

The game is over if any of the following occur:

To aid in winning the game, players are given roles that allow them to alter the above rules. Five roles were introduced with the core game, but additional roles were added through the game's expansion. For example, the Medic is able to treat all cubes in a city with one action or, once a cure for a disease is found, can remove cubes of that color without spending an action, while the Scientist needs only four cards of the same color to discover the cure. The players are also helped by the Special Event cards, which allow for similar one-time actions, such as direct removal of a few infection tokens or immediate construction of a research lab.

Pandemic requires the players to coordinate their efforts to win the game, specifically in gathering and sharing the necessary cards to discover cures while moving in coordination around the board and preventing Outbreaks in an efficient manner.

On the Brink

In 2009 the first official expansion was released, featuring several new roles, rules variants for a fifth player, new Special Event cards, and new challenges for the players.

There are eight Role Cards in this expansion, including a revised Operation Expert card and a Bio-Terrorist card, which pits one player against the rest of the team.

The challenges include a fifth disease, Mutation, which must be cured or not present at the game board when the players score for victory. Another challenge is the Virulent Strain, which makes one disease particularly deadly, replacing standard Epidemic cards with new ones. Each such card represents a special nasty effect that this particular epidemic has on the game play.

In the Lab

This is second expansion, released in the summer of 2013, with a new game board that allows players to research disease cures in a laboratory. The goal of this activity is the same as in the base game—to find cures for diseases—but this time with an added research aspect. Players can also use new characters and new special events included with the expansion. In addition, it added a one-player mode and a team play mode, in which teams of two compete to be the most effective team. In the Lab requires both Pandemic and On the Brink to play, and also requires replacement decks if using the first editions of Pandemic and On the Brink.

State of Emergency

A third expansion, released in March 2015, adds new roles and events and three new challenges: The Hinterlands, Emergency Events, and Superbug. The expansion is compatible with the two previous expansions, but neither is required. However, the purple disease cubes included with State of Emergency make the set included in On the Brink redundant.

Scenarios

Z-man Games has released free-to-download scenarios, with changes to the base game. Various scenarios are set to be released. As of March 2017, scenarios Isolation and Government Shutdown had been published.

Editions

A second edition of Pandemic was released in 2013, with new artwork and two new characters: the Contingency Planner and the Quarantine Specialist. Some prints of the second edition had an error with a missing line between Lagos and São Paulo and edge-to-edge printing on cards.

A second edition of the On the Brink expansion was released in 2013.

Replacement decks

The Pandemic base replacement deck updates the first edition of Pandemic to its second edition.

Compatibility pack #2 updates the first edition of the On the Brink expansion to its second edition.

The In the Lab expansion (released after the second editions of Pandemic and On the Brink) requires the second edition(s), or the first edition(s) along with its compatibility pack(s).

Spinoffs

Five spinoffs or alternate versions of Pandemic have been released by Z-Man Games, all of which are stand-alone games and are not compatible with the original or with each other.

Pandemic: The Cure

Pandemic: The Cure is a dice-based game that uses a similar rule set to the original board game but strips down the number of cities and leaves the outcome of turns up to chance via dice rolls. An expansion to the game, Pandemic: The Cure - Experimental Meds, was scheduled to be released in November 2016, adding a fifth disease and a new hot zone mechanism.

Pandemic: Contagion

Pandemic: Contagion puts players in the role of the diseases and unlike the base game is non-cooperative. The object of the game is to eradicate the human race by spreading infections.

Pandemic Legacy

Released in October 2015 and designed by Leacock and Rob Daviau, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is a new version of the base game released by Z-Man Games, similar to Risk Legacy, in which the game added an ongoing storyline to the basic game, meaning the game board and rules changes permanently after each game.

Each game represents one month of time in a campaign which simulates the passage of one year. If the players win the first game, they move on to the next month, and if they lose, they try again, but move on to the next month regardless of what happens in the second game. New rules and components are included in packages that remain sealed until certain events take place, such as completing the game for a given month, or losing a certain amount of games in a row.

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, designed by Matt Leacock and Chuck Yager, was released at GenCon 2016.

Pandemic Iberia

Released in the fall of 2016 and designed by Matt Leacock and Jesus Torres Castro, Pandemic Iberia is set on the Iberian peninsula in 1848. It introduced developing railways and purifying water, and players cure four specific historical diseases: malaria, typhus, yellow fever, and cholera.

Acclaim for Pandemic Legacy

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 has been described as a leap forward in modern board game design, and the best board game ever created, quickly becoming the highest rated board game of all time on the influential Board Game Geek website.

The game won a record four golden geek awards in 2015, including best board game of the year, best strategy game, most innovative game, and best thematic game.

Awards

Research

Pandemic has also been the subject of empirical published research studies as an example of a non-computer-based activity that involves distributed Computational thinking.