Pandemic board game review. Pandemic

Tell me how comfortable it is to play in two?
I've been looking at co-op for a long time. It is embarrassing that, according to reviews, it is too hard to win, and when playing with a child, this significantly reduces the interest in the game, as well as easy wins in fairness.
With which version is it preferable to start learning about the world of "Pandemic"?

We tried to play different combinations roles, and 4x and 2x. Together it is easier to win especially with strong roles.
With a child for 2 is quite possible. 4 epidemics, of course. And I would not pull out the roles randomly, but would take strong roles for a start: a doctor and a scientist (4 cards are needed to invent a medicine). When you catch a win with these roles, you can take on other roles, with them the game goes differently and the level of difficulty is higher.

For a long time they did not dare to buy - the theme repelled, all these epidemics, sores, consciousness for some reason also immediately threw up zombies. But when I finally bought it, I was very surprised, I personally expected less from this family-recommended game. And in vain, the pandemic, for all its simplicity, turned out to be very tasty. Tactile and goosebumps pleasure from cubes and their sorting; different, nicely made and, most importantly, interesting characters with their own chips, a laconic geographical field (when else will you look for riyadh on the map). There are no complaints about the game at all. At the same time, it goes great together, it’s so much more hardcore even with 4 epidemics than, for example, three of us, but it’s directly addictive. I want to take it off the shelf again and again. Caution: coughing and pinched shoulders in the form of side effects. Apparently, especially impressionable topics still affect)

This game inspires me to believe and continue to play board games. First of all, at the tactile, sensorimotor level, so to speak. In general, I came into this hobby for the sensations that you can get by touching and shifting cardboard (for the most part, no kidding here).

Admiration and ASMR-pleasure causes the sound of contact of the field with disease cubes (in the edition with transparent cubes). Incredibly in love with this fidling, it can only be compared with the juicy placement of evidence on the field in Arkham Horror second edition. Also noteworthy is the "melody" of the friction of the cubes themselves, so, by the way, I was very upset because of the wooden cubes in Iberia (although there are gorgeous tiles railways, which sound wonderfully with the field there and give pleasure from the fact of their placement between points).

The game itself, with its elegant and understandable mechanics, allows you to fully enjoy this fetishization of the components, for example, because in Legacy I did not find all this for myself, I was distracted by the growing volume of rules and captured by the general tension of the narrative (it seems to me that this is not goes to such a game).

Pandemic is another game that changed my mind 180 degrees. The game was made by me a thousand years ago, and then tested. By oneself. And that's when she really upset me. Some kind of naive simplicity and uncomplicatedness, soulless solitaire and nothing more - that was the verdict. I don't remember what made me pay attention to this game again, but after a few years I decomposed it again. And an amazing thing happened - it would seem the same - simplicity and uncomplicatedness, but now I did not play solo, but in a company and it appeared - the atmosphere. Nerve. Set up for the game. When you can really get off your head from the expectation that the epidemic map will come out or not. We won the first game brilliantly.) But as it turned out later, we were very mistaken, passing all the cards to the Medic in a row. Then there was the second game - we were maximally mobilized. Before the game, we decided whether to increase the number of epidemics to 5, but decided to consolidate the success of the first game and left 4. As a result, we did not wait for the 4th epidemic (and maybe the third), the planet could no longer be saved and we did not know how we would look in the eyes of those as yet uninfected millions of earthlings who believed in us. But everything was worse..

I took a direct flight to my meeting in Paris. Lucky. I had to travel to the last meeting with transfers and I was almost late. The engineering service promises to solve the problem soon by building research stations in high-risk cities. When this is done, it will be possible to get there by official flights.

In the cabin, someone coughed and I involuntarily shuddered. Perhaps a person has a cold or just choked on a piece of chicken, but outbreaks in the surrounding cities make one think of the worst. The results of the latest researchers show that our specialists are moving in the right direction and a life-saving vaccine will be ready in the coming days, but the infection is spreading too quickly. If the pandemic cannot be stopped as soon as possible, Largest cities the world will turn into necropolises...

The board game Pandemic is the brainchild of co-op master Matt Leacock, who also gave the world the Forbidden Island and later the Forbidden Desert. Pandemic is also a co-op for two, three or four players, but it can also be played in solo mode.

"Pandemic" turns your company into a group of medics trying to defeat four deadly dangerous diseases, the epidemic of which suddenly struck the whole world. To do this, you need to invent a cure for each. But time is limited, and along the way, players must also fight the disease in already infected cities and prevent new outbreaks. If this is not done, they will lose even faster.

In Russia, the game is published by Lifestyle, which also publishes other Leacock games in Russian. This publisher's products are traditionally distinguished high quality And Pandemic is no exception. The contents of the box pleases even before the start of the game.

Inside are the rules, two plastic-wrapped decks of cards, and lots of plastic components. The cards are embossed "linen", and all other components necessary for the game are immortalized in plastic. This even applies to markers, which are most often made of cardboard.

Each player gets the role of a specialist of a certain profession, who has certain skills that distinguish him from other players. There are seven different roles available in the game, but since a maximum of four people can play the basic version, the composition of virus fighters in each game varies. Tactics, accordingly, also have to be changed. Therefore, the parties proceed differently and the replay value is very high. We have already managed to play a lot of games, but it's still interesting to play.

IN in general terms the course of the game is that the players travel around the playing field, exchanging cards in order to collect five cards of the same color. These cards are needed to invent drugs, of which there are four in total. The difficulty lies in the fact that cards cannot be exchanged anywhere. If you are not an Explorer, then you can exchange a card only in the city to which it belongs. Traveling around the world is also associated with certain difficulties.

In the meantime, viruses multiply rapidly. If players do not take action against the spread of diseases, their outbreaks will deplete the supply of viruses in the box and the game will be lost. New epidemics also occur periodically, total number which depends on the selected difficulty level.

All of the above makes Pandemic an exciting collective puzzle game with fast-paced events.

What I also liked was the minimal impact of randomness. Random events happen every turn. Basically, this is the spread of viruses around the world. But with the exception of epidemics, diseases appear in cities where they have already been identified earlier. So it is possible to predict the development of the virus and prevent outbreaks of diseases that make life very difficult for doctors.

Summary: excellent cooperation with simple rules, adjustable difficulty level, minimal influence of randomness and recognizable "handwriting" of the author. Due large selection characters tactics can in varying degrees different, which makes the tabletop replayable. There is random, but there is just enough of it to keep the atmosphere of the game up to par. Great for playing with children, who at the same time also catch up in geography. I recommend that fans of cooperatives definitely check it out.

A deadly threat hangs over the world! A pandemic, a global epidemic of four deadly diseases, has swept the planet. But you and your comrades are employees international organization to fight the Pandemic, and you have a chance to stop the infection! You, experienced specialists, have to fly around Earth, containing the ninth wave of diseases and extracting the resources needed for drug development. Work together, use your individual abilities wisely, and you will be able to destroy the infection before it engulfs the whole world. Time does not wait! An emergency epidemiological situation has already been declared in several countries, and the infection continues to spread to neighboring regions. Can you. develop a cure in time? The fate of humanity is in your hands!

Purpose of the game

Pandemic is a team game. You and your comrades are employees of an anti- infectious diseases. You work together to develop cures and prevent further outbreaks. Each member of the team has its own, special role and unique abilities, the competent use of which will significantly increase the chances of your team to succeed. Your goal is to save humanity by discovering cures for four deadly diseases that threaten the Earth.

If you fail to contain diseases before a cure is discovered, a Pandemic will sweep the planet - and that means game over and loss for everyone... Are you good enough to save humanity?

Preparing for the game

Place the game board in the center of the table within reach of all players.
At the beginning of the game, you have one laboratory at your disposal. Put this laboratory in Moscow.
Shuffle the role cards and deal 1 card to each player. The players take their tokens (the color of the token is determined by the role) and place them in Moscow. Put the extra roles and chips back in the box.
Place the Infection Outbreak counter on the 0 mark on the Outbreak Track, and the Infection Rate counter on the first mark ("2") of the corresponding scale.
Sort the disease cubes by color and place them next to the board.
Choose 6 epidemic cards from the game cards and set them aside for now
Shuffle the game cards (with the blue back) and deal them face down to the players: 4 players - 2 cards; 3 players - 2 cards; 2 players - 4 cards
Divide the remaining game cards into several stacks as close as possible in size. The number of stacks depends on the desired level of difficulty.
Shuffle one Epidemic card into each pile. Place stacks on top of each other. We recommend stacking the deck so that the smallest deck ends up at the bottom, and the largest deck ends up at the top. Put the resulting deck of game cards on the playing field. Put the remaining epidemic cards back into the box.
Shuffle the deck of infection cards (with the green back) and place it face down on the game board.
By the beginning of the game, several cities are already infected. Select them as follows:

reveal the top 3 cards from the Infection deck. Place 3 disease cubes of the same color as the card in each open city
open 3 more infection cards, place 2 dice in these 3 cities;
reveal 3 more Infection cards, place 1 die in each of these 3 cities.
Everything open cards Infections are placed in the Infection discard pile.

12. The player who was last sick goes first.

Actions

Each turn the player has 4 actions. Each of these actions can be ordinary or special. You can perform the same action several times in one turn, but each of the same actions will be counted separately, and the total number of actions should not exceed 4. In addition to the actions available to everyone, everyone has unique abilities according to their role. Less than four actions can be performed if there is no move; unspent actions are burned and are not transferred to the next turn.

What kind of game is it

This is a re-release of the 2008 game, which has collected quite a few awards and positive feedback players from all over the world. This is a great cooperative game in which there is no place for rivalry, and everyone has a common goal - to save the world from the threat hanging over it.

The second edition of Pandemic is essentially no different from the first, but the game has become much more beautiful and tasteful.

What is to be done

There are several in the world dangerous viruses which gradually destroy human lives. Our mission is to prevent these diseases and eradicate the contagion.

In the board game, you have to choose a role, or to be more precise, a character whose abilities will differ from those of others and begin to destroy the source of the infection. Full rules of the game read the relevant section.

Since it is a cooperative table game, then it will appeal to people who appreciate and love joint actions in games for the sake of a common goal. It is perfect for a company of four people, and thanks to a short game, in the region of an hour of real time, Pandemic will not have time to tire you. The gameplay is built very competently and each new move in the game will bring you a lot of pleasure. So if you love co-op games and have a couple of friends to share the game with, feel free to buy this tabletop!

Training

A terrible virus and a long-awaited cure are delivered in a rectangular box. cardboard box. Under the rules and the field of a board game, there are a lot of different game components.

The field is laid out on the table, and next to it are disease cubes and research stations. Flash markers are located at the zero division of their scale, and test tubes with medicines are next to the space allotted for them.

The disease spread marker goes to the first 2, and the disease deck is shuffled. The top nine cards from it are revealed sequentially.

The first three indicate the cities in which you need to put 3 infection markers, the second three each 2 and the last 1 each.

Each player receives a handout pamphlet and one random role card.

Now you need to shuffle the deck of player cards without epidemics and distribute to each certain number kart.

Choose difficulty and start

Participants choose the difficulty of the game using four to six epidemic cards. The deck is divided into the same number of approximately equal piles and an epidemic card intervenes in each of them, and then they form a common deck.

According to the rules of the board game, the players' pieces are sent to Atlanta to the first research station. Everyone moves in a circle, and each move will consist of three parts.

To start, players can perform a combination of up to four actions indicated on the hint cards.

Movement

The participant can move four different ways or exchange cards according to special rules.

Building a research station and inventing a cure

By discarding the city card they are in, the player can build a research station. And by discarding five cards of the same color at the research station, he invents a cure.

As soon as all four drugs are invented, then according to the rules of the Pandemic board game, the players win.

In addition, if in the process of curing diseases on the map there are no cubes of diseases for which there is already a cure, then it will be completely destroyed, which will greatly facilitate the game.

Treatment of the disease

Treatment of the disease, that is, the removal of the corresponding cubes from the field, is the fourth action available to the player.

After performing four actions, the player draws two cards from the deck of players. If these are cards of cities or events, then he keeps them for himself, but not more than seven pieces.

Epidemic

Much worse if an epidemic map comes out. First, the propagation marker moves further. Then one card is drawn from the bottom of the disease deck and three dice are placed in that city at the same time.

The discard of disease cards is shuffled and sent to the top of the appropriate deck.

Each player's turn in Pandemic ends with the discovery of diseases. From the appropriate deck, as many cards as indicated under the marker are revealed, and one disease cube of its color is placed in each indicated city.

disease outbreak

If at any point in the game there are already three dice in any city and a fourth is to be reported there, an outbreak occurs. The corresponding marker advances one step, and then one disease cube of the same color is added to each adjacent city to the epicenter.

Thus, even whole chains of disease outbreaks can occur in Pandemic, which does not bring anything good. If the flash marker reaches the end of the track, the players will immediately lose.

The same will happen if the player fails to draw two cards from the deck, or if there are not enough disease cubes of at least one type.