Pandemic and On the Brink Review (Z-Man Games)
Cooperative games are ones that I find myself drawn to for whatever reason. Part of the appeal I feel is because I trick myself to thinking that the lack of competition between players will get some of my very casual gamer friends to play. The other easy justification is often co-op games can be played solitaire without much in the way of rule changes or things like that. You just have to take on the roll of a few players by yourself. Pandemic appeared to be a game that would deliver a solitaire puzzle as well as be simple enough to allow my casual gamer friends to play. Both of which the game delivered on to an extent.
In Pandemic players become an emergency response specialist team sent to control sudden outbreaks of various diseases that are breaking out at pandemic levels (hence the name) world wide. The game contains a map of the world with various cities called out and lines which denote travel routes (for both the players and the diseases). Some wooden cubes which represent the viruses, diseases are of four different colors which are isolated by regions. For example the US and Europe are afflicted by the blue cubes, the Middle East by black cubes, South America and Africa by yellow cubes and Asia by red cubes. In addition to the disease cubes, there are pawns for the players and two decks of cards. The two decks of cards form the bulk of play.
The first deck forms the Infection Deck. This is just a deck with all the cities and when a card is required to be drawn from this deck the top card is flipped and a cube of the proper color is placed in that city. What is interesting about this deck of cards is that there are points in the game when the discards need to be shuffled (prior to the deck being exhausted). These are shuffled and placed on the top of the draw deck so what happens is you have the same cities popping up over and over again which I thought was a neat little mechanic to detail how a city, once infected, has a difficult time of eradicating the virus from the population.
The second deck is the player deck which contains yet another set of city cards in their respective colors but also has a few special event cards as well as the dreaded Epidemic Cards. Prior to play this deck is stacked to a certain degree. After players are dealt their initial starting hand the deck is divided into equal piles (the number of piles depends on the “difficulty level” being played with more decks being harder). To these decks one Epidemic Card is mixed in. Each deck is then shuffled individually and then stacked on top of each other to form one overall deck. The Epidemic Cards in effect becomes the game clock since the players must satisfy the winning conditions prior to the last card being drawn, and if they don’t they lose as the world succumbs to virus outbreaks of horrendous and devastating scales. Epidemic Cards are also the trigger for that neat little mechanic where the Infection Deck has the discards shuffled and placed on top of that deck.
When I initially bought the game I was having a blast with the game and I really thought it was the cat’s pajamas. It combined simple gameplay with some interesting little twists and was pretty thematic. The rules were simple and easy to teach and for new players to grasp. But after a while it started to lose some of that shine. Each game felt like they were just the same thing over and over again which in reality it was. The only real variation were the roles that players had. As each role has a different bonus they can provide the team, the roles drawn was about the only true variety. Then as players became accustomed to the roles they fell into predictable patterns. Overall the it got a little stale.
On the Brink was then released which introduced new roles for the players to use as well as Virulent Strain which makes one of the disease colors react and grow in different ways as well as the Mutation Challenge which adds in a fifth color (purple) which behaves in a different manor than the other four colors. On the Brink added variety, variation and some unpredictability. What was once getting stale, started to have some differences from game to game. The new roles that were added makes a wide possibility of potential teams with each team having some strengths and weaknesses. The changes to the behaviors of the diseases added some nice twists. In other words to me the game felt complete when playing with On the Brink. Also included in OtB is the BioTerrorist option which has one person running around the board via hidden map setting off bio-chemical weapons in various cities and generally causing havoc. I haven’t had the opportunity to play with this variant yet but I do look forward to when the opportunity presents itself.
Pandemic though is a tough game for me to recommend, especially since it doesn’t feel complete unless you have OtB. I love the simple and easy to grasp rules, but the gameplay at first feels a little opaque and puzzle like. To a new player, the rules aren’t intuitive and often I felt like they were looking to me and my past experience with the game to make their choices for them. Once I thought this game would have mass appeal, but as time wore on I see that this just isn’t the case. In my opinion the game is fun, but not great. What I feel the game really lacks is those moments of disbelief or those moments of exuberance where things go horribly wrong or where the odds are defied causing hoots and hollers in excitement or disbelief, the game just felt level even though the tension builds through the game - It is usually in those moments where I personally derive the most fun from games and unfortunately Pandemic just lacks those moments. It is one of those games where you should try it at least once because it may be the perfect game, or it could just be boring and procedural depending on your preferences.
Rating: 3 out of 5 (base game); 3.5 out of 5 (with expansion)
‘Til Next time - Happy Gaming
LvT
