Designers | Matt Leacock |
---|---|
Illustrators | Joshua Cappel (graphics and illustration), Régis Moulun (cover painting), Chris Quilliams (2013 edition) |
Publishers |
|
Publication | 2008 |
Genres | |
Players |
|
Setup time | 10 min |
Playing time | 45 min |
Chance | Moderate |
Skills | Tactics, cooperation, logic, logistics |
Pandemic is a cooperative board game designed by Matt Leacock and first published by Z-Man Games in the United States in 2008. [1] Pandemic is based on the premise that four diseases have broken out in the world, each threatening to wipe out a region. The game accommodates two to four players, each playing one of seven possible roles: dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher, operations expert, contingency planner, or quarantine specialist. Through the combined effort of all the players, the goal is to discover all four cures before any of several game-losing conditions are reached.
Three expansions, Pandemic: On the Brink, Pandemic: In the Lab, and Pandemic: State of Emergency, co-designed by Matt Leacock and Tom Lehmann, each add several new roles and special events, as well as rule adjustments to allow a fifth player or to play in teams. In addition, several rule expansions are included, referred to as "challenge kits". [2]
Pandemic is considered one of the most successful cooperative games that have reached mainstream market sales, condensing the type of deep strategy offered by earlier cooperative games, like Arkham Horror , into a game that can be played in a limited time by a broader range of players. [3]
Aside from expansions, several spinoffs have been released, most notably the Pandemic Legacy series, which encompasses three seasons (Season 1, Season 2 and Season 0), [4] which adds an ongoing storyline and permanent changes to the game. The Pandemic Legacy games have been received with critical acclaim, with Season 1 ranking 2nd place on BoardGameGeek out of approximately 22,000 games. [5] [6]
Leacock began designing the game in 2004 after realizing that competitive games were making for strained evenings with his wife. He based the Pandemic board game on the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak. [7]
The goal of Pandemic is for the players, in their randomly selected roles, to work cooperatively to stop the spread of four diseases [8] and cure them before a pandemic occurs. [9]
The game consists of a game board representing a network connecting 48 cities on a world map, two decks of cards (Player cards and Infection cards), four colors of cubes with 24 cubes each (each representing a different disease), six Research Stations, and a pawn for each role. The Player cards include cards with each city name (the same as those on the board); Event cards, which can be played at any time (except for some events in expansions) to give the players an advantage; and Epidemic cards. Infection cards consist of one card for each city on the board and a color of the disease that will start there.
At the start of the game, Infection cards are randomly drawn to populate the board with infections, from one to three cubes for a number of cities. Players start at Atlanta, the home of the Centers for Disease Control, and are given a random role and a number of Player cards based on the number of players.
On each player's turn, there are four actions to take up, consisting of any combination of the eight possible actions (some of which require cards, including curing). After taking their actions, the player draws two Player cards, reducing their hand down to seven cards if necessary. [9] If either draw is an Epidemic card, the player moves the Infection rate marker one space, draws a card from the bottom of the Infection deck and places three cubes on that city, puts that card into the Infection discard pile, reshuffles the discard pile, and places it back on top of the Infection deck (so that cards just drawn will come out again soon, unless another Epidemic follows shortly after). After the two Player cards are drawn (Epidemic or otherwise), a number of Infection cards are revealed (increasing throughout the game and corresponding to the Infection rate marker), and one cube of the indicated color is placed on each city drawn. Should a city already have three cubes and a new cube is to be added, an Outbreak occurs, and each interconnected city gains one cube of that color. This can create a chain reaction across many cities if several already have three disease cubes on them. After the infections are resolved, the player on the left has a turn.
The game is over if the players either win (by discovering the cure for all four diseases) or lose (by having 8 outbreaks, not having enough disease cubes of a color to place at any time, or not having enough Player cards when someone needs to draw). [10]
To aid in winning the game, players are given roles that allow them to alter the above rules. Five roles were introduced in the original core game, with 7 in the 2nd edition, but additional roles were added through the game's expansion. For example, the Medic is able to treat all cubes in a city with a single action or, once a cure for a disease has been found, can remove cubes of that color in the city he is in without spending an action, while the Scientist needs only four cards of the same color to discover the cure (instead of 5). The players are also helped by the Event cards, which allow for similar one-time actions, such as direct removal of a few disease cubes or immediate construction of a research station.
Pandemic requires all players to coordinate their efforts to win the game, specifically in gathering and sharing the necessary cards to discover cures while moving in coordination around the board and preventing Outbreaks in an efficient manner. However, a criticism of the game, dubbed "quarterbacking" is that there is a tendency for one player – the "alpha gamer" – to control the game. However, this is not limited to Pandemic – other cooperative board games can also suffer from quarterbacking. [11]
In 2009 the first official expansion was released, featuring several new roles, rules variants for a fifth player, new Special Event cards, and new challenges for the players.
There are eight Role Cards in this expansion, including a revised Operation Expert card and a Bio-Terrorist card, which pits one player against the rest of the team.
The challenges include a fifth disease, Mutation, which must be cured or not present at the game board when the players score for victory. Another challenge is the Virulent Strain, which makes one disease particularly deadly, replacing standard Epidemic cards with new ones. Each such card represents a special nasty effect that this particular epidemic has on the game play.
A second expansion was released in the summer of 2013, [12] with a new game board that allows players to research disease cures in a laboratory. The goal of this activity is the same as in the base game—to find cures for diseases—but this time with an added research aspect. Players can also use new characters and new special events included with the expansion. In addition, it added a one-player mode [13] and a team play mode, [14] in which teams of two compete to be the most effective team. [15] In the Lab requires both Pandemic and On the Brink to play, [16] and also requires replacement decks if using the first editions of Pandemic and On the Brink.
A third expansion, released in March 2015, adds new roles and events and three new challenges: The Hinterlands, where animals spread diseases to human; Emergency Events, in which unpredicted events have a negative effect on the game; and Superbug, where a fifth disease is introduced that cannot be treated. [17] [18] The expansion is compatible with the two previous expansions, but neither is required. The purple disease cubes included with State of Emergency make the set included in On the Brink redundant. [19]
Z-man Games has released free-to-download scenarios, with changes to the base game. Various scenarios are set to be released. [20] As of March 2017 [update] , scenarios Isolation [21] and Government Shutdown [22] have been published. [23]
A second edition of Pandemic was released in 2013, with new artwork and two new characters: the Contingency Planner and the Quarantine Specialist. [12] Some prints of the second edition had an error with a missing line between Lagos and São Paulo [24] and edge-to-edge printing on cards. [25]
A second edition of the On the Brink expansion was released in 2013. [12]
In July 2018 a 10-year Anniversary Edition was released. This edition includes detailed miniatures representing the individual roles, updated role cards, a larger board, and wooden disease cubes. All components contained in a metal box made to represent a first aid kit from the early 20th century. This edition is a remake of the original game, but includes additional room within the box to hold expansions. [26]
The Pandemic base replacement deck updates the first edition of Pandemic to its second edition. [27] It has been discontinued.
Compatibility pack #2 updates the first edition of the On the Brink expansion to its second edition. It has been discontinued.
The In the Lab expansion (released after the second editions of Pandemic and On the Brink) requires the second edition(s), or the first edition(s) along with its compatibility pack(s). [28]
Several spinoffs and alternate versions of Pandemic have been released by Z-Man Games, all of which are stand-alone games and not compatible with the original or each other, except for the Hot Zone series.
Released in 2014, Pandemic: The Cure is a dice-based game that uses a similar rule set to the original board game but strips down the number of cities and leaves the outcome of turns up to chance via dice rolls. [29] An expansion to the game, Pandemic: The Cure - Experimental Meds, was released in November 2016, adding a fifth disease and a new hot zone mechanism.
Pandemic: Contagion is a card-based version of the game, first released at Spiel 2014, that puts players in the role of the diseases and, unlike in the base game, the players do not cooperate. The object of the game is to eradicate the human race by spreading infections. [30]
Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, designed by Matt Leacock and Chuck Yager, was released at GenCon 2016. [38] [39] In this version of the game, players battle against occultists to prevent the summoning of the monster Cthulhu. The game was rebranded in 2019 as the first “Pandemic System Game”, with the title changed to just Reign of Cthulhu. [40]
Pandemic Survival is not a single game, but instead a series of separate historical games covering a local area instead of the whole globe. [41] They were originally intended to be limited edition alternate games, celebrating the location of each year’s Pandemic Championship by setting the game in that region and partnering Leacock with a local game designer. This led to some brand confusion, and the idea was eventually abandoned in favour of the “Pandemic System” label. [40]
Pandemic: Rapid Response is a real-time cooperative game set in the Pandemic universe, released in 2019 and designed by Kane Klenko. [45] In Rapid Response, players take on the role of an international crisis response team tasked with delivering essential supplies to cities affected by natural disasters. [45] Players roll dice and allocate the results to various actions, including producing resources, piloting the plane towards affected cities, recycling the waste created by producing resources, and dropping off finished supplies in the cities that need them. [45] The game takes place in real time, with the game briefly pausing and a new city being added after a two-minute timer expires. [45] Players win by delivering relief to all cities and lose by running out of time or creating too much waste. [45]
The Hot Zone games are streamlined quicker variants of Pandemic featuring smaller maps of one section of the world, miniature cards, and just three diseases. Each game has different player roles and event cards, and a unique type of challenge cards used to increase difficulty. All of these can be mixed and matched between games in the series.
In 2019, Z-Man Games rebranded Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu as the first in a series of Pandemic spin-offs to use a new “Pandemic System” label. This was to make it clearer that a game was based on the systems of Pandemic, but was a standalone game in its own right. [40] As well as new editions of the Survival Series games Iberia and Fall of Rome, there have also been licensed games not designed by Matt Leacock (though he is credited as the designer of Pandemic).
The New Scientist listed Pandemic as one of "9 of the best board games to play for fans of science and tech". [50] The game has been met with positive critical and commercial reviews including winning the 2009 Golden Geek Best Family Board Game [51] and nominated for the 2009 Spiel des Jahres. [52] Pandemic has been described as a "modern classic" with a "simple and compelling" design by Ars Technica . [53] The Guardian also praised the theme, stating that "Sam Illingworth has used [Pandemic: Iberia] to help teach schoolchildren about the different causes of disease and the importance of water purification", and suggests that it has “a brilliant central message that it’s not just one scientist in a lab, fighting disease, it’s lots of people working together”. [54] A review from the Pyramid also praised the cooperative nature of the game. [55] Pandemic was commercially successful, with approximately two million copies sold, and its popularity also increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. [56] [57]
The Pandemic Legacy games have also received critical acclaim. Season 1 has been described as a "leap forward in modern board game design", [58] and "the best board game ever created", [6] [33] and is the second highest rated board game of all time on the influential BoardGameGeek website, having occupied the highest rank for several years. [5] [6] [59] The Guardian has claimed that "this may be the best board game ever created", [60] BoardGameTheories stresses that its strategic depth is increased significantly because players have to balance the interest of the current game with that of the overall campaign while making decisions, [61] and Board Games Land described the game as "smart, dramatic and thematic, designed to create those memorable moments full of emotional highs and lows only a handful board games can match". [62] Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 and Pandemic Legacy Season 0 have also been met with critical success, with The Opinionated Gamers describing the discovery system as 'brilliant' and the gameplay to be "the best version of Pandemic I’ve played". [63] Ars Technica also praised the game's legacy format as 'immeasurably satisfying and stating that the "clever innovations boost almost every aspect of play". [64] Pandemic Legacy Season 2 was awarded five stars by Board Game Quest, with its legacy campaign praised as allowing "a level of engagement that isn’t available in other games". [65] Furthermore, Pandemic Legacy Season 0 has also been received positively, described as a '"flawless finale" [66] Both of the subsequent seasons rank among the top 100 games of all time on BoardGameGeek. [67]
In 2018, The New Zealand Herald noted that Pandemic's map does not include New Zealand, a recurrent phenomenon in world maps. [68]
Year | Award | Category | Work | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2009 | Origins Award | Best Board Game | Pandemic | Won | [70] |
GAMES Magazine | Best new family game | Won | [71] | ||
Golden Geek Award | Best Family Board Game | Won | [72] | ||
Best Board Game Expansion | Pandemic: On the Brink | Won | [73] | ||
2015 | Game of the Year | Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 | Won | [74] [75] | |
Best Thematic Board Game | Won | [76] | |||
Best Strategy Board Game | Won | [77] | |||
Best Innovative Board Game | Won | [78] | |||
Cardboard Republic | Immersionist Laurel Winner | Won | [79] | ||
2016 | SXSW | Tabletop Game of the Year | Won | [80] | |
Dragon Awards | Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game | Won | [81] | ||
As d'Or | The Golden Ace Expert (French : L'As d'Or Expert) | Won | [82] | ||
In 2013, an iOS version entitled Pandemic: The Board Game was released by Asmodee Digital. [83] The digital game was ported to PC five years later and released via Steam. [84] As of January 2022, Pandemic is no longer purchasable on Steam. [85]
A novel based on the game will be published by Aconyte Books and written by Amanda Bridgeman. [86]
Leacock has designed several other games using gameplay elements similar to Pandemic, most notably the Forbidden series of family games published by Gamewright Games. These include Forbidden Island (2010), Forbidden Desert (2013), Forbidden Skies (2018) and the upcoming Forbidden Jungle (2023). He also designed the Thunderbirds board game in 2015, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1960s television series and published by Modiphius Entertainment. He is currently working with Matteo Menapace on Daybreak , a tabletop game about the global response to climate change, to be published by CMYK. [87]
Risk is a strategy board game of diplomacy, conflict and conquest for two to six players. The standard version is played on a board depicting a political map of the world, divided into 42 territories, which are grouped into six continents. Turns rotate among players who control armies of playing pieces with which they attempt to capture territories from other players, with results determined by dice rolls. Players may form and dissolve alliances during the course of the game. The goal of the game is to occupy every territory on the board and, in doing so, eliminate the other players. The game can be lengthy, requiring several hours to multiple days to finish. European versions are structured so that each player has a limited "secret mission" objective that shortens the game.
Ticket to Ride is a series of turn-based strategy railway-themed Eurogames designed by Alan R. Moon, the first of which was released in 2004 by Days of Wonder. As of 2024, 18 million copies of the game have been sold worldwide and it has been translated into 33 languages. Days of Wonder has released electronic versions of the board games in the series, as well as Ticket to Ride-themed card games and puzzles.
Cooperative board games are board games in which players work together to achieve a common goal rather than competing against each other. Either the players win the game by reaching a predetermined objective, or all players lose the game, often by not reaching the objective before a certain event ends the game.
Betrayal at House on the Hill is a board game published by Avalon Hill in 2004, designed by Bruce Glassco and developed by Rob Daviau, Bill McQuillan, Mike Selinker, and Teeuwynn Woodruff. Players all begin as allies exploring a haunted house filled with dangers, traps, items, and omens. As players journey to new parts of the mansion, room tiles are chosen at random and placed on the game board; this means that the game is different each session. Eventually the "haunt" begins, with the nature and plot of this session's ghost story revealed; one player usually "betrays" the others and takes the side of the ghosts, monsters, or other enemies, while the remaining players collaborate to defeat them.
Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a two to five player high fantasy dungeon crawl published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2005. Descent was designed and produced by Kevin Wilson. The game is based on an improved version of the mechanics of FFG's licensed Doom: The Boardgame. In Descent, players take the roles of adventurers who delve into underground complexes in search of treasure. One player takes the role of the Overlord, who controls the enemies and plays cards to hinder the hero players. Descent differs from other games in the genre in that the Overlord player's goal is to win by exhausting the other players of victory points, rather than merely to facilitate play. The Overlord's resources are limited by the rules of the game, which require them to hoard and expend "threat" points, which are generated in response to the hero players' actions, in order to hamper the other players and to bring out additional monsters to defeat them. This mechanism is very much reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings when playing with the Sauron optional expansion.
Ted Alspach is an American game designer and CEO of Bezier Games, Inc. He is best known as the designer of Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Suburbia, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Ultimate Werewolf, and Werewords. Alspach is also one of the world's leading experts on Adobe Illustrator. He served as its Group Product Manager for several releases and published 18 books on it over the course of 20 years.
Twilight Struggle: The Cold War, 1945–1989 is a board game for two players, published by GMT Games in 2005. Players are the United States and Soviet Union contesting each other's influence on the world map by using cards that correspond to historical events. The first game designed by Ananda Gupta and Jason Matthews, they intended it to be a quick-playing alternative to more complex card-driven wargames.
Z-Man Games is an American board game company, incorporated in 1999. It was named after its founder, Zev Shlasinger. The company is known for their Pandemic series of board games, as well as being the sole publisher for the English editions of popular Eurogames, such as Carcassonne and Terra Mystica.
Bézier Games, Inc. is a privately owned American tabletop game publisher, known by hobby gamers for Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Suburbia, and known to casual gamers for the One Night Ultimate Werewolf series, Werewords, the Silver series, and Ultimate Werewolf. It was founded in San Jose, California in 2006 by Ted Alspach upon publication of Start Player. In 2013, the company was renamed Bézier Games, Inc. when it incorporated. The company moved to Louisville, Tennessee in 2016 run by Ted & Toni Alspach.
Catan, previously known as The Settlers of Catan or simply Settlers, is a multiplayer board game designed by Klaus Teuber. It was first published in 1995 in Germany by Franckh-Kosmos Verlag (Kosmos) as Die Siedler von Catan. Players take on the roles of settlers, each attempting to build and develop holdings while trading and acquiring resources. Players gain victory points as their settlements grow and the first to reach a set number of victory points, typically 10, wins. The game and its many expansions are also published by Catan Studio, Filosofia, GP, Inc., 999 Games, Κάισσα (Káissa), and Devir. Upon its release, The Settlers of Catan became one of the first Eurogames to achieve popularity outside Europe. As of 2020, more than 32 million copies in 40 languages had been sold.
Village is a historical-themed euro-style board game with a focus on resource management for 2-4 players, released in 2011. It is designed by Inka Brand and Markus Brand.
Matt Leacock is an American board game designer, most known for cooperative games such as Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert.
SeaFall is a board game designed by Rob Daviau and published in 2016 by Plaid Hat Games. SeaFall is a game of colonial era exploration which uses a legacy format, meaning the board and components change during each game, creating a different game each time and a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The game is played by 3–5 players, each of whom takes on the role of a province taking to the seas after a long dark age. Players explore the game board with their ships, revealing islands and other surprises. The game contains 430 entries in a Captain's Booke, a journal which is read in sections when players trigger in-game events called milestones. The story contains about 15 games' worth of content, with each game taking about two hours to play.
Love Letter is a card game introduced in May 2012 and designed by Seiji Kanai. Its first English-language edition was produced in the United States by Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) until 2018, when Love Letter was acquired by Z-Man Games.
Scythe is a board game for one to five players designed by Jamey Stegmaier and published by Stonemaier Games in 2016. Set in an alternative history version of 1920s Europe, players control factions that produce resources, develop economic infrastructure, and use dieselpunk combat mechs to engage in combat and control territories. Players take up to two actions per turn using individual player boards, and the game proceeds until one player has earned six achievements. At this point, the players receive coins for the achievements they have attained and the territories they control, and the player with the most coins is declared the winner.
A legacy game is a variant of tabletop board games in which the game itself is designed, through various mechanics, to change permanently over the course of a series of sessions.
Terraforming Mars is a board game for 1 to 5 players designed by Jacob Fryxelius and published by FryxGames in 2016, and thereafter by 12 others, including Stronghold Games. In Terraforming Mars, players take the role of corporations working together to terraform the planet Mars by raising the temperature, adding oxygen to the atmosphere, covering the planet's surface with water and creating plant and animal life. The game incorporates elements of resource management, engine building, and strategic planning. Players compete to earn the most victory points, which are measured by their contribution to terraforming and to human infrastructure. These goals are achieved by collecting income and resources which allow them to play various projects, represented by cards that increase their income or resources, build infrastructure, or directly contribute to terraforming the planet. The game was received positively by fans and critics, and received numerous awards.
Rob Daviau is an American game designer known for creating legacy board gaming.
Everdell is a board game for 1 to 4 players designed by James Wilson and published by Starling Games in 2018. In the game, players take the role of forest animals building a city over four seasons by collecting resources, recruiting workers, and constructing buildings. The game has been well regarded by reviewers, with its art and components receiving strong praise.
Mage Knight Board Game is a cooperative board game for 1 to 4 players designed by Vlaada Chvátil and released in November 2011. It is based on the related collectable miniatures game, Mage Knight. It has been rated as one of the top single player board games.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)