Buy Pandemic

With those words, we knew we were in for an interesting night. I had done plenty of personal research before taking a bite out of boardgaming. As a confessed die-hard video gamer, and a vicious competitor, board games never did it for me. The heads-up multiplayer cutthroat style always left me a little wanting for something either more fun or at the very least, "less competitive." Pandemic, billed as a fully cooperative game, seemed to fit the bill.

The rules came neatly printed on an 8 page full color pamphlet. Setting up the game required some careful reading, but was relatively painless. With a couple of well shuffled decks, the original "disease cubes" in place, our intrepid two man team set out to save the world.

Like most turn based games, there's a lot of cross-talk and strategy that goes into each move. Once the general concepts were grasped, however, board movement and action selection were very swift. The mechanics of the game do a wonderful job of creating tension. Epidemics -- the critical event that drives the threat and tension of Pandemic -- come at fairly pre-set times. Once an Epidemic hits, all of the disease cards that were played to that point get reshuffled and go back on top of the deck. This immediately creates rising tension, as you know what's going to happen, and do your best, as a team, to stop it.

Even with only two players, not enough can be said about the cooperative element. Every character can, in some way, feel essential to the core game and makes each player feel special -- that they have a direct ability to contribute. While my friend was handling strategy and deployment, I was hustling around the world curing cities to stop future outbreaks. You're always keeping one step ahead of the next outbreak -- when a disease hits critical mass in a city and then spreads the infection to surrounding cities.

After an hour (given that the first fifteen minutes were spent making sure we knew what was going on, the target time for experienced gamers is dead on) we had everything under control. We had eradicated both the 'blue' and 'yellow' strains, and noticed immediately the in-game reward -- once you eradicate a disease, no new cubes of that type may be played, which limits the threat you face, and those cards remain in the deck. It gives you a little breathing room. That left us with the Black and Red strains, and we had found the cure for the black strain.

Then, we reshuffled the player deck, but didn't redistribute the Epidemic cards in the correct order. Drawing two epidemics back to back, all of India immediately succumbed to the strain, and collapsed under a pile of black cubes. Despite having lost out first attempt, probably to a rules bit that we couldn't find -- no where did we see how to 'reshuffle' the player deck -- the game was remarkably fun and engaging.

It is easy to learn, there are no heavy nuances to master, but little intracies that will make you more successful as you go on. Please review the rules carefully, to avoid common pitfalls, and know that you may not win, but you will have a pretty great time. If I were to give one piece of advice:

* Remember to populate the board fully with disease counters,
* That you only draw AFTER your turn, and
* Remember to always take an Infection Phase

Well worth the purchase.Get more detail about Pandemic.