Pandemic: A Cooperative Board Game

While there's nothing quite like some friendly competition around the table, sometimes it's better for everyone to be on the same team for a while. Instead of being player vs. player, it's players vs. rules, a gaming situation in which the only way to win is to communicate with your friends. One of the best co-op board games out today is a relatively new title called Pandemic.

Pandemic was created by Matt Leacock and published by Z-Man Games just last year. It puts up to four players in one of five different roles with the goal of curing four unnamed diseases that break out in various cities around the world. A series of event cards act as a sort of randomized "fifth player" that keeps participants on their toes with a steadily mounting level difficulty. Event cards place new disease cubes in random cities or even unleash a dreaded outbreak that causes diseases from heavily infected cities to "pop" and spread to all nearby cities.

The genius of Pandemic is how each role depends on all the others in order to be effective on the board. The Medic character, for example, can treat diseased cities with incredible efficiency, but he or she would be little more than a wandering pawn without the mobility provided by the Dispatcher or the improved medicine created by the Researcher. If even one player ignores the group strategy and goes for personal glory, it's almost certain that the game will end badly.

To that end, at least half of Pandemic is spent deliberating actions in between turns. It's particularly satisfying to make a master plan that thinks several turns ahead, but it's also thrilling to have to alter that plan as new, unexpected events create new crises. The ducking and weaving of this process flows organically throughout the game. There are down times when the whole world isn't in a panic, especially if the team plays smart. It's less about distinct rounds or stages and more about the most recent influx of yellow cubes into South America or the effort to contain a wave of blue in Europe.

Players win Pandemic when they successfully develop a cure for all four diseases. This involves collecting and exchanging cards, building research stations and making tough sacrifices for a chance at long-term success. If a single disease reaches pandemic exposure, meaning all available cubes are on the board, it's considered a loss. There are other, less likely losing conditions, like accruing eight outbreaks or running out of Player Cards.

Though there is a fair bit of randomness to Pandemic, it is still very much a skill-based game. Each turn provides a wide variety of options and the right move isn't always obvious. A fresh group of players should expect to lose a few games before getting the hang of the system, but once they do it is tremendously entertaining.

Recently, Matt Leacock and Tom Lehmann released an expansion to Pandemic called On the Brink that adds a wide variety of content, including new roles, new event cards and specific "challenge kits" to add some extra spice to the original game. Pandemic certainly lends itself to replay, so the extra content is a must-have for dedicated players.

Pandemic is an all-around excellent board game that breaks the competition mold and is easy to jump into as a total newbie. Its unique premise, elegant design and flawless execution make it one of the finest titles on the shelves today.