Inoculation! Immunization! Annihilation! Let's Play Pandemic!

*cough* Ahem. *assumes Movie Trailer Guy voice* In a world where an ancient disease runs rampant, and society is thrown into chaos, four doctors must find the cure... or face worldwide infection. Four doctors. Four viruses. One cure. Pandemic. Abe Winthop promises, “...more explosions than you've ever seen occur during surgery...” Cheryl Baker calls it, “...an action-packed thrill ride... not to be missed...” This summer, take two of these, and if tomorrow comes, call me in the morning. Pandemic. Not even Madagascar is safe.

Let's Play Pandemic!

And if you have any doubt about this being the most exciting board game you ever read about me playing, just take a look at this exciting description of the game from the manual!

How could the stakes be higher? It is of the utmost importance to get that team assembled, and fast, before the world suffers a grisly fate.

I was hoping you all can help with that.


There are five character roles in the base game of Pandemic, which is what I will be playing. The game is only built for four doctors, and you can't double up on roles. That means that one role must be left out. Which one? Well, you'll have to let me know. Let's see what our options are.

From these roles we must pick four daring doctors to combat this horrible threat. But a doctor is not just a role. Oh no. They're people, with their own agendas, lives, and background. They are, say, characters in the, say, movie-like story of the gameplay you're about to witness. Robert needs to choose his crack team of doctors, but without dossiers, he has nothing to look at.

Basically, I want your suggestions about who the heroes of our ensemble cast are going to be. What kind of people are they? What are their likes and dislikes? What are their histories? Are there potentials for inter-team romance or inter-team conflict? You don't need to write a story (unless you want to! Writing stories is fun!) but if you have any vague, cool ideas, throw them out! It's only going to help the team out once they get to the nitty gritty of solving this global crisis. And, of course, gameplay-wise, please get in your votes for what roles I should be using. Hell, tie in the roles with the background information to sell a complete package!

The story may have said ASAP, but you have a little while. Before the story continues, we're going to dive deep into the mechanics of the game, and I'll show you exactly the kind of threat we're up against. Until that happens, though, you might want to stock up on hand sanitizer. You don't want to be part of the problem, do you?

FUCK YES

Ditch the Operations Expert.

Leave out the scientist. Without him you'll be forced to resolve everything with your FISTS.

I don't know how much you know about Operations (I'm an Expert), but we should totally ditch that guy. That one. He's right over there.

By which I mean the Dispatcher.

Aww. I was hoping this was gonna be Pandemic 2. Then again, that game's small enough to show up in the Microgames thread. So instead of infecting the whole world and spouting meme-tastic curses regarding Madagascar, we get... um, the other side of the whole man vs. germs conflict? I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

I'll have to bow out on suggestions. I tend to work better in games where you control the pandemic itself.

We need a Medic, a Scientist, a Researcher, and an Ops Expert. Screw the Dispatcher!

I would write you a long and drawn out tale for your backstory, one filled with laughter, thrills and tears, but upon reflection, I think I can sum it up like so.

Four experts, with four different specialties. All called upon to help save life, and civilization, as we know it.

One of them doesn't actually have a medical degree.

Poetfox, I just recently picked up a copy of Arkham Horror based on your LP of it. I'm excited!

For the role selection: science is for chumps.

and by her solo LP, poetfox explains all of my issues with this otherwise interesting game. It's multiplayer, but i don't need to be there. You can play my turn and get the optimal result without me even in the same room. and that sort of defeats the purpose of sitting down and playing anything.

You're supposed to be dispatching germs, not people. Ditch the Dispatcher.

Well, it's time to finally get to the part of the game nearest and dearest to my heart: Rules! But first, let's set up the game.



Here's the board! And here's a diagram of the board in case my photography sucks, which it probably does.



As you can see, this game covers the entire world! It's also set up with a whole lot of arrows so that the cities don't actually look like they are where they are in reality. But that's okay, it kind of makes sense. This is where our brave and daring doctors will be doing battle... MEDICAL battle.



Here are the pieces we will be using to attempt to save the world. The pawns in the back, obviously, are our doctors. They certainly look handsome, sexy, and brave. Unfortunately, one of them is going to have to sit out. I'm not going to start playing quite yet, so you still have some time to influence who sits out, and who these characters are! Please do get that in. Below them are the research stations. As you can tell, we can only build a finite number, and one of those research stations starts in Atlanta, home of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Then we have the cures for the diseases, the very thing our doctors are questing for! And below them are bags of disease cubes. These are used to show how much of the population is sick in a given city. If any color of these cubes run out, and we need another, the game is lost.

There are also two decks of cards in this game. Only two is depressing, I know, considering how many cards there could be, but let's look at them anyway.



This is the infection deck. This shows us where to infect every turn. Below that is the Infection Rate (which I put the wrong marker on for this picture, not that it particularly matters). This tells us how many cards to flip up each time we have to infect. Currently, it's at 2, but as you can see, it will go up as the game goes on. It's a race against time! The card itself simply shows a city and what color virus to infect it with. Each city is one of the four colors, and always gets infected with that color. However, through Outbreaks, to be explained later, it's possible that diseases of other colors could infect those cities.



The other deck of cards is the player deck. This deck is a double-edged sword. It contains the cards our doctors need to find cures, move around the map, and win the game, but it also contains Epidemic cards, which make the global pandemic even worse when drawn. You can see one of the common location cards in the picture. Once again, it shows a location and a color of virus. This color is basically a suit, and one needs 5 cards of the same color (Or 4, if you're a scientist) to find a cure for that color disease. The location on the card is also important, but we'll get to that when we talk about actions.



The other main feature of the board is the Outbreak counter. An outbreak occurs any time a city with 3 infection cubes on it would have another infection cube added. Instead of adding that fourth cube, you instead give every connected city a cube, and up the Outbreak counter. This can cause chain reactions of outbreaks! That's why it's very important to get people to cure cities with 3 cubes on it. If the Outbreak counter fills up, the game is lost.

Well, now that we know the parts, let's get set up. First, I shuffle the two decks, and I draw two player cards for each doctor. This number would be higher if we were playing with less players, but since we're going with all four doctors, they only get two cards. Who gets what hand? What are they? I'm sure the doctors will let us know when they join the team next update. In any case, after I deal out these cards, then I prepare the Epidemics.



The game can be tailored in difficulty based on the number of Epidemic cards you include. We're going to be playing at “Normal” difficulty, which uses 5 Epidemic cards. It's important to have them evenly dispersed throughout the deck, so what you do is you separate the shuffled deck into five parts. Adding an Epidemic card to each part, you then shuffle each section individually, then stack the five parts up to form the complete deck. This keeps the Epidemics happening at a fairly constant rate, although there's still some randomness to contend with.



We then infect the board for the start of the game. We do this by drawing three groups of three infection cards. The first three start with three disease cubes. The second three get two cubes, and the last three get one. Take a good look at these cards and cities, because you're going to be seeing them a lot, due to how Epidemics work. These are the key areas in which are doctors are going to be working.



In any case, adding the cubes to the board looks like this. Here's the Americas, all nice and infected. You can also see the research laboratory on Atlanta in this picture. It's actually a nice thing that Atlanta is one of the centers of infection, as it'll be really easy to access and cure, since our base is there. That'll make things easier.

And that's it! Besides putting the doctors on the board, the game is ready to go. Let's take a look at the current board position.



This is the situation. Will our brilliant medical professionals be able to deal with this in time? We'll see.

More important, though, how will they be dealing with it? Before we go, let's talk about how a turn goes.

Each turn consists of three steps.
1)Take Four Actions
2)Draw 2 Player Cards
3)Take on the role of the Infector

Each Doctor gets four actions a turn, which they can spend however they like. There's no particular order in which you have to take the actions, but you do have to pick from this list!



The game separates actions between “Basic” and “Special,” which is kind of silly. I feel like it would be better organized as “Movement” and “Other.” Or something like that.

Anyway, Basic actions are the ways you can move. You can move from one city to a connecting city for one action. You can discard a card from your hand to fly to the city listed on the card for an action. You can discard the card of the city you are in to fly to any city for an action. Finally, you can move from one research station to another for one action. Thus, you can see why Research stations are so important. They let you move about the world without using cards in hand, which are a valuable resource.

The other actions include building a research station by discarding a card of a city while in that city. Operations Experts don't have to discard the card, but it still costs an action. When in a research center, any doctor can discard five cards of the same color to discover the cure for that color. Once all four cures are discovered, the game is won! A doctor can also share knowledge for an action to give one card of the city which they are in to another doctor who is in that city. The researcher can trade any card, however, but it still costs an action. Most importantly, though, any doctor can cure for one action. This will be the majority of what the doctors do during their turns. Curing removes a disease cube from the current space. You can do specific actions multiple times a turn, so a doctor could move to a city and then use 3 actions to remove all disease from it. Of course, the Medic would only have to use one action for that. Also, if you have the cure for the disease on the space, it only costs one action to remove all cubes, or no actions, if you're a Medic.

Doctors can also pass, and choose not to use an action or actions, but that's rarely a good idea.

The good doctor, after taking all of their actions, then draws 2 player cards. If any are Epidemics, they have to be shown immediately, and they have to resolve the Epidemic. Otherwise, they have two more cards. Huzzah!

Then, the doctor has to play the infector. They flip over a number of infection cards equal to the current infection rate, and add one disease cube to each city pictured. If this causes Outbreaks, they also resolve those before moving forward. Then it's the next doctor's turn.

And... that's the rules! Besides how Epidemics work, which I'll explain the first time we have one. Now that you know what we're up against, it'll soon be time to pick the story back up and move onward toward oblivion or salvation! Any last requests? Get them in. The game will start in earnest soon!

I think you should play without the Medic, since the game is tougher without his god-like healing abilities.

Also, you should play with the Expansion, since there are a bunch of new roles, all of which are awesome, and they tweak the Operations Expert to be more useful.


And Shivam's right in that you can technically play by yourself, but the game is what you make of it - if you have four people all eager to collaborate and debate what needs to take priority, it's fun. If you're content to sit back and let others hash it out, you'll be bored and feel like they're playing for you. It isn't for everybody.

Thank you Poetfox. This is one of my favorite coop boardgames, up there with Arkham Horror, Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Space Alert (all awesome games in this vein). And for the record, your AH LP is how I discovered this site.

I vote you play without the Scientist, mostly because I love the OpEx (even though I admit he's the worst of the original 5). Lot's of research stations will be incredibly useful. Also, for some reason I've always imagined the Dispatcher as a Lain-like character, holing up in the back of a van somewhere, surrounded by computers hooked into every major server on Earth. S/he knows everything, and whatever is unknown can be found out. (I admit, the picture has something to do with that)