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Pandemic

When you don’t have enough people show up for your weekly role playing game what is a game master to do? Pull out a board game, thats what!

Just last week this happened to me. With not enough people to play our normal RPG so I ended up pulled out a board game I had not yet played. The game was Pandemic and let me tell you this game was FUN!

You and up to 3 others players as a team to take out diseases that have broken out all around the world. You can play as a dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher or operations expert. The odds are staked against you from the beginning and the longer you play the harder the game gets. The whole time we played everyone at the table was talking strategies and planning. Everyone was trying to help each other out. Each turn yielded the possibility of pulling an Epidemic card that would infect the world even worse than it already was. Just when you think you have one disease licked you are face with it popping up else where in the world, or worse yet, you become so focused on taking out one disease that a different diseases has become unstoppable.

You can win at Pandemic. It is possible, but my friends and I where unsuccessful. At the end of the first game we talked for about ten minutes about how we could improve our strategies and we played the game again. When we lost the second game we talked a long time about what we could do differently next time. It was a lot of fun and a good game to have in my library.

Pandemic is a 2 to 4 person game with suggested ages of 10 years old and up. Playing time for us was about 40 minutes each game and I spent about $35.00 on it.

Have you played Pandemic? Leave me some comments on what you thought about this game.

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Youseph

29-year-old working as a facility manager and living on the final frontier in Juneau, Alaska. Writing, reading, computers, drumming and playing some Dungeon & Dragons top my interest.

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5 comments

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Anonymous

I have to agree, Pandemic is an awesome game although it may be a bit on the hard side if you play it for the first time. I think the first time I played it, we failed half a dozen times in a row but that didn't keep us from trying again.
The cooperative nature of the gameplay is a welcome change from all that competitive games out there.

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Cassey

Pandenmic is lots of fun, and even better with the expansion 🙂

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Ameron

My social circle has recently expended to included gamers who don’t like RPGs but love board games. Needless to say I’ve discovered a lot of new games. I picked up Pandemic about a year ago and it’s quickly becoming one of my favourites. Just as you described, we often play a quick game (usually loosing) and then discuss strategies on how to improve. The cooperative nature of the game really builds teamwork without loosing the competitive edge that I enjoy in any game.

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Tyler

Pandemic's a fun board game to play, for the most part. It gets a little tedious when you find yourself playing with someone with a talent for number-crunching. They can run the board, then announce "Oh, we've lost" turns before it happens.

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morlockhq

Pandemic's great. I highly recommend the On the Brink expansion to increase the player count to 5 and to shore up the Operations role's abilities. I haven't played the base game enough to need to rules for mutant and virulent strains or the need for legendary difficulty yet, but Pandemic has so much replay value that I plan to keep it as part of my collection for a long time to come.

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