Pandemic The Board Game: Part 1

Pandemic is a board game created by game designer Matt Leacock that was published in 2008. The objective of the game is to, as a team, treat and cure four different diseases that are infecting the world. Players must work together in order to beat the game and win.

Pandemic is cooperative multiplayer against the game play format. Each player either wins or loses each game. The objectives are based on outwitting the game, coming up with a solution collectively and racing against the game before it’s too late.

The game is made for 2 to 4 players, each of which have a character role which gives them special skills. There are five roles but only a maximum of four can be played with at one time. The roles are dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher and operations expert.

The dispatcher is the grand controller and planner of the game, a player with the dispatcher role can move other players around the board outside of their turn.

The medic can remove all cubes of disease when treating a city, only using one action, and can administer cures without any actions.

The scientist can discover cures using only four cards rather than the regular five needed.

The researcher can share any cards with another player without being in the city portrayed on the card given. Both players must be in the same city though.

The operations expert can build a research station anywhere using one action. The operations expert can also move to any city as long as he is at a research station and discards a card.

Each player is allowed four actions per turn. There are basic actions such as moving between cities either by car or by flying (though you must discard a card of that city in order to move). Other actions including giving cards to other players (known as sharing knowledge), treating one cube of disease or discovering a cure.

At the start of the game several disease cards a drawn and cubes are placed on the matching cities. At the end of every turn a certain number of disease cards are drawn again and more cubes are placed on the map. A player must draw two player cards, which can either be a city, a special event, or an epidemic card. The city cards are used for various things such as curing diseases, travelling and building research stations. The special event cards are certain scenarios and actions that can be played at anytime, such as an airlift that allows you to travel anywhere on the map at anytime. In the event of an epidemic cubes are placed on several cities and all the disease cards that were discarded are reshuffled into the deck of disease cards. If a city with three cubes is infected with one more cube an outbreak occurs.

The game ends if the players discover a cure for each disease, the only way in which the game is won by the players. Otherwise, if more than seven outbreaks occur, or there are no more cubes of a specific disease or there aren’t any cards to be drawn, the players lose.