Pandemic

I recently got back into board gaming after many years not playing them and was looking for something different that could be played co-operatively rather than competitively. Pandemic was mentioned many times as a great example so I decided to give it a try. This is an excellent game. I've been learning the game and playing it 2 player with my wife and we are finding it very enjoyable. The core of the game is playing as two people with different roles trying to travel around the world treating disease outbreaks ( of four different diseases) and trying to find cures whilst the outbreaks of these diseases escalate and epidemics emerge. The game has a mechanic to provide the spread and escalation of infection and outbreak, it's very well done. My mind boggles at the game designer coming up with this. It's a clever game yet not too complex and we found it accessible and were grasping it quickly. Soon we'll be adding our friend as a third player and really look forward to it. It's a great game to get your working together, communicating and forming strategy to try to prevent a worldwide unbeatable pandemic. This is an excellent game. Very impressed.

Really fun game to play with up to 4 people. The size packaged away is easy to store, it does spread out a bit in game play but can be easily played on a coffee table. Condition arrived perfectly, no issues.

If you are considering buying this item, then you will already be a fan of the Pandemic game series. Pandemic State of Emergency is the third expansion from Z-man Games for this amazing game. The three new games are: The Hinterlands Challenge, the Emergency Event challenge and the Superbug challenge. Of the three challenges Superbug is by far the most interesting and played in our household. The Hinterlands challege is played the least. I the Superbug challenge you not only have to cure the regular diseases but you also have to build vaccing centres and produce vaccines for the Superbug. Vaccines are the only way to treat the Superbug, you cannot treat it as you would a normal disease. It's very difficult but very enjoyable. The Emergency Events challenge essentially allows you to replace Epidemic cards with Events that work against you, these events can continue every round or may be one off events. The Hinterlands challenge expands the board by itroducing some new cities that can only be reached via certain locations. They represent cities that have animal diseases that have mutated to infect humans. At the beginning of each turn a special dice is rolled and depending on the outcome disease cubes are placed on Hinterlands cities. There are of course new roles including the veterinarian who works only in the Hinterlands challenge, the pilot who can travel much further than normal players and can transport another player along with him, the General who is capable of placing quarantine counters on cities, these essentially act to protect cities from infections. The quarantine counters can also be used without the General where placing a quarantine counter in a city becomes one of your actions. If you are reading this and do not have the base Pandemic game, buy it! Buy it now! It is the best game we have played and is also a co-operative game meaning all players work together to beat the game. If you already own Pandemic then buy this expansion, you will thoroughly enjoy the Superbug challenge, and the additional roles and features will enhance your gaming experience further.

Easy to understand rules, perfectly made co-op style board game, thrilling action gameplay with one common goal to find cures for all 4 types of diseases teaches quick and efficient strategy, teamwork, basic geography Perfect as for couples so for whole family as you are not playing against each-other nobody walks away angry from table. Limited amount of turns depending on how many player play as the player deck runs out of cards before the cures are found the game is lost and that is one of 3 ways to lose the game so you need to develop effective quick tactics on every turn and full cooperation with other players. There are no dice in the game, you can do up to 4 actions per turn, so the game is very balanced and not purely based on luck. If you fail to treat an infection in time you risk an outbreak, you can only have 7 outbreaks then its game over when the 8th comes or you risk running out of infection cubes that is the 3rd way to lose the game. The game board and all pieces are very good quality and very detailed, lovely graphics, only cards and board are from card everything else is in plastic, there are many pieces but you get 2 compartments in the box and all pieces come in separate resealable plastic bags. Took us 2 people 90minutes to play the 1st time so for experienced players it can be 30-45 minutes if played without expansion sets that are available separately.

Pandemic is a great introduction to the world of board games for all those people who expect you to bring out Monopoly or Cluedo when you suggest playing one. Pandemic is cooperative game for 2-4 players about travelling around the world and fighting four diseases and takes around an hour to play. This theme is portrayed strongly through all the elements in the box, from the different roles you can take, the disease cubes spreading if left unchecked to the epidemics that occur regularly throughout the game. The cooperative nature of the game leads to a sense of togetherness as you play, as well as promoting friendly conversation around the table, and will be a new experience for a lot of players. The rules of the game are tight, simple enough to learn and convey a sense of being able to affect the state of the game without wholly relying on random elements. A single turn consists of a player taking four actions which include moving, treating a disease, building a lab and curing a disease. After this the player will draw two cards, most of which are useful but a few (4-6 as determined at the start of the game) are epidemics which cause the disease to intensify through making them more likely to spread. Finally 2-4 more cards will be drawn from a second deck to determine which cities either became or increased their levels of infection this turn. After this play passes to the next player and they follow the same turn structure. The game is won when all four diseases are cured which you do by spending an action at a lab and discarding five cards of that diseases colour. Curing a disease does not, however, remove it from the game, if there are still cubes of that disease's colour on the board it can still spread. To stop a disease from affecting the board again you must remove all its disease cubes from the board and then that disease becomes eradicated. This is not required to win the game, but in certain circumstances can make your like much easier. Losing the game can happen in a number of ways. One way to lose is the card pool you draw from each turn works as a kind of timer, if ever someone can't draw at the end of a turn you lose. Another way is every time you are told to place a disease cube on a city with three disease cubes of that colour already there you cause an outbreak which puts disease cubes of that colour on each connected city. This, in turn, can cause a chain reaction effect making you repeat the action (although never back to a city that is part of the chain) and for every outbreak you move the outbreak marker along a track, if it reaches the last space you lose. Another way of losing is if you run out of disease cubes of a certain colour and have to place one, the disease is classed as having infected too many people and the game ends. So that's the basic overview of the game and if it sounds entertaining to you in any way you should try the game out. Having said that there are a few downsides to the game. Firstly, as I said, if you are a beginner in the world of board games it is a great starting point, but if you are more of a veteran it is harder to recommend the game. The content, for me, feels a bit too light, and after a game or two you'll likely have come up with a strategy that works unless you get unlucky with card draws or your role cards (this is more of an issue in the two player version). After about half a dozen games I also felt like I'd seen pretty much all the game had to offer and it was consigned back to my bookcase to be used only when there was someone new to introduce into board gaming. Of course, this in itself should make it a buy for even the most grizzled veteran, a game that successfully introduces new people to more complex board games without them looking for the exit. To some extent the problems would be fixed by adding a few more surprises to the decks, which is what the On the Brink expansion does, except I can't really recommend that expansion on the basis there is so little physical content in it for the same price as the base set. So, in summary, if you are new to the world of board games and this sounds good, get it. If you are used to board games, but have friends/family/significant others who you'd like to try board games, this is a really good choice (although there are other games that fill this slot). If you are a board gamer without any of that though it is a harder shout, you would really need the expansion to get more than half a dozen games out of it and then you are talking £40-50 which could, in my opinion, be spent on better games including its big brother, Pandemic Legacy.

I love board games. I've been playing Pandemic and its expansions for a couple of years and it's my favourite, so I was intrigued by the idea of Legacy but put off by the fact that it can only be played once and that you have to "deface" the board, some cards and so on. And it's relatively expensive. However, justifying the purchase as a gift for another couple with whom we regularly meet to play Pandemic, my girlfriend and I bought Legacy Season 1, and I'm so very glad that we did. Over four separate days and around 18 hours of game play we had a huge amount of fun. Any reservations we had about having to mark the board permanently or make changes to cards were alleviated almost immediately by how exciting it was to see the game evolve as we played it. Objectives and goals changed as we played out an interesting story with shocking twists and turns. There was one shock in particular which genuinely affected me as much as the biggest movie twists I've ever seen - the kind that you don't see coming at all and leave you reeling for days afterwards. When it was all over we all felt sad and perhaps my only criticism of this game is that, at the end, all you can really do is throw away the beautiful board and game components (some you could keep as spares for the original game). I haven't been able to bring myself to do that yet and maybe I'll think of some interesting way to preserve it. On a practical level, the rules are quite involved - some would say complicated - and, of course, they change as the game goes on (stickers are revealed with new rules which must be stuck into the rule book in designated spaces), but for the most part they're well explained and the rewards make it worth the effort. It's a lot easier to get to grips with if you've played the original Pandemic game before, and some of the early game play will be familiar to you if you've played some of the original game's expansions. Not only in terms of the hours of game play and huge fun that this game delivers but also in terms of the quality and quantity of things that the box contains which are added to the game as it progresses, Legacy Season 1 is unquestionably full value for money even at £55. We've now got Season 2 and will be starting that next week!

Super fun

Pandemic is a co-operative game so everyone takes on a different role and works together against the game. There is still the competitive element of working against the game, however it's nice to all win or all lose together. There are three levels of difficulty based on how many 'epidemic' cards you use. We're finding the second level (using 5 cards) a good level for us as we need to work hard to win, but still feel we have a chance. It's pitched right so we usually only JUST win or JUST lose and this makes us want to play it again straight away! I've played with two and three players, but the game allows for up to four people. It's a great game played with just two players. It's usually just my boyfriend and I playing and we often find board games don't work as well with two players as they do with more, but Pandemic works very well and doesn't require adapting the rules. It didn't take too long to understand the rules and because you're working cooperatively it isn't too daunting to introduce new people to the game. I've introduced this game to someone who plays a LOT of board games as well as someone who hasn't played a board game since they were a child and both people really enjoyed it. My only negative comment is that a couple of the player roles are better to play with than others. When I say 'better' I don't necessarily mean it's easier to win with them, but that they just aren't as fun to play with. That said if you work together and play to your strengths you can still have a very enjoyable game. I'd happily suggest this to anyone looking for a new game to play.

Pandemic - in my opinion - is the best board game ever published. It takes just the right amount of time to play (30-60 minutes), is cooperative so everyone playing is a team trying to beat the game which makes the social dynamic more engaging than a competitive game, the mechanics are basic and easy to learn, and the game is different each time you play. I have yet to find another game that borders on so close to perfect as this one. It doesn't even need the expansions (except for On the Brink - you have to get that just for the petri dishes for your disease cubes) which to me complicate an already precisely balanced game. I cannot praise this game enough, and everyone I've played it with has gone out and bought their own copies.

Es una ampliación imprescindible, esta y la IN TO THE LAB lanzan el juego básico a otra dimensión. Muy recomendables.

Ce jeu est génial ! Pour tout les amateur de jeux de plateaux et Lovecraft c'est un indétournable. Pour ceux qui ont du mal avec l'anglais le jeu est très simple une fois pris en mains vous n'aurez aucun problème avec les cartes.

A fun, quick game! You're working on a timer so it can be quite stressful, but it can also lead to funny moments of pure panic. You are trying to deliver cures, like in Pandemic, but it is otherwise a completely different game. Takes about 20 minutes to play, quick set up and is well made. It's a stand alone game, and more for light fun then strategic gameplay (like Pandemic).

Erg toepasselijk thuisquarantaine vermaak! We spelen meestal op een avond een paar rondjes achter elkaar, want het klaarzetten en opruimen is wel wat werk met al die kleine onderdelen. Zeer geschikt voor mensen die niet tegen hun verlies kunnen.