Games Like Pandemic 2? The 127 Latest Answer

cooperative board game

Pandemic is a cooperative board game designed by Matt Leacock and first published in the US by Z-Man Games 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, emergency planner or quarantine specialist. Through the combined effort of all players, the goal is to discover all four cures before one of several game-losing conditions is met.

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 for a fifth player Or play in teams. In addition, several rule extensions called “challenge kits” are included.[2]

Pandemic is considered one of the most successful co-op games to hit mainstream market sales, condensing the kind of deep strategy that previous co-op games like Arkham Horror offered into a game that could be played by a broader range in a limited amount of time can be played by players.[3]

Aside from expansions, several spinoffs have been released, most notably the Pandemic Legacy series, which spans three seasons (Season 1, Season 2, and Season 0),[4] which adds an ongoing storyline and lasting changes to the game. The Pandemic Legacy games have received critical acclaim, with Season 1 being ranked 2nd out of about 22,000 games on BoardGameGeek.[5][6]

Leacock began developing the game in 2004 after realizing that competitive gaming made for tense evenings with his wife. He based it on the SARS outbreak of 2002-2004.[7]

Gameplay[edit]

The Pandemic game board visualized as a graphic

The goal of Pandemic is for players to work cooperatively in their randomly chosen roles to stop the spread of four diseases[8] and cure them before a pandemic strikes.[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-colored dice with 24 dice each (each representing a different disease), six research stations, and a pawn for every role. The player cards contain cards with each city name (the same as on the board); Event cards that can be played at any time (except for some events in expansions) to give players an advantage; and epidemic cards. Infection cards consist of a card for each city on the board and a color of the disease that will start there.

At the beginning of the game, infection cards are randomly drawn to fill the game board with infections, from 1 to 3 dice for a range of cities. Players begin in Atlanta, home of the Centers for Disease Control, and are given a random role and number of player cards based on the number of players.

game setup

On each player’s turn, 4 actions must be taken, consisting of any combination of the 8 possible actions (some of which require cards, including healing). After the player has performed his actions, he draws two player cards and reduces his hand to seven cards if necessary.[9] If one of the epidemic cards drawn 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 dice on that city, places that card on the infection discard pile, shuffles the discard pile, and discards it back on top of the Infection deck (so cards just drawn will come out again soon, unless another epidemic follows shortly thereafter). After the two player cards have been drawn (epidemic or otherwise), a number of infection cards are revealed (increasing throughout the game and equal to the infection rate marker) and a die of the indicated color is placed on each drawn city. If a city already has three cubes and a new cube is about to be added, an eruption occurs and each connected city gets a cube of that color. This can cause a chain reaction across many cities if several already have three disease dice on them. After the infections are cleared, it’s the left player’s 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 dice of a color to place them at any time, or not having enough player cards when someone needs them to draw).[10]

A game in progress

To help win the game, players are given roles that allow them to change the rules above. Five reels were introduced with the original core game, with 7 in 2nd Edition, but additional reels were added as the game was expanded. For example, the medic can treat all the dice in a city with a single action, or, once a cure for a disease has been found, remove dice of that color from the city it is in without spending an action, while the scientist only needs four cards of the same color to discover the cure (instead of 5). Players are also helped by the event cards, which allow for similar one-off actions, like removing some disease cubes directly or building a research station right away.

Pandemic requires all players to coordinate their efforts to win the game, especially in collecting and sharing the necessary cards to discover cures while moving around the board in a coordinated manner and preventing outbreaks in an efficient way. However, one criticism of the game referred to as “quarterbacking” is that one player – the “alpha gamer” – tends to control the game. This isn’t unique to Pandemic though – other cooperative board games can also suffer from quarterbacks.[11]

Extensions [ edit ]

At the abyss[edit]

In 2009, the first official expansion was released, containing several new roles, rule variants for a fifth player, new special event cards, and new challenges for players.

There are eight role cards in this expansion, including a revamped Operations Expert card and a Bio-Terrorist card that pits one player against the rest of the team.

Challenges include a fifth disease, mutation, which must be cured or not present on the game board as players score for victory. Another challenge is the virulent strain, which makes a disease particularly deadly and replaces standard epidemic cards with new ones. Each of these cards represents a particularly unpleasant effect that that particular epidemic has on the game.

In the lab[edit]

This is the second expansion released in Summer 2013[12] with a new game board that allows players to research cures for diseases in a laboratory. The goal of this activity is the same as in the base game – finding cures for diseases – but this time with an added research aspect. Players can also use new characters and new special events included in the expansion. A one-player mode[13] and a team game mode[14] have also been added, in which teams of two compete to be the most effective team.[15] In the Lab requires both Pandemic and On the Brink[16] to play, and also requires spare decks if using Pandemic and On the Brink first editions.

state of emergency [edit]

A third expansion, released in March 2015, adds new roles and events and three new challenges: The Outback, where animals transmit disease to humans; emergency events where unforeseen events adversely affect the game; and Superbug, which introduces a fifth disease that cannot be treated.[17][18] The extension is compatible with the previous two extensions but is not required. The purple plague cubes included in State of Emergency make the set included in On the Brink obsolete.[19]

Scenarios[ edit ]

Z-man Games released free downloadable scenarios with changes to the base game. Various scenarios are to be published.[20] From March 2017, the “Isolation”[21] and “Government Shutdown”[22] scenarios were published.[23]

Editions[ edit ]

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 second edition prints had an error with a missing line between Lagos and São Paulo[24] and edge-to-edge printing on maps.[25]

A second edition of the On the Brink expansion was released in 2013.[12]

A 10-year anniversary edition was released in July 2018. This edition includes detailed miniatures representing each role, updated role cards, a larger game board, and wooden disease dice. All components in a metal box modeled after an early 20th century first aid kit. This edition is a remake of the original game, but includes additional box space to accommodate expansions.[26]

Spare decks[ edit ]

The Pandemic Base Replacement Deck updates Pandemic First Edition to Second Edition.[27] It has been discontinued.

Compatibility Pack #2 updates the first edition of the On the Brink expansion to the 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 the compatibility pack(s).[ 28]

Spin-offs[edit]

Six spinoffs or alternate versions of Pandemic have been published by Z-Man Games, all of which are standalone games and are not compatible with the original or with each other.

Pandemic: The Cure[edit]

Released in 2014, Pandemic: The Cure is a dice-based game that uses a similar ruleset to the original board game, but reduces the number of cities and leaves the outcome of rounds to chance with dice rolls. An expansion to the game, Pandemic: The Cure – Experimental Meds was released in November 2016, adding a fifth disease and a new Hot Zone mechanic.

Pandemic: contagion [ edit ]

Pandemic: Contagion is a card-based version of the game, first released at Spiel 2014, that puts players in the shoes of the diseases and, unlike the base game, is non-cooperative. The goal of the game is to exterminate the human race by spreading infections.[30]

Pandemic legacy[ edit ]

Season 1 – Released October 2015[31] and designed by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is a legacy version of the base game published by Z-Man Games[32], similar to Risk Legacy in which the Das Game added an ongoing storyline to the base game, meaning the game board and rules change permanently after each game. Each game represents a month’s time in a campaign that simulates the course of a year. If players win the first game, they move on to the next month, and if they lose, they try again but move on to the next month regardless of what happens in the second game.[34] New rules and components are contained in packages that remain sealed until certain events occur, such as E.g. completing the game for a certain month or losing a certain number of games in a row.[6]

Season 2 – Released in October 2017[35] and designed by the same designer couple Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau, was a logical follow-up to the original Season 1. The board game is set 71 years after Season 1 on a devastated earth. This version changes the core rules of Pandemic enough to include a prologue tutorial game in the campaign to allow players to learn the new mechanic, which includes a discovery aspect.[36] Instead of diseases being represented by dice and the goal being to minimize the number of disease dice placed, different dice represent supplies and diseases spread when supplies run low.

Season 0 – The third game in the series, released in October 2020, is a prequel set during the Cold War.[37]

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu [ edit ]

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 fight occultists to prevent the summoning of the monster Cthulhu.

Pandemic Survival Series [ edit ]

Pandemic Survival is not a single game, but a series of separate historical games covering a local area rather than the entire globe.[40]

Pandemic: Iberia is the first game in the Pandemic Survival series released in Fall 2016 and designed by Matt Leacock and Jesus Torres Castro. Pandemic Iberia is set in 1848 on the Iberian Peninsula. It introduced the development of railroads and the purification of water as new mechanics. In addition, players could play to cure four specific historical diseases: malaria, typhoid, yellow fever, and cholera.[41]

Pandemic: Rising Tide is the second game in the Pandemic Survival series, released in the last quarter of 2017.[42] Pandemic Rising Tide is set in the Netherlands, where players work together to prevent the country from being inundated by the rising tide.[42]

Pandemic: Fall of Rome was released in the last quarter of 2018. Pandemic: Fall of Rome transports players back in history to the days of Rome, when a weakened military left the borders open to invasion by countless tribes. Players must recruit armies, fortify cities, forge alliances, and find peace with their neighboring races.[43]

Pandemic: Rapid Response[ edit ]

Pandemic: Rapid Response is a real-time cooperative game set in the Pandemic universe, released in 2019 and designed by Kane Klenko.[44] In Rapid Response, players take on the role of an international crisis response team tasked with delivering essential supplies to cities hit by natural disasters.[44] Players roll the dice and assign the results to various actions, including producing resources, piloting the plane toward affected cities, recycling the waste generated by resource production, and delivering finished supplies to the cities that need them.[44] The game takes place in real-time, with the game briefly pausing and a new city being added after a two-minute timer expires.[44] Players win by giving relief to all cities and lose by running out of time or creating too much waste.[44]

Pandemic: Hot Zone – North America [ edit ]

In June 2020, Z-Man Games announced plans to release Pandemic: Hot Zone – North America on July 31.[45] In Hot Zone – North America, players take on the role of a disease control unit tasked with finding the cure for three deadly diseases in North America.[45]

Applause and reception[ edit ]

The New Scientist listed Pandemic as one of “9 of the best board games for fans of science and technology”.[46] The game received positive critical and commercial reviews, including winning the 2009 Golden Geek Best Family Board Game[47] and a 2009 Game of the Year nomination[48]. Pandemic has been described by Ars Technica as a “modern classic” with a “simple and compelling” design.[49] The Guardian also praised the theme, stating that “Sam Illingworth has used [Pademic: Iberia] to teach school children the various causes of disease and the importance of water purification,” and suggesting that it “carries out a brilliant central message that it’s not just one scientist in a lab fighting disease, it’s many people working together.”[50] A review from Pyramid also praised the game’s cooperative nature.[51] Pandemic was commercially successful, selling about two million copies, and its popularity also increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.[52][53]

The Pandemic Legacy games also received critical acclaim. Season 1 has been described as “a leap forward in modern board game design”[54] and “the best board game ever made”[6][33] and is the second highest rated board game of all time on the influential BoardGameGeek website, which has been used for several years ranks highest.[5][6][55] The Guardian has claimed that “this is perhaps the finest board game ever made”,[56] BoardGameTheories emphasizes that its strategic depth is greatly increased as players must balance the interest of the current game with that of the overall campaign, while making decisions. [57] and Board Games Land described the game as “intelligent, dramatic, and themed, designed to create those memorable moments of emotional ups and downs that only a handful of board games can match”.[58] Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 and Pandemic Legacy Season 0 were also met with critical acclaim, with The Opinionated Gamers calling the discovery system “brilliant” and the gameplay “the best version of Pandemic I’ve ever played”.[59 ] Ars Technica also praised the game’s legacy format as “immeasurably satisfying and stated that the “clever innovations improve almost every aspect of the game.”[60] Pandemic Legacy Season 2 was awarded five stars by Board Game Quest, with its Legacy campaign being praised for “allowing for a level of engagement unavailable in other games”.[61] In addition, Pandemic Legacy Season 0 was also positively received and described as a “flawless finale”[62]. Both subsequent seasons are among the 100 best games of all time on BoardGameGeek.

Awards[edit]

Pandemic won the 2009 Origins Award for Best Board Game. [64]

won the 2009 Origins Award for “Best Board Game”. GAMES Magazine – Best New Family Game 2009 [65]

– Best New Family Game 2009 Golden Geek Award – Best Expansion 2009 (for Pandemic: On the Brink)

) Winner of SXSW Tabletop Game of the Year 2016 (for Pandemic Legacy: Season 1) [66]

) 2016 Dragon Awards Winner for Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game (for Pandemic Legacy: Season 1) [67]

) 2016 As d’Or – Jeu de l’Année Expert Winner (for Pandemic Legacy: Season 1) [68]

) Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 won a record four Golden Geek Awards in 2015: [69] 2015 Golden Geek Board Game of the Year Winner [70] 2015 Golden Geek Best Thematic Board Game Winner [71] Golden Geek Best Strategy Winner Board Game 2015 [72] 2015 Golden Geek Best Innovative Board Game Winner [73]

Cardboard Republic Immersionist Laurel Winner 2015 (for Pandemic Legacy: Season 1)[74]

Related products [ edit ]

In 2013, an iOS version titled Pandemic: The Board Game was released by Asmodee Digital.[75] The digital game was ported to PC five years later and released via Steam.[76]

A novel based on the game will be published by Aconyte Books and written by Amanda Bridgeman.[77]

Leacock is developing Daybreak, a tabletop game about the global response to climate change with gameplay similar to Pandemic.[78]

Play Pandemic Simulator for free

Play now Pandemic Simulator for free on LittleGames. Pandemic simulator is free to play.

Play Pandemic Simulator online

Pandemic Simulator is playable online as an HTML5 game, therefore no download is required.

Categories in which Pandemic Simulator is included:

It’s been over 10 years since the first Pandemic game was played. That’s a long time. It’s by no means the first cooperative board game, but it’s by far the most influential to hit the board game scene, and today we’re looking at the best Pandemic expansions and releases to hit the market (and Furthermore).

Our top picks for the best pandemic extensions

In a hurry? Check out our most popular Pandemic Extensions below.

Best competition

Pandemic Expansion: On the Brink The most popular co-op board game isn’t purely co-op anymore? Stop the presses. On the Brink is a departure from the original but with amazing new challenges like a fifth disease, a virulent strain and a bio-terrorist trying to undermine the others!

best topic

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu Reign of Cthulhu is Pandemic with a terrifying Lovecraftian twist. Instead of diseases, you meet 12 old people trying to take over the world. Put away your medical kit; Now you will seal portals and stop cults…hopefully before you go insane.

Overall best

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 has everything you could want from Pandemic. It introduces parts from each Pandemic expansion in a highly themed game. To date, it remains one of the most popular board games out there and by far one of the most popular legacy games.

My first Pandemic game was at the table with family and friends. We played the classic version for the first time and neither of us knew that we had just opened Pandora’s box. My very first run at the Pandemic Board Game was (not uncommonly) a loss. It wasn’t the epidemics or lack of disease dice that got us either. We had run out of cards and were literally a round short of victory.

Of course I was totally addicted to the game. It was such an incredible shared story experience. Every player counts 100% in every game. Stupid things like building a research station in the right place or deciding whether or not to discard a card for a move can completely change the outcome of a game, and when played correctly, they’re never due to a person’s actions .

But like I said, 10 years is a long time. The rules have changed, boards have been added, and there are now multiple versions and expansions to choose from. In this article we will guide you through the world of the pandemic in all its forms.

#0. Pandemic

If you haven’t played the original Pandemic board game, grab it now and play it. Come back and read this article later. Don’t worry, we’re waiting.

We love the game and even wrote an in-depth Pandemic review of the original core game, which you should check out if you haven’t already tried it.

Pandemic STRATEGY GAME: Players must work together to search for their…

COOPERATIVE BOARD GAME: Only through teamwork can you keep the…

WORKING TOGETHER AND SAVING MANKIND: Four diseases threaten the…

#1. Pandemic Legacy: Season 1

There’s a reason Pandemic Legacy has been at the top of virtually every playlist for several years, only recently being ousted from BGG’s #1 spot by Gloomhaven.

Play Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 begins as a classic Pandemic game. After each game, players are prompted to read from a secret deck of cards that advances the game’s plot. Without disclosing spoilers, the world of Pandemic Legacy is getting worse and the diseases are getting more virulent and causing destruction throughout the game.

You have to live with the consequences

Every game of Pandemic changes the board in a permanent way. Cities can take extra damage during a single game turn and the damage will be reflected in future games. Entire sections of the board can become impassable wastelands. Each role card is a specific character that can die or become a die-hard veteran, and all changes are permanent.

Of course, when we played through our game Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, I was horribly maimed and died mid-campaign… but I’ve never had so much fun being destroyed by a board game.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 basically takes all the lessons learned from every version of Pandemic and recreates it all in one epic experience.

Red Blue

There are 2 versions and as far as I know they are exactly the same. There might be a few minor changes, but speaking to someone who’s played the red versions (we played blue), there was no difference in the outcomes or the storyline.

I’ll admit that I shared the same caveats that everyone has about a legacy game, and that, of course, is the game’s limited shelf life. It forces you to go back and destroy parts of the game as you progress. It was a really weird feeling tearing up my first card but I have no regrets.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 STRATEGY GAME: Players must work together to search for their…

COOPERATIVE BOARD GAME: Only through teamwork can you keep the…

GAMES OVER A YEAR: Pandemic Legacy begins as the…

Final Thoughts

We’ve played this one board game more times than many games on our shelf. The experience was so unique that Kendra and I are still talking about it.

If you’re still feeling a little insecure, remember that most board gamers want to play and one person doesn’t have to foot the bill. With four players sharing the cost of the game, it costs about the same as going to the movies on a Friday night.

1 film = 2 hours of entertainment per person

1 Pandemic Legacy Campaign = 12+ hours of entertainment per person

It remains one of my favorite board game experiences to this day.

#2. Pandemic Legacy: Season 2

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 created an amazing narrative that allowed players to experience everything Pandemic has to offer. They’ve taken all the lessons learned from previous expansions and created the perfect Pandemic experience (in my humble opinion).

Season 2 is a whole different beast. It takes all of the events from season 1 and fast forwards to the future where humanity is grappling with the aftermath and consequences of the events in season 1. The world has changed forever, and so has the world of Pandemic. The game itself takes everything you know about the pandemic, the known rules, the global map, diseases, and strategy, and turns it completely on its head.

tell nothing

Without giving any spoilers that you would find in the prologue game, the world has been hurt. The last bastion of survivors is still battling the effects of a surviving disease, and players must set out after years of isolation to attempt to rebuild the world.

You’ll notice in your first game of Season 2 that the rules are very different. Instead of a growing number of disease dice, players must manage a dwindling number of supplies. When supplies run low, areas and safe havens become vulnerable to disease and outbreaks.

Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 STRATEGY GAME: Embark on an epic adventure to bring humanity back…

COOPERATIVE BOARD GAME: Only through teamwork will you and the…

GAMES OVER A YEAR: Pandemic Legacy takes gameplay…

Where Pandemic Season 1 was the pinnacle of classic Pandemic games and expansions, Season 2 is the game’s evolution. It’s guaranteed to throw some monkey wrenches into the rules, way more than Season 1 ever did.

#3. Pandemic: on the brink

When it comes to expansions, On the Brink is generally considered the first port of call for any disease-curing enthusiast. It is the first expansion for the classic Pandemic. It introduces the usual suspects you’d expect from an expansion: new characters and roles, new abilities, but it also features one of the most dramatic changes of any Pandemic expansion.

No more collaboration

For one thing, Pandemic, the game that catapulted cooperative board games to the stratosphere in terms of popularity, is no longer purely cooperative.

WAAAA-?

How do you change a cooperative game about CDC agents traveling the world fighting a faceless disease? You add a terrorist, of course.

It’s really very dark… I didn’t expect that.

One of the variants introduced by On the Brink is a bioterrorist spreading a deadly fifth disease across the world. The actions of the bioterrorist are completely hidden and traced from the board with pen and paper. This addition changes the overall dynamic of the game, which now becomes a 1v4 situation.

The bioterrorist will be sneaking around spreading the crimson disease across the world or sabotaging research stations. The bioterrorist can be a subtle mastermind or a mad scientist spreading plague everywhere. In each case, players must decide whether dealing with the bioterrorist is a priority or whether focusing on a cure is more important.

The bioterrorist is an idiot.

This variant alone adds so much new gameplay to the game and completely changes the feel by adding a new competitive aspect.

It also mitigates alpha gamer syndrome, where one player dominates decisions on the board. What’s happening in Pandemic is that the veteran players are rolling over the newer players. This isn’t fun for everyone, but the way the game works almost encourages this behavior. If you try the Bioterrorist variant, you can push the more experienced player into the terrorist role and allow the newer players to fight against the board to make decisions for themselves.

After all, wasn’t it the shared experiences, the extreme difficulties, the challenge and the hope of succeeding against overwhelming odds that made us all fall in love with Pandemic in the first place?

Epidemic variants

The other variants added in On the Brink are new Epidemic variants. Various epidemic cards can now be added to the game, which could make a specific disease more contagious or more difficult to treat. For example, there is a scenario where a certain disease color is so bad that players will have trouble traveling through infected cities. This makes the already daunting task of moving around the board even more difficult.

If you want to challenge yourself further, you can also play with the virulent strain variant. It takes one of the original diseases and mutates it, making it much more difficult to cure and deal with on the board. The deadly virulent strain mutation can challenge even experienced players.

If the bioterrorist’s competitiveness is really annoying and you want a purely cooperative experience, you can always add the purple superbug to the game and eliminate the bioterrorist component. This still adds the new elements without adding a fifth player. For the truly masochistic players out there, there’s also a new “Legendary Difficulty” featuring 7 epidemic cards.

Pandemic Expansion: On the Brink THIS IS A PANDEMIC BOARD GAME EXPANSION: You need Pandemic…

UP THE ANTE AND FACE NEW CHALLENGES WITH THIS EXPANSION:…

THREE EXCITING NEW CHALLENGES: Challenge 1: A disease could…

Final Thoughts

Of all the Pandemic expansions, this is my favorite.

Personally, I really like the bio-terrorist. I’m a huge fan of co-op games, but I also think the themed story it brings to the table is worth the trade-off of having an evil player, and it’s fun to spread the diseases for a change.

If you love Pandemic, this is the easiest choice for your first expansion. The superbug and new challenges offered in On the Brink add loads of replayability to Pandemic’s tried and tested gameplay.

Oh! Did I mention On the Brink includes cute petri dishes for storing your disease cubes? I know I’m a nerd, but it’s totally worth mentioning in terms of unique (and useful) components.

#4. Pandemic: In the lab

For those of you looking for a themed experience, In the Lab delivers.

In classic Pandemic, when you cure a disease, you must discard a handful of matching cards. It works out. It made sense within the game. It is boring.

In the Lab drastically overhauls how diseases are cured in Pandemic.

The Mini Board (aka Lab)

This expansion introduces a whole new mini-board that represents the laboratory where the diseases are actually researched and cured. There are multiple steps and sometimes there is no way to develop a cure.

As the game progresses, players will treat diseases across the world, just like in the classic Pandemic. Instead of returning the plague cubes to the supply pile, players can instead send them to the lab as samples. The lab board has multiple stages in which players have an almost mancala-like mini-game to move the disease cubes through the board.

New actions & increased difficulty

After the plague cubes have moved through the laboratory, it’s time to develop a cure. The development of a remedy takes place in several phases. Players must add a certain number and type of disease dice to research a cure, test it, and then release it worldwide. At first glance it’s a bit complicated. Experienced players will probably need a game or two to figure out the rules and then try to come up with some strategies.

In the laboratory, the difficulty of the game changes drastically. If a player tries to bring too many samples into the lab, they run the risk of running out of disease dice and the game is instantly over. There’s just so much more stuff to juggle in an already mind-blowing game, but it’s still one of my favorites.

If that’s not enough for you, In the Lab is introducing several new variants as well as other goodies. The usual suspects of additional characters and abilities are included. Each will have a unique power, and all are useful.

Competitive and solo play

The new game variant adds competitive play to the mix. The overall gameplay itself remains cooperative, but in a “too close to home” example of art imitating life, players can split into teams and focus on curing the disease for fame and glory (points) and at the end fighting for a final score the game.

There’s even a new addition to the rules for solo play, where the player doesn’t just control multiple characters.

Pandemic Expansion: In the Lab THIS IS A PANDEMIC BOARD GAME EXPANSION: You need both the…

NEW EXCITING CHALLENGE – A RACE AGAINST TIME TO TREAT DISEASES AND…

SECOND NEW EXCITING CHALLENGE – SOLO GAME: Now you can do it with…

Final Thoughts

I love thematic elements in board games and the new lab delivers 100%. It’s cool, intricate, and fits right in with the base game. I don’t play it on every Pandemic game, but when I play with a team of experienced scientists and emergency responders, we try to increase the difficulty as much as possible.

#5. Pandemic: state of emergency

State of Emergency adds new difficulties to the world of Pandemic, but also gives some newly upgraded abilities to deal with humanity’s impending destruction.

The ever rampant purple virus now has a deadly SUPERBUG variant that cannot be treated. WTF!?!?!?

How to treat it? You can’t… at first.

The purple superbug

The purple superbug will rampage through the world and cannot be dealt with until it is researched. It is researched like a normal disease, but 1 card that is discarded must contain a city infected with purple. The research station used is then upgraded to a Vaccine Factory that produces vaccines. Players must collect vaccines and then place them in infected cities to remove purple infection cubes. Each vaccine only removes 1 die.

Quarantine Token

But don’t be afraid. Players will receive a new ability to slow the spread of diseases. Players can now quarantine cities and place quarantine markers on cities. Quarantine markers are double-sided and show the numbers 2 or 1. When a quarantined city is afflicted by a disease, the quarantine marker is rotated to 1 instead of placing a disease die, or, if it already has one, removed. The Quarantine ability is the only way to slow the spread of Crimson Sickness, and is a great way to bolster some defenses in anticipation of a particularly bad epidemic.

New Characters

To support these abilities, players will have access to new characters that complement the new variants well. Apothecary will be able to cure diseases around the world, the Colonel will be able to restore quarantine tokens to full health, and the Gene Splicer will be able to research the cure using multiple colors instead of just one.

The Hinterlands module

The additional Hinterlands module contains 2 side panels that can be added to the game. The hinterlands are thematically areas in which animal diseases can eventually spread to humans and spread quickly through the population.

Basically, 4 extra points are added to the board: one for each suit. They are connected to multiple cities and if players ignore them and break out, a large number of cities will be infected (4-5).

emergency events

The final addition are the Emergency Event cards. The added emergency events are equal to the number of epidemic cards added at the beginning of the game. Each has a different effect, either an immediate effect or a lasting effect. However, they all have one thing in common, they are all terrible and they will hurt. They are similar to the mutation cards in previous expansions, but usually affect everything, as opposed to a single disease.

Pandemic Expansion: State of Emergency THIS IS A PANDEMIC BOARD GAME EXPANSION: You need Pandemic…

NEW CHALLENGES: Your task to cure deadly diseases is…

FINE CONTROL THE DIFFICULTY OF YOUR GAME: Take more control over…

Final Thoughts

I personally found the Hinterlands expansion interesting, but not as groundbreaking as some of the other elements. It adds some difficulties and a whole new thematic element, but the backcountry remains separate from the main game. It’s challenging but doesn’t feel integrated enough to keep me invested.

The superbug, on the other hand, is only painful but also a lot of fun to play. It’s my favorite part of the expansion. The increased difficulty and challenge make the expansion worthwhile.

The new abilities and quarantine tokens add more depth and replayability to Pandemic. This expansion adds more of what you’ve come to expect and love from Pandemic: challenging, brutal, cooperative gameplay.

#6. Pandemic: The Cure

The Cure is another standalone series from Pandemic. The main mechanics change and rely on dice instead of cards.

Each character has a specific set of abilities in the form of individual color-coded dice. With custom dice, certain players will trade better than other players simply because of the odds on each dice.

Introduction to dice mechanics

It’s a very cool way of changing the game and it works really well. The medic, for example, has dice faces which allows him to treat 3 diseases, which is way more than any other character, making him a good choice to help treat diseases that are threatening to break out.

Speaking of disease… guess what they swapped out the disease cubes with?

Dice! Each disease color has a set of dice that are placed on different tiles when the dice are rolled. If you roll a 5, place that die on the tile with a 5. Each die has different odds of which country tile it lands on. Eventually, as players treat and remove dice from the tiles, they return to the disease pool.

Beware of the dice gods

When players infect, they draw random dice from the supply bag, roll them, and assign them. Just like the normal Pandemic: if you run out of dice, the game ends in a loss.

Players still have to move around the board and treat diseases, but everything has been modified to accommodate dice and gambling mechanics. Making a sacrifice to the Dice Gods before a game lets you do some incredible things, but angering the Dice Gods can quickly drown you in disease cubes.

epidemic rolls

Epidemics are handled a little differently. At various set points in the game, players move two trackers along the center piece of the board. These are the infection and outbreak counters. If they hit the skull marker, everyone is dead and the game is over. There are also epidemic rolls, which basically force players to roll a boatload of dice.

The only other thing that’s a bit odd is the board; there really is none. All are free-floating tiles that could easily have been made into a board. Instead, there will be a series of free-standing tiles that make up the play area. I don’t understand why Z-Man games went this way, but it works.

Pandemic: The Cure STRATEGY GAME: Players must work together to save their…

COOPERATIVE BOARD GAME: Only through teamwork can you keep the…

DICE-BASED VERSION OF THE PANDEMIC: Rolling the dice determines…

So why do we need a cube version of Pandemic?

It makes a lot of fun.

It’s a much faster game and much easier to set up.

It’s absolutely fantastic for a smaller number of players 2-3.

If you constantly find yourself with just 1 or 2 other players in your playgroup and love the original Pandemic board game, I highly recommend The Cure. It offers many of the same elements that made us fall in love with Pandemic, but in a much simpler, cleaner, and faster version. If I have 4 players I’ll probably always go for the classic Pandemic over the Cure, but when Kendra and I are hanging out alone I’m happy to pull it off the shelf for a game.

#7. Pandemic the Cure: Experimental Drugs

Unlike all other standalone variants of Pandemic, The Cure has an expansion, and it’s a very well thought out expansion.

As with most expansions, there are a number of new roles and characters to choose from using appropriate custom dice.

The dreaded purple superbug returns

There are 2 main modules that come with this extension. The dreaded purple disease appears in The Cure with terrible, terrible purple cubes. The purple dice work like a normal disease, but each has two special dice faces.

2x: The 2x side forces a player to draw and roll additional dice and then reroll the purple dice. If you’re unlucky you can sit there and roll 2x and then roll more and more dice all in one go. It sucks.

The 2x side forces a player to draw and roll additional dice and then the purple dice. If you’re unlucky you can sit there and roll 2x and then roll more and more dice all in one go. It sucks. -1: Negative, that sounds good, doesn’t it? NO. Each negative 1 forces a player to reach back into the dice supply pocket and remove a die from play. Remember that if you run out of dice from the supply, you lose the game. If that’s not enough for you, you have to re-roll the purple dice.

If you really pissed off the dice gods in a past life, you could theoretically sit and lose the game in a single round of bad purple rolls.

The Hot Zones Challenge

The next module added in the expansion is the Hot Zones Challenge. The Hot Zones are new events in the form of green cubes. The green dice spread across the board and affect what happens on a square. As the infection bar moves down, more dice are added to the game.

There is a 50/50 chance that the event will be good or bad.

Some of the good effects can be moving a die for free, avoiding 1 biohazard roll, or a bonus when finding the cure.

The bad effects can make it harder to move through areas, or you can roll more disease dice (much more).

Pandemic: The Cure – Experimental Meds THIS IS A PANDEMIC THE CURE BOARD GAME EXPANSION: You will need…

STRATEGY GAME: Players must work together to complete their…

COOPERATIVE BOARD GAME: Only through teamwork can you keep the…

Final Thoughts

I was skeptical about the Cure from the start but gradually warmed to it. Pandemic: The Cure – Experimental Meds just seals the deal for me. I’ve found that I really like the dice version of Pandemic, especially with 2 players. The fact that there’s also a SOLID extension for it makes it even better. I’m enjoying every component added and the additional character abilities are absolutely phenomenal.

#8th. Pandemic: Iberia

Pandemic: Iberia is a special edition of Pandemic. That being said, if you can find a copy of this, you’re in luck. It is a collector’s edition with a limited one-off print.

For us normal people, who cares? Does it play well? Is the hunt worth it? Just take a look.

Pandemic: Iberia takes place in Iberia (Spain & Portugal) in the mid-18th century. This version stays true to its roots by letting players fight disease instead of eerie horrors, water, or barbarians. Notice how I said fight, not cure. In the 19th century Iberian Peninsula there is no way to heal anything.

The best thing you can do is make it as comfortable as possible for everyone.

Wait a minute! It got a little too dark too quickly.

The importance of research…

Instead, players win the game if they manage to research all diseases. You don’t get a bonus for researching a disease, but you win the game if you manage to research all 4 before they all die.

19th-century medicine might not be cutting edge, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do. Players will travel across Spain to purify water. You’ll be surprised how basic hygiene improves when you stop polluting the water supply.

…and water treatment

Placing a purified water marker works similar to the quarantine markers from previous Pandemic expansions. Instead of placing them on a specific city, Purified Water is placed on the negative space of a board between cities. If a city touching this space becomes infected, the purified water marker is removed instead of placing a disease die.

Forget air travel

To complicate matters further, air travel did not exist in the 19th century. To move around the game board, players must travel through the ports by boat or, if they plan well, they can use the railway. As an action, players can place a railway tile. I highly recommend that you start building the rail early in the game. Players can move to any square connected by a continuous railroad for 1 action. This makes it the best way to move around the board… but you need to build it up early before you get completely overrun.

Final Thoughts

Iberia is a very cool concept. It takes all the classic pandemic elements and then asks the question: “What happens without modern technology?”. The thematic elements, gameplay, and components are all excellent. The rule changes to accommodate the historical era are so well done and make for a very interesting gameplay experience. If you can find a copy, I strongly encourage you to get it.

#9. Pandemic: Rising tide

The ocean rises, the levees fail and the water rises.

Pandemic: Rising Tide pits players against one of the most primordial forces on Earth and seek to push back an unstoppable force… water.

Vielleicht übertreibe ich es ein bisschen, aber Rising Tide hat aufgrund meiner alten Navy-Ausbildung einen besonderen Platz in meinem Herzen. Früher habe ich mich mit einigen Dingen in Rising Tide als richtiger Job befasst, und es ist hart, sowohl im Spiel als auch im wirklichen Leben.

Die Grundregeln, die wir kennen und lieben

Hier gelten die grundlegenden Pandemieregeln:

4 Aktionen

Entwässern und Pumpen (Behandlung von Krankheiten)

Pumpstation bauen (Forschungsstation bauen)

Bau von 4 hydraulischen Strukturen (Krankheit heilen & Zustand gewinnen)

Sturmkarten (Epidemie)

Mehrere Szenario-Module

Es gibt mehrere Szenarien, die Sie spielen können. Jeder hat unterschiedliche Gewinnbedingungen und Ziele, die die Wiederspielbarkeit des Spiels erhöhen und die Tatsache ausgleichen, dass diese Version im Grunde genommen einmalig ist und niemals eine Erweiterung erfahren wird.

Im Standardspiel bauen die Spieler 4 riesige Hydraulikstationen, um die Niederlande zu retten. Rising Tide verwendet die meisten grundlegenden Pandemieregeln in Bezug auf Handgröße, Aktionen, Bewegungen und Gebäude.

Das Ziel: Das Wasser in Schach halten

Die Unterschiede liegen im Umgang mit Wasser. Im klassischen Pandemic haben Sie es mit einer Krankheit zu tun, die sich auf benachbarte Städte ausbreitet. Diesmal haben Sie es mit Wasser zu tun … und Wasser ist eine sehr fließende Kraft. Der Wasserfluss kann viel verheerender sein. Wenn an einem Ort 3 Wasserwürfel liegen und ein weiterer Würfel platziert wird, fließt das Wasser nach außen. Der Wasserstand der umliegenden Felder steigt um 1 (bis zu 2) und dann der Wasserstand der umliegenden Felder um 1 (bis zu 1). Dies kann zu einem verheerenden Wasserfalleffekt führen, der schnell große Teile des Bretts überschwemmt.

Deiche bauen und mit Stürmen fertig werden

Spieler sind jedoch nicht hilflos. Die Spieler können Deiche bauen, die das Wasser zurückhalten und Barrieren schaffen. Mit sorgfältiger Planung können die Spieler sicherstellen, dass der Wasserfluss eingedämmt wird. Jeder Damm auf dem Brett verhindert, dass Würfel auf das Brett gelegt werden und Wasser auf andere Plättchen überschwappt, aber sie werden im Laufe des Spiels beschädigt und zerstört.

Es ist ein sehr interessantes Konzept mit mehreren Spielmöglichkeiten. Im Spiel enthalten ist eine Variante, die dem Brett Zivilisten hinzufügt. Die Ziele können gewechselt werden, um Zivilistenleben zu retten, anstatt die Hydraulikstationen zu bauen, was dem Spiel ein gutes Stück Wiederspielbarkeit verleiht.

Die Achillesferse von Rising Tide sind die Deichstücke. Sie sind eine interessante Komponente, aber ein völliger Schmerz im Hintern. Stellen Sie sich Catan-Straßen vor, aber beim geringsten Klopfen des Tisches oder wenn jemand mit langen Ärmeln über den Tisch greift, fliegen die Deichstücke über das Brett. Es gibt eine Menge Räume, in die sie gehen können. Wenn sie also umgestoßen werden, kann es schwierig sein, sich daran zu erinnern, wohin sie gehen.

Pandemic: Rising Tide STRATEGIESPIEL: Du und deine Freunde spielen als Team niederländischer Zivilisten…

KOOPERATIVES BRETTSPIEL: Nur durch Teamwork wirst du ein…

WASSERBEDROHUNG: Seit Jahrhunderten verlassen sich die Niederländer auf eine Reihe …

Final Thoughts

Pandemic: Rising Tide ist anders genug, um eine Menge neuer Strategien und Gameplay zu bieten, aber es ist ähnlich genug, dass ein erfahrener Pandemic-Spieler sofort die Grundregeln erkennen und mit nur einer kurzen Erklärung loslegen kann.

Ich mag das Thema und ich mag sogar das Aussehen des Boards. Manche Leute sagen, es sieht eintönig und deprimierend aus, aber es passt gut zum Thema. Mein einziges Problem ist, dass ich es nicht mag, 20 Minuten in jedem Spiel damit zu verbringen, herauszufinden, wohin die Deiche gehen sollen, nachdem ich sie unweigerlich über das Brett geschleudert habe.

#10. Pandemiefall von Rom

Webster’s Dictionary definiert „Pandemie“ wie folgt:

(Adj.) Tritt in einem großen geografischen Gebiet auf und betrifft einen außergewöhnlich hohen Anteil der Bevölkerung.

(Ja, ich war dort.)

Pandemie: Fall of Rome entschied sich dafür, die Adjektivform von Pandemie anstelle des Substantivs zu verwenden, das sich auf Krankheit bezieht.

In Fall of Rome ist die Katastrophe, die sich ereignet und einen großen Teil der Bevölkerung betrifft, der barbarische Einfall, der das Römische Reich verwüstet.

Dies ist ein völlig neues Thema in der Serie und nimmt ein bisschen kreative Lizenz, um in die Pandemic-Reihe von Spielen einzusteigen, aber die eigentliche Frage ist: „Ist es immer noch ein lustiges Spiel?“

Ähnliche Mechanik, neue Ziele

Es gibt Mechaniken, die der Pandemic-Serie ähneln, aber die Strategien und Ziele sind zugegebenermaßen anders.

Let’s take a look at the similarities first.

Players take turns and get 4 actions.

To move from port to port players can discard a card matching the color of their destination.

To build a fort, players discard a card of the same location.

Every turn, players will be drawing cards from the invade cities deck (the infection deck).

Ok so a lot of mechanics are similar, but the objectives and way that you play are very different. The invading barbarians need to either be completely eliminated from the board or they need to be allied with Rome. Instead of curing diseases, players will need to use equal parts diplomacy and violence to save Rome.

Barbarians, Legions, and Diplomacy… Oh my!

To actually fight, players need to recruit legions and position them throughout the board to stop barbarians. The legions act similarly to quarantines from previous Pandemic games. When a location is overrun by barbarians, players will remove legions from the space first before placing barbarians.

As players move around the board, they can take up to 3 legions with them and drop them off along the way. This positioning is extremely important throughout the game. As the game continues, barbarians will be invading on all sides and the only way to slow them down or stop them is to build forts and place legions in the way.

Each barbarian has a different color and a set starting point. During the invasion step, barbarians push outward from that point and spread throughout the board. It’s a little weird at first to understand how they move, but after seeing it happen once or twice in a game, it starts to make sense.

Players who’ve never played Pandemic are going to be a little lost on the first rules reading, but any veteran Pandemic player is going to feel right at home with a 5-minute rule explanation.

Pandemic: Fall of Rome STRATEGY GAME: Travel back in history to the time of the…

COOPERATIVE BOARD GAME: Improve your team’s chances to defend…

THE GREATEST EMPIRE IN HISTORY: At the height of its power, the…

Final Thoughts

Now that you have a very general idea of what’s happing, the real question is, “Does Fall of Rome stand on its own or is it just a reskinned clone?”

I honestly think it works. The general system and rules are similar, but the thematic elements do work well together and they took all of the lessons from previous versions of Pandemic and made a very tight game. The rules are clear and concise, it’s a cooperative game, and there is a high difficulty that is genuinely fun.

#11. Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

Everything needs a Cthulhu theme, right?

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu is a standalone game that replaces diseases with cultists and eldritch monsters.

The major goal of the game is to close 4 gates to the other worlds before Cthulhu awakens and plunges the world into madness.

A Map of Cities & Gates

The map is… difficult to navigate. There are 4 distinct Lovecraftian cities to explore and adjacent cities only have one entrance, making it a bit of a pain to get around. Players can risk taking sanity damage by traveling through the gates, but the goal is to close gates so it will become progressively harder to move around the board.

Most of the same Pandemic actions and rules will apply. Removing cultists costs actions just like disease cubes, but the larger Shoggoth figures that will wander around the board cost 2 actions to indicate a harder fight.

The Ancient One

There is an Ancient One track at the top of the board that will wreak havoc throughout the game. When prompted to flip over one of the Ancient One cards, bad things will happen, usually involving spawning additional cultists and shoggoths. The last card on the track is always Cthulhu and if he ever awakens, it’s game over.

Madness!

The player characters all have stats in this version. Each player has a sanity level that lets them perform certain actions like special abilities and traveling through gates. Players don’t necessarily die, but if they lose all their sanity the character card gets flipped over showing a weaker version and are considered insane. Closing a gate can return sanity to players, so all is not lost. If all the characters go insane though, then it’s game over.

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu STRATEGY GAME: Players are investigators who must work together…

COOPERATIVE BOARD GAME: Only through teamwork will you have a…

A THREAT FROM BEYOND THIS WORLD: The Old Ones, ancient beings of…

Final Thoughts

The game itself is probably the prettiest Pandemic game on the market. The components, artwork, and board are all gorgeous and fit the theme extremely well. The shoggoth tokens are awesome-looking. There’s a reason everything has a Cthulhu variant; it has so much excellent imagery to work with and it really does make for an aesthetically-pleasing game.

The big question is, “Is this just a reskin of Pandemic?”.

Pretty much… sort of.

It’s a reskin, but the few extra bits added make it feel worthwhile. The sanity abilities and the change from disease to Cthulhu works. If you don’t own either this version or the original, you’ll get a similar experience with each. If you like all things Cthulhu, you’ll absolutely love it. If the theme isn’t your thing, go with regular Pandemic. The additional expansions and rule changes to classic Pandemic makes the original a smarter buy.

It’s fun, but I don’t know if I could justify it since I already own classic Pandemic. If I want some Cthulhu in my life, I’ll probably just play Arkham or Eldritch Horror.

Fun Fact: I really enjoy Cthuhlu-inspired games, but I still think H.P. Lovecraft’s writing is garbage.

#12. Pandemic Contagion

Pandemic: Contagion is the complete oddball in the Pandemic series of games.

The theme is basically the only similarity and even then, it’s completely turned upside-down. Players are now the disease and the goal is to destroy as much of the human population as possible.

The rules, mechanics, and gameplay are completely unique and nothing at all like classic Pandemic. If you were looking for a variant or expansion, this is not the game. If you love Pandemic and want to see another perspective of global eradication through disease, then this is the place for you.

The Goal: Be the nastiest disease

Contagion is not cooperative at all. Each player will become a virus and mutate throughout the game in order to kill people.

I actually really like the player boards. Contagion uses disease cubes to mark down levels on one of the three tracks to show:

Incubation: Number of cards you can draw

Infection: Number of cubes you can infect cities with

Resistance: Defense against World Health Organization (WHO) events

Instead of a whole map, players will draw cards from a deck showing which cities are available to infect. Players score points depending on who put their cubes on first and who has the most disease cubes.

Pandemic: Contagion Standalone game

For 2-5 players

Takes about 30 minutes to play

Final Thoughts

So… this is Pandemic in name only. It’s a completely different style of game. If you really like Pandemic and are a completionist, I’d say give it a try. If not, there are plenty of Pandemic variants and expansions that give a much more vibrant and strategic experience than Contagion.

#13. Pandemic: 10th Anniversary Edition

Has it really been 10 years?

The 10th Anniversary Edition of Pandemic is an awesome-looking box of goodies. The first thing you’ll notice is that it comes in a super-cool tin medic box. It reminds me of old school WWI field medic kits.

The board is much prettier than the original version. It’s double the size of the original board with full-color printing. It’s colored like an actual map instead of the dark black and blue theme of the 2008 version.

Excellent Components

All of the card components have been upgraded to heavy card stock and the printing and colors are very well done. You won’t find any flimsy tissue paper here.

The Petri dishes are well done and the disease cubes are wooden. They’re still cubes. This is probably the only thing I don’t like about the 10th-anniversary edition. I’ve seen 3rd party tokens shaped like bacteria and viruses that looked really cool, so seeing cubes is a bit boring for a big, expensive anniversary set.

One of the cooler elements that comes with the set is the fully-modeled miniature for each character, which is much nicer than a generic pawn.

Misprint or New Challenge?

There is a bit of an elephant in the room when you look at the collector’s edition… and the publisher is trying its darndest to ignore it. The collector’s edition board is missing a line that connects Bangkok with Ho Chi Minh City. Previous versions have these two spaces connected but they’re not in the collector’s edition. There’s also no verification if this is a conscious change or a misprint and the publishers are ignoring the problem until it goes away.

Pandemic: 10th Anniversary Edition The original Pandemic game has sold over 1.5 million copies…

Limited release anniversary edition comes in a custom metal case,…

Detailed plastic figures and large ID cards PA the character…

Final Thoughts

If you’re a big collector or legitimately aren’t worried about the premium price tag, you may want to look into it. If you’re not a hardcore fan you could get an original copy plus several expansions for the same price as the collector’s edition.

Wrap up

Pandemic is fantastic. It’s one of my favorite games and has been a game night staple for years now. Start with the base game and you’ll quickly see why I love it. For expansions, they’ve done such a great job that the best way to get them is in order of release.

Each one is modular, so you can literally pick and choose which parts of the expansion you want to play. Doing that adds even more replayability to a game that already has a long, long shelf life.

Give them a try and I guarantee you’ll find something that you like.

I hope you enjoyed this article. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the best Pandemic expansions.

If you see anything I missed or just want to talk board games, we’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment below.

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While Pandemic wasn’t the first tabletop game in which players could work together for a common cause, it is perhaps the best known and most popular co-op board game today. For good reason – it’s an exciting, themed and just challenging experience that’s relatively easy to pick up and offers hours of interesting choices without being overwhelming if you’re a board game newbie.

How to play Pandemic

Number of players, playing time and overview: How many people can play Pandemic, how long does it take to play Pandemic and what you will do during the board game.

How many people can play Pandemic, how long does Pandemic take to play and what you will do during the board game. Set-up: Set up the Pandemic game board, choose player roles, infect the first cities and prepare disease cards.

Build the Pandemic board, choose player roles, infect your first cities and prepare plague cards. Game Rules: Available player actions, how to cure diseases, when to draw cards, and how to resolve episdemics and outbreaks.

Available player actions, how to cure diseases, when to draw cards, and how to resolve episdemics and outbreaks. End of the Game and How to Win: How to win Pandemic – and how to avoid defeat.

Matt Leacock’s 2008 game has been followed by a number of expansions and spinoffs over its decade-plus – most notably the acclaimed Pandemic Legacy trilogy – but the original remains a great place to start if you want to learn the basics . Once you know the rules of Pandemic, it’s easy enough to jump over to some of the other offerings in the series and feel right at home while enjoying the additional gameplay challenges and alternate scenarios they introduce.

To get you started, this guide will walk you through all the rules of the original game, showing you how to play Pandemic from the start and what you need to do each round to win. It’s time to save the world together.

Number of players, playing time and overview

Pandemic is a cooperative board game for two to four players in which you all work together to fight and cure a variety of infectious diseases before they spiral out of control. It takes about 45 minutes to play.

configuration

Unfold and lay out the board in the center of the table for all players to reach.

Break the plague cubes into their four colors and place them next to the game board.

Place a research station in Atlanta and set the rest aside.

Place your burst and cure tokens in their appropriate places on the board.

The breakout marker is the green marker with the circle in the center and the arrows pointing outwards. Place it on space 0 of the breakout track.

In Pandemic, players travel the world to treat outbreaks of disease and search for a cure.

The cure tokens are the vial-shaped pieces that correspond to the colors of the four diseases in the game. Place this, vial side up, near the discovered healing indicator. Make sure you don’t place them in the actual locations just yet.

Place the infection rate marker—the green marker with the biohazard symbol on it—at the bottom of the infection rate track, above the number 2.

infect cities

Now you have to infect cities. To do this, you reveal the top three cards of the infection deck and place three dice of each card color in the specified cities. Then you turn over three more cards and infect each city with two dice. Finally you turn over three cards and infect each city with one die. This means you have a total of 18 dice on the board before the game starts. Each of the city cards you drew during the infection step should be placed face up on the discard pile next to the draw pile.

player roles

Next, everyone gets their player cards. Each player should have a double-sided reference card to remind you of the possible actions you can take on your turn.

Your role is chosen at random by shuffling the role cards together and dealing one to each player – although a common house rule allows players to choose their roles themselves.

Players can choose from a selection of different roles, each with a unique ability.

Make sure you read the text on your role card as each player has a unique ability that will help you throughout the game. The powers are written on each individual role card as well as on the back of the rulebook.

Grab the pawn that corresponds to your role card and place all the pawns used in this game in Atlanta. (Players always start at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.)

Player Cards and Hand Limit

Remove the plague cards from the player deck, shuffle the player deck and deal cards to each player: four each in a two-player game, three each with three players, and two each with a maximum of four players. You can either keep these cards for yourself or play them open hand – since this is a co-op game you shouldn’t have anything to hide.

During the game you get more cards. If you ever have more than seven cards in your hand, you must discard cards until you reach the hand limit. You can use event cards to reduce your hand size.

Prepare epidemic cards and infection deck

You can change the difficulty of Pandemic depending on the number of plague cards you include in the player deck: from four for an introductory beginner game to six for experienced players. The more plague cards you include, the more difficult it becomes to win.

Cut the player deck into separate stacks of roughly the same size. (You don’t have to be exact.) You must have as many decks as there are epidemic cards you’re going to use. For example, if this is your first game and you use four epidemic cards, make four stacks.

Add an Epidemic card to each deck and shuffle before stacking the decks to form a single player deck. Smaller stacks should go down, thicker stacks should go up. This should spread the plague cards fairly evenly.

The number of epidemic cards you add during setup adjusts the difficulty of the game.

game rules

Let’s start playing! The player with the most populous city card in hand begins.

Each player’s turn is divided into three phases:

Player actions Draw player deck cards Infect cities

1. Player Actions

When it is your turn, you can carry out four actions. You have a total of eight possible actions to choose from. Your reference card will remind you of the actions you can take throughout the game. You can perform the same action more than once.

Drive/Ferry is the most basic move action. It allows you to move from a city to a neighboring location connected to it by a white line.

Direct Flight means you can move to a city named on a card by discarding the matching card from your hand.

The charter flight is similar to the direct flight except that you discard the map of the city you are in to travel to another city on the map.

Shuttle Flight allows you to move between research stations once you have more than one on the board.

You can build a research station by discarding the card that corresponds to the city you are in. Place a white research station marker in that city. If you have already placed all six research station markers from the box, you can move an existing one around the game board.

Players can move around the board by traveling between adjacent locations, discarding cards to fly, or building research stations.

Treating Illness is one of the actions you will perform most often. With each Treat Disease action, you can remove one disease cube from the city you are currently in. When a cure for that disease is discovered, you can remove all dice of that color from the city with a single action.

The Share Knowledge action can be performed in two ways:

Give another player a city card. To do this, you must both be in the city that corresponds to the card you want to give.

Take a city card from another player. Again, you both need to be in the city that corresponds to the card you want to take.

If a player has more than seven cards when sharing knowledge, he must immediately discard all but seven or play an event card to reduce the hand limit.

Finally, you can discover a cure. To discover a cure, you must take your pawn to a research station and discard five player cards of the same color to cure that color’s disease. Place that disease’s cure marker on its cure tracker on the game board.

When there are no more dice of a cured disease on the game board, that disease is eradicated. Turn the vial upside down to reveal the erased symbol. Eradicated diseases do not place new dice on the board when revealed in the Infect Cities step.

Event cards are powerful one-way effects that help players and can be played at any time.

2. Draw player deck cards

Once you have performed your actions, you can draw two cards from the player deck. The player deck contains city cards, event cards, and the dreaded plague cards.

City maps are ultimately what will help you discover cures. You try to get city cards of the same color to discover cures as quickly as possible and win the game.

Event cards are rare and can be very powerful. They can be played by any player at any time and can save you from some dire situations. They just cannot be played between drawing and resolving a card. For example, you cannot reveal an Epidemic card and then play an Event card—you must first fully resolve the Epidemic card.

Epidemic cards are the main threat in Pandemic as they spread disease and make your quest more difficult. Resolving plague cards works as follows:

Increase the infection rate by one by moving the marker to the next space on the infection rate track.

Infect a new city by drawing the bottom card from the Infection deck and placing three dice in that city.

Now you intensify, which means you take the infection deck discard pile and shuffle it before putting it back on top of the infection deck. You will now draw already infected cities again.

In the rare event that you draw two plague cards at the same time, go through these steps once and then each one at a time.

If you draw epidemic cards during your player card draw phase, you may not draw replacement cards—they count towards your draw cards. Remove all Epidemic cards from play once they have been drawn and resolved.

3. Infect cities

The final step of each player’s turn is to infect more cities. To do this, turn over as many infection cards as the current infection rate indicates. This increases with each disease card drawn.

Reveal each infection card individually and add a die to each matching city.

Pandemic has seen a number of reboots, expansions, and spin-offs since its initial release in 2008.

How do pandemic outbreaks work?

If that city already has three dice of that color, don’t add any more dice to that city. Instead, an eruption occurs.

Move the burst marker to the next space on the burst track. If you ever reach the last symbol on the track – the square with the skull – you immediately lose the game.

Instead of placing a disease die in the city where the outbreak occurred, place a die of that color on each city connected to the original city where the outbreak occurred. (This may mean placing a cube that doesn’t match a location’s color, such as a red cube on a yellow city.)

If any of those cities already have three cubes of that color, another eruption occurs. You must repeat the above steps, moving the eruption marker again and placing dice in each connected city – and so on and so on until the chain reaction ends. However, you never have more than one outbreak in each city in a given turn.

Infection cards indicate where to place disease dice.

End of the game and how to win

The pandemic will end once players find cures for all four diseases. (You don’t have to eradicate diseases to win.) Since it’s a co-op game, everyone wins!

While there is only one way to win the game, there are three ways to lose:

When the burst marker reaches the last space on the burst track.

When you need to place disease dice but are out of dice of a certain color.

When you are unable to draw two cards during your player card draw phase because the player deck is empty.

If any of the above occurs, all players immediately lose the game.

This list features a wide range of tabletop titles that are ideal for a duo, whether you’re looking for a simple card game or a more complicated strategic experience. There is also a wide range of themes featured here, from picturesque quilting to the wonders of the ancient world, with something to suit every mood of the player. Don’t settle for second best, here are the best two player board games.

1. Jaipur

A quick card game about trade and camels

Some card types in Jaipur are rarer than others, making them worth more than others.

There are many two player card games out there, but Jaipur stands out as one of the best. A game about trade, Jaipur encourages its players to indulge their more competitive sides and steal victory right under their opponent’s nose. As rival merchants working for the Maharajah, players try to impress by making some of the cutest deals they can. Each round, players buy different goods from the market before subsequently selling them in bulk. The more they can sell at once, the more points they earn. However, players must move quickly if they want to stay ahead of their opponent.

On his turn, a player may choose to take a single card from the market or trade any number of cards from his hand for an equal number of cards from the market. The cards they take must be of the same type, which certainly helps when players are trying to collect as many matching cards as possible. Once players have at least three cards of the same type, they can sell them to purchase an equal amount of matching tokens. The higher value score tokens of each type stay on top of the stack, meaning players who sell early get more points.

On the other hand, waiting for more cards to be sold at a time grants players a bonus token worth a random number of points, with the more valuable tokens going towards the larger sales. There are only a set number of each card type, with rarer cards providing more valuable tokens, meaning players can end up fighting over certain types and things can get nasty. Nothing is more devastating than seeing a card of the type you collect being taken by your opponent. Luckily, Jaipur is a fast-paced game that will get you so fired up that you’ll want to play again in an instant.

Buy Jaipur on Amazon UK and Amazon US

2.Patchwork

An incredibly healthy and fun little game about quilting

Covering your board reduces the number of points deducted from your final score.

When it’s raining outside and you just want to curl up comfortably indoors, there’s nothing quite like an intimate board game session. Days like this call for Patchwork, a two-player board game that’s about as charming as a corgi with a very small hat. Using the various embellishments you’ve acquired over the years, you’ll need to piece together a quilt – making sure to use as much space as possible and, of course, score as many points as possible.

Each player gets their own board on which the various quilt pieces are laid out in a circle, with each piece placed in a direct line next to each other so that they form an orderly row. This is your choice of fabrics, with pieces varying widely in size and shape. It is important that you cover as much of your board as possible, as you will be penalized for each empty space at the end of the game. On his turn, a player may receive a quilt piece. If players do not have buttons to buy a quilt piece, or do not want to buy anything, they can move their player marker along the round track to gain buttons equal to the number of spaces they move.

Another way to get Buttons in Patchwork is to place quilt pieces with buttons on your player board. Each time a player token passes or lands on one of these button spaces, both players gain as many buttons as they currently have on their player board. You’ll eventually get into the rhythm of selecting and placing quilt pieces on your board, maximizing the space they cover, and making sure you select a few with buttons. For a challenging yet undeniably relaxing two-player board game, why not wrap yourself in a little patchwork?

Shop Patchwork on Amazon UK and Amazon US

3. 7 Wonders Duel

The popular civilization-building card game for two players

Each type of card offers a different benefit to the players who take it.

The original 7 Wonders is considered by many to be one of the best board games of all time. Taking the epic theme of taking a civilization through the ages, 7 Wonders played out in under an hour, striking the perfect balance between the deep strategy of developing your technology, culture, science and more and the simplicity only having to pick a single card and do what it says on each turn.

7 Wonders Duel takes 7 Wonders and reduces it even further, making it a board game for only two players. (Technically, 7 Wonders has two-player rules, but they’re not the best way to play if there’s only two of you.)

Instead of passing cards around the table, in 7 Wonders Duel the two players choose from the middle of the table and must choose from cards revealed in previous rounds. As they collect valuable resources, players can even build wonders – yes, like these wonders – that will help their civilization continue to grow.

The thrust of the two-player board game remains largely the same, as players try to develop their civilization faster than their opponent – and try to achieve victory through scientific breakthroughs, military might or general advancement. 7 Wonders Duel plays just as fast – if not faster – than its bigger brother, making it the perfect two-player game to break out with a friend or partner.

7 Wonders was a brilliant board game, and 7 Wonders Duel easily lives up to its legacy as one of the best two-player board games. It’s a fast-paced journey through history in a small, fast-paced card game that’s easy to learn and fun to play over and over again. One of the wonders of the board game world? Maybe…

Buy 7 Wonders Duel on Amazon UK and Amazon US

4. Lost Cities

Explore ancient ruins in hopes of making amazing discoveries

Deciding on an expedition is not an easy decision.

Lost Cities is considered an absolute classic and one of the best by legendary designer Reiner Knizia. As rival archaeologists, both players in Lost Cities plan and embark on expeditions simultaneously, greatly upping the ante. The reputation and possibly career of every archaeologist is on the line with a successful exploration in their sights. These expeditions are represented by columns of numbered cards that players must discard in numerical order. However, players do not necessarily have to play cards in sequence, only higher numbered cards over lower numbered cards. But the more cards played on an expedition, the better, as they earn players a larger number of points at the end of the game.

Deciding to start an expedition is not an easy decision as you will be scored in all of your columns regardless of how many cards you have placed there. Traveling around the world with a whole team costs a lot of money, which is why the score for each launched expedition starts at minus 20 points. This means that players must place cards with a total value of at least 20 in order not to score negative points. In addition, playing special handshake cards on an expedition multiplies its total score, as do negative totals. That means you have to be sure you can discard enough cards on an expedition to avoid this minus point penalty.

This is what makes Lost Cities so exciting and intense. Players share the same deck, meaning they both draw from the same deck. You’ll spend most of the game praying that you draw the cards you need to get past that minus 20 total, or else you’ll quickly regret your past decisions as you watch your Expeditions grow yours use up points. For a high-risk, high-reward game, open a copy of Lost Cities.

Buy Lost Cities on Amazon UK and Amazon US

5. Undaunted: North Africa

Historical wargaming meets Dominion deck building

Players have access to a different list of units depending on which side of the conflict they are playing on.

The Undaunted series is the meeting of two very different game styles. One of these is the strategic skirmish war game – the sort of classic two-player board game where toy soldiers wield a ruler and move across styrofoam mounds and trenches. The other is Deck Builder, the modern card game genre pioneered by Dominion in which players slowly build their deck from a small handful of cards to a healthy stack of actions, abilities, and victory points. It’s a mix that might seem strange on paper, but it’s a genius combination on the table.

Undaunted: North Africa is the second standalone entry in the series, following its French-set predecessor, Undaunted: Normandy. Both games use similar rules, with players controlling opposing WWII forces in a series of skirmish scenarios using a unique deck of cards. Objectives can vary from driving off the enemy to capturing strategic points, but the basics of how to move your troops around each map, take shots at enemy units by rolling dice, and strengthen your squads by playing cards remain similar.

Undaunted’s accessible gameplay is far simpler than the often complex simulation of traditional wargames, but still offers plenty of tactical advantage to chew on. The two-player board game is a tense affair, as each player pushes for their own victory conditions, using the diverse nature of their sides – the British Army’s Long Range Desert Group and the Italian Axis Powers – to pressure their opponent through ground forces, Vehicles and even air support.

Undaunted: North Africa’s asymmetrical gameplay means it’s not just the same board game for two players – it can be a different experience depending on which side of the table you’re sitting on. The gameplay additions and setting make it the best Undaunted game yet, in our opinion, but if you’re looking for another fantastic two-player board game, the original Undaunted: Normandy is well worth your time.

Buy Undaunted: North Africa from Amazon UK and Osprey Games

6. Skulk Cave

Play either as an imposing giant or as a group of brave fighters

Each monster in Skulk Hollow presents a unique challenge for both players.

The legendary PlayStation 2 video game Shadow of the Colossus is a work of art that has left its mark on both game developers and critics since its release and refuses to loosen its grip. Lucky for tabletop fans, there’s a two-player board game inspired by Shadow of the Colossus. Pencil First Games’ Skulk Hollow pits two players against each other in a fight for survival as a legendary guardian of epic proportions takes on some fox warriors. With two boards representing both the battlefield and the creature itself, players must strategically use their limited actions to slide around the board and deal some damage to their opponent.

The player controlling the Foxen clan manages several warrior meeples which, while weak on their own, can combine their powers to attempt to go toe-to-toe with the Behemoth on the other side of the board. Different warriors offer different special effects and tactics that you can take advantage of, and chaining them together is important if you don’t want them all to be crushed. The goal is simple: bring down the beast. Destroy every destination on their board and you win the game. To get there, however, you’ll need to hone your climbing skills as your meeples physically move up and down the Warden’s body.

Warden’s play is a little different each time depending on what creature he’s playing. There are four different Wardens, each with their own abilities, custom decks, and most importantly, objectives. While the giant bear is looking to slay as many foxes as possible to achieve victory, the giant squid is trying to spread its roots across the kingdom. With various Guardians also come brand new bodies to climb, each with their own safe climbing paths for you to navigate. Combine that with the fact that the foxes can also choose between four different leaders to play as, and there’s a touch of replayability already in the box. The artwork is clean and colorful, and the box itself has a really nice layout that makes setting up the game a breeze. It’s an amazing game and there’s even a sequel – Maul Peak – on the horizon at the time of writing.

Buy Skulk Hollow on Zatu and Amazon US

7. Agricola: All creatures large and small

A two player version of the classic farming board game

Building enclosures for your different animals is essential to win Agricola: All Creaturs Big and Small.

Agricola is one of those giant board games that takes a long time and requires a whole bunch of players. That’s why it’s so good to see a board game version for two players that skimps on a lot of fat and focuses on the most important aspect of Agricola: the animals. Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small – a title easily confused with the 1970s British TV series All Creatures Great and Small – is a tabletop title about creating a menagerie of various farm animals such as cows and sheep to collect and try his best to find enough space for everyone.

Both players start the game with a three-by-two board to hold their pets on. This may not seem like a lot of space at first, and it isn’t, but players will eventually be able to expand their available land as they progress. The expansion initially requires Victory Points, which players earn by breeding their newly acquired animals together to create—you guessed it—even more livestock. It’s not just about quantity, as players are also rewarded by collecting a greater variety of farm animals. Ultimately, players want to be able to enclose their livestock in pens using their available fences, making for a much more organized farm than one where the animals just roam around and do as they please.

Victory points can also be earned by acquiring certain special buildings – which require space to construct, meaning players must sacrifice space that could otherwise be used to house more livestock – some of which grant players certain unique abilities. Not only is Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small’s theme undeniably charming, it’s also an example of a fantastic two-player translation of another title – one that understands that less isn’t necessarily worse.

Buy Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small on Amazon UK and Amazon US

8. Klask

Air Hockey plus Magnets is the equivalent of this fast-paced two-player game

The Klask table is much more portable than you would expect.

Developed by Danish carpenter Mikkel Bertelsen on a hungover morning, Klask is fittingly the perfect two-player game to enjoy over some cold games with friends.

A modern descendant of pub fixtures like air hockey and foosball, but with the addition of magnets, Klask – a Danish word for “gossip!” – is a crowd-pleasing head-to-head competition played on a self-contained miniature wooden pitch .

Each player controls an air hockey-like slider to throw a ball across the field – except instead of moving the plastic pieces directly with their hands, they control them with a powerful magnet from underneath the board.

This magnet increases the tension when overtaking your opponent, as players must prevent the ball from entering their goal – a circular pit in the board – but also avoid getting their own magnetic piece stuck in the hole, often accompanied by the game signature “SMACK!”

Other obstacles include small white magnets that lie along the center line of the pitch that will stick to a player’s magnet if they get too close – or even be hurled at your rival with a careful shot. Falling into your own hole or getting two of the magnets stuck to you also earns a point, so it’s not just about scoring.

Klask’s simple rules and intense, lightning-fast gameplay make it a standout two-player board game, but it’s the kind of game that naturally draws crowds and makes for fun mini-tournaments – so it can be difficult to narrow it down to just two players restrict task! The original two-player game has since been expanded into a four-player version, but we’d argue that the original two-player game is still the best way to experience this utterly unique gem.

Buy Klask from Amazon UK and klaskyourway.com

9. Attorney on

Play a courtroom encounter as a prosecutor or defender

Playing cards with matching symbols help strengthen your attorney’s arguments.

We’ve all seen at least one courtroom scene — whether it’s from Miracle on 34th Street or Legally Blonde — and wondered what it would be like to be in one. The drama, the suspense, the relaxation — all of these aspects are part of what makes a typical courtroom scene so entertaining, but they’re also not reproducible unless you film one yourself or you’ve done something very naughty. Luckily, Lawyer Up, a two-player board game that pits a defense attorney against a prosecutor, allows you to do so without all of the potential criminal activity and convictions.

Lawyer Up hails from the tabletop studio behind Watergate – another excellent two-player board game about the historic US scandal – and the company’s penchant for asymmetric gameplay is evident here too. For those who may not know, asymmetric refers to a game where players attempt to complete unique goals or have access to unique gameplay mechanics. In the case of Attorney Up, the asymmetry here is represented by the different goals and tactics of the defense and the prosecution. As a defense, players will attempt to collect as much evidence as possible to prove their client did not commit the murder they are accused of. In contrast, prosecutors will attempt to dispute the evidence presented by the defense by presenting any damning evidence they might have that proves the defense is guilty.

Lawyer Up’s gameplay mainly revolves around drawing and playing cards, with the aim of playing cards with matching symbols. Each symbol on the card relates to a different tactic the attorney might use – like evidence or emotional pressure – to sway the jury’s opinion. The more symbols players match, the more convincing their argument becomes, eventually leading to the jury voting on the case and that player winning. Although Lawyer Up will probably not be quite as dramatic as a real court case, it is a creative asymmetrical game that builds and releases tension very well.

Buy Lawyer Up on Amazon UK and Amazon US

10. Summoner Wars: Second Edition

Compete against a friend in this hybrid of Magic: The Gathering and XCOM

Each faction will require players to approach this two-player board game in a different way.

The original Summoner Wars launched board game publisher Plaid Hat to fame in 2009, so it seems only right that its full-blown second installment helped the studio re-emerge as a new, once again independent creator over a decade later after its split with Asmodee start in 2020.

For the unfamiliar, Summoner Wars is an expandable card game that plays like a hybrid of classic two-player card games like Magic: The Gathering and the tactical strategy of video games like Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, and XCOM.

As with Magic, players spent mana points summoning creatures from their unique deck onto the battlefield in order to reduce their opponent’s rival summoner’s health to zero.

What sets Summoner Wars apart from a typical card battler is the introduction of a grid board on which cards are placed and moved around like units in a turn-based strategy game. In addition to creatures, players can build new structures – including summoning gates and defenses – to increase the range and power of their creatures’ attacks or block their opponents’ abilities.

Each of Summoner Wars’ factions has a unique playstyle, with new factions being introduced to the six in its starter set through fixed expansions – meaning there’s no need to buy random booster packs. Although the decks can be played as is, players can also customize their loadout from game to game for a new strategy and playstyle.

Summoner Wars is a fantastic two-player board game for fans of classic competitive card games and tactical video games, and its second installment improves on the original’s already excellent gameplay with a number of quality-of-life additions that streamline and tighten the rules rather than making them comprehensive changes. The new edition also saw the introduction of a full digital version of Summoner Wars, allowing newcomers and existing fans to play online for a relatively small monthly subscription. You can even try the game for free, so there’s no excuse to let this great two-player board game pass you by.

Buy Summoner Wars: Second Edition on Amazon UK and Amazon US

Board games aren’t just for kids. From teenagers to adults, everyone engages with board games as soon as they start playing. Usually, children also play their board games at home with their parents and siblings. In this situation, board games should be such that they educate children, develop their personality, sharpen their mind and teach decision-making. With all these lessons, the game should also keep players interested and fun. Therefore, the choice of board games sometimes becomes very difficult.

But in the world of board games, one of the most popular and trusted games is Matt Leacock’s Pandemic. Released in 2008, the pandemic spin-off series Pandemic Legacy was first released in 2015. The game became very popular all around the world and Season 1 also got #2 on Board Game Geek. After Season 1 and Season 2 of Pandemic Legacy, the prequel of Season 0 of the series has arrived in 2020. Now its fans are wondering about season 3. So we have found all the information related to season 3 of Pandemic Legacy, its release date and the expected story.

Pandemic legacy season 3

The Pandemic board game spin-off Pandemic Legacy launched in 2015. The second season came out in 2017. While 2020 also saw the release of a season 0 which is a prequel to the original game series. Therefore, now is the time for Pandemic Legacy Season 3. Notably, no official Pandemic Legacy Season 3 release date has been announced yet. However, in a tweet from game developer Rob Daviau, he stated that Pandemic Legacy Season 3 is in development. After that, however, no official information about season 3 was announced. But we can expect Pandemic Legacy Season 3 to be released in 2023. However, this is not an official date, just a prediction taking into account the current circumstances.

SEASONS RELEASE DATE Pandemic Legacy Season 1 Release Date 2015 Pandemic Legacy Season 2 Release Date 2017 Pandemic Legacy Season 3 Release Date Unannounced Pandemic Legacy Season 3 Release Date

READ MORE: What are the Bonelab release date updates?

About the legacy of the pandemic

In Season 1 of Pandemic Legacy we have seen how a very powerful virus is spreading on earth from which people need to be saved. Your every action can either save the world or increase the problems. The game can be played by two to four players. The second season of the games retells the storyline of the first season of Pandemic Legacy 72 years later. After season 2 came season 0. Unlike season 2, season 0 was a prequel. Pandemic Legacy Season 0 is set in the Cold War era.

It is now clear that Pandemic Legacy Season 3 is in development and will be released soon. But the creators have not given any spoilers regarding the description of Pandemic Legacy Season 3. It could be a sequel, a prequel, or a current focus. To know the description of Pandemic Legacy Season 3 by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau, we have to wait a little longer.

Looking back at the legacy of the pandemic

Season 1: A virus has emerged that is getting stronger every month. You have to control it and save people. In this game, every action you take now affects the future.

Season 2: Season 2 of Pandemic is the story after 71 years of Season 1. The world has been ravaged by the plague and it is now your responsibility to save and restore it.

Season 0: This season takes us back to the Cold War era when the CIA enlists your help to investigate the Soviet bioweapon.

Pandemic Legacy Season 3 content

Pandemic legacy season 3

The package and content of all three seasons (Season 1, Season 2, and Season 0) were similar but different. Therefore, in the Season 3 pack you will also find similar content to previous seasons, but they will differ in quantity and work. However, the game will be for 4 players and will last about an hour.

In the Pandemic Legacy Season 3 Pack, you get a rulebook, board game, reference cards, various character cards, and supply centers. Pawns, tokens, supply dice, infection cards, legacy cards, and other cards and items.

Where to buy Pandemic Legacy Season 3?

Pandemic Legacy is a very popular board game among all the spin-offs in the Pandemic board game series. Therefore, Season 1, Season 2 and Season 0 of Pandemic Legacy will be available at toy stores that stock the latest games. However, if you didn’t find the game in a toy store, you can also buy it online from Amazon or any other e-commerce where you can find the game.

Given Pandemic Legacy’s popularity, it looks like Season 3 of the board game will also be available on local e-commerce sites and toy stores.

ALSO READ: Offer Season 1 Episode 10 Release Date Announced!

Pandemic Game Rules

components

5 pawns

6 research stations

1 board

6 markers

96 disease dice

59 player cards

48 infection cards

5 role cards

4 reference cards

configuration

Place the board in the middle of the table so all players can easily reach it. Shuffle the role cards and deal 1 to each player. Each player takes their corresponding pawn and places it in Atlanta. Put excess role cards and figures (if any) back in the box. Place 1 research station in Atlanta and place the others next to the game board. Place the outbreak token on the “0” space of the outbreak tracker, the infection rate token on the first space of the infection rate track (marked “2”), and the 4 healing tokens near the “cure discovered” area of ​​the game board. Separate the disease dice by color and place them next to the game board in four separate piles. Draw the 6 epidemic cards from the player deck and set them aside for now. The remaining player cards (with the blue backs) are shuffled and dealt face down to the players: 4-player game: 2 cards each

3-player game: 3 cards each

Game for 2 players: 4 cards each Divide the remaining player cards into several piles depending on how difficult you want to make the game. Make the stacks as big as possible. For the introductory game, divide the cards into 4 decks. (Use this option if this is your first game).

For normal play, split the cards into 5 decks.

For the heroic game, split the cards into 6 decks. (Once you’ve mastered the normal game). Shuffle an epidemic card into each deck. Stack the stacks on top of each other to form the player draw stack. (If the stacks are not exactly the same size, stack them so that the larger stacks are on top of the smaller stacks). Return any excess Epidemic cards to the box. Shuffle the Infection cards (green-backed) and place them face down on the game board to form the Infection deck. Place the initial disease dice on the game board: a) Draw 3 cards from the Infection deck and place them face up on the Infection discard pile. For each card drawn, add 3 dice (of the card’s color) to each depicted city. b) Draw 3 more cards and do the same as above, but add 2 dice to each city shown. c) Draw 3 final cards and do the same as above but add 1 die to each city. The player who was last ill begins.

subject matter of the game

Pandemic is a cooperative game. You and your fellow players are members of a disease-fighting team, working together to research cures and prevent further outbreaks.

Each of you will have a unique role within the team, with special abilities that, if used wisely, will improve your team’s odds. The goal is to save humanity by discovering cures for four deadly diseases (Blue, Yellow, Black, and Red) that are threatening to overtake the planet.

If you and your team are unable to contain the diseases before finding the necessary cures, the planet will be overrun and the game will end in defeat for all… Do you have what it takes to save humanity?

playing style

Play proceeds clockwise around the table with each player taking turns until the game ends.

In each round, the active player must: Perform 4 actions

Draw 2 cards to add to his hand

Take on the role of the infector

After the player assumes the role of Infector, their turn is over and the player to their left begins their turn.

Actions

A player gets 4 actions to spend on his turn. A player can choose any of the available basic and special actions and spend 1 action to perform it. A given action can be performed more than once during a round as long as 1 action is spent for each instance.

Each player’s role grants them special abilities unique to that player. Players can also pass when they have nothing else to do. Unused actions cannot be saved from round to round.

Basic Actions

car (or ferry)

Move your character to an adjacent city. Cities are adjacent if they are connected by a red line. Red lines emanating from the edge of the board “wrap around” to the opposite board edge and continue to the indicated city. (For example, Sydney and Los Angeles are considered neighboring)

direct flight

Play a card from your hand and move your pawn to the depicted city. Discard the card into the player discard pile.

charter flight

Play the card that corresponds to your character’s current location and move to any city on the board. Discard the card into the player discard pile.

shuttle flight

If your character is in a city with a research station, move it to any other city with a research station. (See below for details on building research stations).

Happen

A player may also choose to pass (and do nothing) for an action.

The dispatcher can move other players’ pawns on his turn (using any of the available basic actions) as if it were his own pawn. He can also spend an action to move a pawn to any city that has another pawn in it. He may only move other players’ figures if they allow him to do so.

Note: For the charter flight action, the dispatcher must play the card that corresponds to the current location of the pawn he wants to move.

special promotions

Build a research station

Building research stations will help your team move from place to place. Research stations are also needed to discover cures.

Play the card that corresponds to the city your character is currently in, then place a research station in that city. Discard the card into the player discard pile. If there are no more research stations in the supply, choose one of the research stations already in play and move it to the city your character occupies.

The operations expert does not have to play the card corresponding to the city his pawn is in when performing the Build a Research Station action. He simply spends an action to add a research station to his current city.

Discover a cure

Once your team discovers all four cures, you win!

If your character is in a city with a research station, discard 5 cards of the same color to cure the corresponding disease. Take a cure token and place it (vial side up) on the Discovered Cures space to indicate which disease was cured. Place the dealt cards in the player discard pile.

The scientist only needs 4 cards of the same color to discover the cure for the corresponding disease in the Discover Cure action.

treat disease

As the game progresses, your team can treat diseases to buy the time it takes to discover cures.

Remove a plague cube from the city your character is in. (Each cube removed costs one action). Put the removed cube back into the supply next to the board. When players have discovered a cure, remove all dice of a cured disease in your current city for one action instead of one die.

eradication of a disease

When a cure for a specific disease has been discovered and all disease dice of that color have been removed from the board, flip the cure marker for the disease to the Sunset side. From now on, cards of that color have no effect when drawn on the Infector’s turn. Take all dice of the erased color and put them back in the box – they won’t be used again for the rest of the game.

The medic may remove all dice of one color (instead of 1) when performing the Treat Disease action. If at any point the Medic finds himself in a city that contains cubes of a cured disease, he may remove all of those cubes immediately. This unique ability is in effect during each player’s turn and costs no actions.

Share knowledge

Sometimes it is difficult for a player to get the necessary cards to discover a cure. The Share Knowledge action (although difficult to perform) can be useful in these cases.

Transfer a card from one player to another. Each transferred card costs 1 action. Both your pawn and your opponent’s pawn must be in the same city, and you may only transfer the map of the city you are in together. (For example, if you are in Moscow together, only the Moscow card may be transferred from one player to another).

If either player has more than 7 cards as a result of a transfer, the excess cards must be discarded immediately to the player discard pile.

The researcher may give any card from his hand to another player when he is involved in a “Share Knowledge” action. Unlike other players, he is not limited to giving the card to the currently occupied city.

This freedom only applies when the explorer deals a card – he always gets a card with the same restriction as other players. The researcher can use this ability when participating in knowledge-sharing actions during any player’s turn.

draw cards

After performing actions, players must draw 2 cards from the player deck to add to their hand. If a card is an Epidemic card, do not pick up the card, but read the Epidemic rules below. After drawing the required cards, you assume the role of the infector.

If there are not enough cards in the player deck to draw, the game will immediately end in defeat for all players!

Special event cards

The player deck contains some special event cards. These cards can be played at any time (even when it is another player’s turn) and require no action to play.

When you play a Special Event card, immediately follow the instructions on the card and then discard the card into the player discard pile.

hand limit

Players have a hand limit of 7 cards. If the number of cards in your hand ever exceeds 7 as a result of the card draw (or Share Knowledge action), the player must immediately discard the excess cards to the player discard pile.

Players can choose which cards to discard. Players can play Special Event cards (including the cards they just drew) instead of discarding them to reduce their hand to 7.

Sharing information about maps

Players can openly discuss strategies throughout the game, but like in the real world, players are not immediately aware of everything the other players are doing. To simulate this, when playing the Normal or Heroic games, players are not allowed to show their opponents the contents of their hands during play.

However, players are free to tell each other what cards they have. The introductory game has no such restriction and players can choose to play their hands face up.

Since Pandemic is a test of cooperation and courage (rather than memory), players are free to examine the contents of the player discard pile and the Infection discard pile at any time.

epidemics

Whenever a player draws an Epidemic card, discard the card to the player discard pile and do the following:

Increase Infection Rate: Move the infection rate indicator up one on the infection rate track on the game board Infection discard pile. Note: No city can contain more than 3 cubes of one color. If the epidemic would cause the city to exceed this limit, any excess dice are returned to the supply and an outbreak is triggered. During an epidemic, if there are not enough dice to add to the board, the game immediately ends in defeat for all players. Increase Infection Intensity: Take the Infection discard pile, shuffle it thoroughly, and then place it on top of the remaining Infection draw pile. (Do not shuffle these cards into the Infection deck).

Play the Infector

Draw cards from the infection draw deck equal to the current infection rate and add one die to the cities shown, using one die of the same color as each card. Trigger the cards in the order you draw them.

However, if the depicted city has a color that has been wiped out, do not add a die. If a city already contains 3 cubes of the added color, it will erupt in that color instead of adding a cube to the city.

outbreaks

A breakout occurs when a player must add a cube to a city that already has 3 cubes of that color. When this happens, instead of a 4th die, add one die of the erupting color to each adjacent city.

chain reactions

If any of these new dice would cause the total number of dice of that color in an adjacent city to exceed 3, additional bursts can occur, causing a chain reaction. Note that each city can only erupt once in each chain reaction

Each time a city erupts, move the eruption marker up one space on the eruption track. If the number of breakouts ever reaches 8 (and the breakout marker reaches the skull icon), the game immediately ends in defeat for all players.

If there are not enough dice to add to the board when infecting, the game immediately ends in defeat for all players.

end of round

After all Infection cards have been resolved, they are placed in the Infection discard pile. Your turn is over. The player on the left now begins his turn.

the end of the game

Loss

The game ends immediately in defeat for all players if any of the following conditions occur:

A player must place disease cubes on the board and there are no more of that color in the supply.

The eighth burst occurs (the burst marker reaches the skull icon on the burst indicator).

When a player needs to draw cards, there are not enough cards in the player deck.

victory

Players collectively win the game immediately when the cures for all four diseases (Blue, Yellow, Black, and Red) are discovered. Players don’t need to administer cures to every infected city to win the game – victory is instant when a player discovers the fourth and final cure.

The best legacy games to bring to your table when you’re done saving the world in Pandemic Legacy.

A deprived, casteless life is no life at all. Or at least that’s how it feels when you finally complete a beloved legacy campaign. If Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock’s Pandemic Legacy was your first experience of the format, you might have just created a new itch – one that can only be scratched by the sultry delights of mysterious packages and delicious board-changing stickers.

Don’t worry, that’s no reason to call a doctor. The only side effect is that going back to regular board games might seem rather boring in comparison. However, before you back every single Kickstarter with “Legacy” in the title, allow us to intervene.

Board games like Pandemic Legacy

The concept of the “evolving board game” is dangerously tempting. With designers still mastering the art, there are some pretty terrible games under the Legacy belt. Even Daviau’s own SeaFall is a sodden mess – seriously, how did pirate adventures get so boring? — although it was explicitly built for the format. Instead of rushing to this quick fix, check out these excellent suggestions for your post-pandemic follow-up activities.

The Greatest Legacy: Gloomhaven

What is it?

A cooperative dungeon crawler focused on tactical combat. Also the highest rated board game out there.

Similarities to Pandemic Legacy:

cooperative

Slapping you in the face is sometimes difficult

Sticker! Secret Boxes! Secret!

In 2017, Gloomhaven placed its hefty box at the top of BoardGameGeek’s rankings with a decisive hit. Since then, the Vermling-filled pack refuses to budge, fending off all competitors with a cavalcade of miniatures, monsters, and exciting scenarios. The fantasy theme may seem uninspired, but the game itself is so intelligently woven and generous with its components that almost everyone who has played it is immediately hooked.

Tactical, grid-based combat mixed with deck building is already an exciting premise. However, Gloomhaven takes it a step further by packaging a jam-packed campaign of branching scenarios, stories, and characters. If you’ve played video games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 or Dragon Age, this is as close as you can get to replicating them in board game form.

However, the core box is a lot of money. For people who aren’t sure if they even want to start playing the game, a price tag of over $100 is a bit high. Thankfully, the standalone Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion offers the same great brilliance but squeezed into a much more affordable (but still outrageously generous) 30-mission box. Gloomhaven might seem a far cry from Pandemic, but even the elven-averse players deserve a taste of the current king of the scene.

Co-op and Maps: Aeon’s End: Legacy

What is it?

Cooperative deck building where everyone plays as colorful wizards with powerful spells.

Similarities to Pandemic Legacy:

cooperative

legacy deck

Sealed treat packages

They hold cards

You’re forgiven for missing out on the Aeon’s End series, which has produced quietly entertaining cooperative deckbuilders for the last four years. Much like Gloomhaven, the theming can get the eyes scanning right past the box with barely a blink of interest (although there’s at least some color at work here). Take a chance and open a copy and you’ll find some really fun and innovative ideas. In addition to carefully managing your decks, Aeon’s End challenges you to deal with varying turn order while battling bosses and their minions.

The Legacy Edition is a great place to start for those scared of the idea of ​​building decks from scratch. It allows you to slowly build your deck into a powerful weapon over the course of the campaign. And here, too, there are neat boxes to unpack. The story – although uninspired – is spliced ​​into chapter boxes that tease events and upcoming enemies. If you’re looking for a new cooperative (and evolving) puzzle to solve with your friends each week, Aeon’s End: Legacy is a solid step up from that, shaking up the structure enough that Legacy style feels fresh .

A Taste of Betrayal: Betrayal Legacy

What is it?

Explore a haunted house with your friends over and over again! Collect powerful items, pass insanities, and – wait a minute, why is your friend wielding a knife? And are those bat wings? Oh man.

Similarities to Pandemic Legacy:

cooperative (almost!)

Chance can decide your fate

legacy deck

Rob Daviau’s handwork

Lots of stickers to apply.

By the time 2020 rolled around, a globally devastating pandemic seemed like an easy, fun fair to sit comfortably alongside other clichéd horror scenarios. To that end, we really hope that Betrayal Legacy doesn’t announce an upcoming ghost attack.

Built on the ghoul-infested foundations of 2004’s Betrayal at House on the Hill, this legacy tale follows generations of families who are inevitably drawn to exploring a haunted house.

Each of the 13 included games in this semi-cooperative experience builds excitement with exploratory tile laying as players delve into the dark, shifting halls. Finally, a scenario is revealed in which one, all, or none of the players could attack each other when a paranormal force strikes. Depending on who survives each game, characters can age, change their stats, or be replaced by their descendants as the legacy aspect provides an overarching narrative.

Those who have delved into the central, not outdated game, Betrayal, will be aware that part of the charm comes from the myriad of weird and wacky scenarios. The 13 games included might prove plenty, but you also have a unique and fully-functional game to play with once your story is over.

A lighter contest: My City

What is it?

A gentle legacy game about flipping cards and adding polyominoes to your grid.

Similarities to Pandemic Legacy:

Almost nobody

Are you trying to wean yourself from legacy gaming? My City’s laid-back affair of revealing cards and snapping building tiles together will take less of a toll on your wits, emotions, and schedule. Depending on how you line up the tiles in your grid and what they cover, you’ll earn your city a different bundle of points. It’s a satisfying premise that’s simple enough for even the youngest (or most easily distracted) board game minds to get to grips with.

The Legacy aspect breaks everything up into chapters spanning three games. There’s minimal storyline here – it’s best not to ponder why your cities are so wastefully destroyed in each game – but new chapters mark a new era of development. These offer an excuse to add new building types or stickers that change the board, along with rules that twist, push, and play with scoring mechanics. You have to be careful, but each game remains a fast, unexcited affair. After racing around the world to stop a deadly disease, choosing where to build a new farm or factory is hardly a life-or-death decision.

My City sells itself with family-friendly design, but there’s enough complexity here to satisfy even a seasoned, family-hating board gamer. That makes it the perfect legacy game to share with your siblings, parents, or kids. You can enjoy the systems while ruthlessly demolishing your scores round after round. This is a win for the family and your ego.

A piece of history: Risk Legacy

What is it?

The first true legacy board game and prequel to Pandemic Legacy. A game of dice and world domination that advances into stranger and stranger territories.

Similarities to Pandemic Legacy:

Sealed boxes, stickers and surprises

It’s basically the foundation on which Pandemic Legacy was built

Finally, if Pandemic Legacy really blew your mind, consider going back to where it all began with Risk Legacy 2011. We have to admit that we’re not really big fans of Risk’s heavily luck-based board game. However, it’s hard to deny how cool it is to open up that briefcase of a game to play with your party.

Much like Pandemic Legacy, we can say little more about what’s inside without stepping into the ubiquitous and toxic swamp of spoilers. At its core, this is still risk. But opening the box today feels like discovering the first scribbles of what has become a staple of the modern board game. There are some ingenious bombshells dropped on Risk Legacy’s insanely changing map, and they still serve to outperform many of the newer games to jump on the old bandwagon.

These are our favorites for Pandemic Legacy-like games, but we’ve barely scratched the genre’s ever-changing surface. Titles like Clank Legacy and The King’s Dilemma offer brilliant, unique twists on the concept that are worth checking out. If you’ve found others activating the same pleasure sensors in your brain, be sure to share them with us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. And if you enjoyed this piece, you can also check out the Going Analog Podcast or our new quiz show!

When he’s not getting lost as a mercenary in Gloomhaven, Henry Stenhouse can be found devouring the latest and greatest party games and then wondering why he never finds the time to actually play them with friends. Share your love of deck building with him on Twitter @Fernoface or email [email protected].

After the digital version of Pandemic disappeared from online stores last week, publisher Asmodee Digital gave players a rather cryptic answer. A more direct statement has dashed any hope of a big reveal or mystery – the game was just too old.

As PC Gamer first reported, Asmodee has removed Pandemic from both major mobile gaming markets, along with Steam, Microsoft and others, to clear the way for whatever comes next. The only version available exists on the Nintendo Switch e-shop, but even that will expire at the end of July 2022.

“The Pandemic app was released 9 years ago and we no longer feel that the current quality and reliability of the game matches what Pandemic deserves on digital platforms. It’s time to make way for Pandemic’s digital future,” Asmodee Digital told PC Gamer via email.

“As such, we are gradually removing current Pandemic games published by Asmodee Digital from all digital stores. Current owners are not affected: all players who have already purchased the game can continue to play and download it. Pandemic is and will continue to be available to play online in single player or multiplayer in the Board Game Arena.”

First published by Z-Man Games, the cooperative board game became an instant classic and has since spawned multiple expansions, variants such as the dice game Rapid Response, and a well-reviewed legacy version in Pandemic Legacy: Season Zero. The digital adaptation is one of over 20 titles that Asmodee Digital has worked on releasing online, including Gloomhaven, Terraforming Mars, Catan and Scythe.

While Pandemic’s digital sibling found success with those who wanted to take their dice clearing with them on the go, the game reportedly suffered from significant graphical glitches, slowdown, and poorly received UI changes. Reddit users who commented on the post that originally surfaced the removal debated how “ruined” and “outdated” Pandemic Digital has been looking lately. They assumed the publisher had plans to completely overhaul the app or even replace it with a more modern engine and codebase.

It remains to be seen whether this theory will be confirmed. Asmodee Digital’s explanation is in many ways as vague as the initial response from customer service. It admits that the state of the game didn’t offer a pleasant gaming experience on computers and consoles, but the company doesn’t mention a timeline for the replacement, nor what it might look like. Dicebreaker again reached out to Asmodee Digital to fill in these gaps, but received no response prior to release.

Asmodee Digital is itself a branch of the larger company, which is in the process of being bought by Embracer Group for €2.75bn (£2.28bn/$3.12bn). The Swedish holding company has been on a buying spree in recent years and has taken over the large video game companies THQ Nordic and Gearbox Studios, among others. Once the deal closes, Asmodee will mark the growing giant’s first foray into analog tabletop gaming.

Anyone who previously purchased the game digitally can still download it from marketplaces, but this pretty much confirms the end of tech support or bug fixes in the future. The virtual recreation of the Board Game Arena boxing experience also remains.

Nearly two weeks after the digital version of the Pandemic board game was quietly pulled from Steam for seemingly no reason, developer Asmodee Digital and publisher Z-Man have finally released a statement explaining their decision. Although some felt the decision was due to the impact of COVID-19, Asmodee’s testimony claims an alternative rationale.

“The Pandemic app was released 9 years ago and we no longer feel that the current quality and reliability of the game matches what Pandemic deserves on digital platforms,” ​​said Asmodee. “The time has come to make way for Pandemic’s digital future.”

Asmodee clarified that current owners of Pandemic are not affected and can continue to download and play the game. A multiplayer version of Pandemic has also remained available in Board Game Arena (owned by Asmodee) despite the delisting.

Activision Blizzard deal compares to other major acquisitions 16 pics

“We are truly grateful to the entire Pandemic community for their amazing support and dedication over the past few years,” continued Asmodee. “Stay tuned!”

Asmodee’s statement implies that the digital version of Pandemic will continue to exist in some form in the future, perhaps in an updated version. It’s possible that a cosmetic and structural overhaul has been due since the original digital version was released almost a decade ago.

Screens – Pandemic: The Board Game 25 images

In early 2020, a Pandemic giveaway on the Epic Games Store was canceled. It was thought at the time to be a matter of sensitivity thanks to the rise of COVID-19, but Asmodee’s recent comment seems to imply the two decisions are unrelated.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.

Pandemic Games and Expansions

As experienced members of a disease control team, you and the other players work together to protect the world from outbreaks and epidemics. Only through teamwork do you stand a chance of finding a cure.

Pandemic is a cooperative board game where players work as a team to treat infections around the world while gathering resources for cures. First released in 2007, the game’s unique combination of cooperative gameplay, immersive premise, and immersive design has proven to be a hit with everyone from hardcore gamers to casual gamers. The Pandemic line of games now includes multiple expansions and standalone titles.

draft

I spoke to Mike Fitzgerald and Geoff Engelstein about the design of the game in Episode 121 of Ludology.

frequently asked Questions

Can you switch players in and out during the game?

Yes, the game supports 2, 3 or 4 players. You can add a player mid-campaign, remove one, or switch players in and out mid-game.

I hear rumors about a “Season 2”. Do I need to save anything from Season 1 to play this game?

Season 2 of Pandemic Legacy is actually in the works. It will be a fully standalone game and nothing required from the Pandemic Legacy Season 1 box.

Is there a difference between the red and blue boxes?

There is no difference other than the cover and the rule book cover. For real.

Can I play Pandemic Legacy Season 1 again after I finish the campaign?

The game is designed to be played 12-24 times. (Players typically got around 16-18 games.) However, some BoardGameGeek users got creative after they finished their game. (Warning: possible spoilers)

I have another question, can you help?

Check out the wonderful FAQ on BoardGameGeek. David Murray has done a great job compiling FAQs and has used spoiler tags so you can look up your questions month by month by clicking on them. If you don’t find your answer there, write to me!

Unboxing teaser

So you got your hands on unstable unicorns! It raised a cool $1.8 million on Kickstarter, which means only one thing, this game is awesome! Unlike Exploding Kittens, Unstable Unicorns can be played over and over again. How the heck do you play Unstable Unicorns? Unfortunately, there is no university that offers a bachelor’s degree in unstable unicorns.

If you don’t own Unstable Unicorns shop online for just £14.99 with free UK delivery. We also ship worldwide. Consider adding an expansion pack, the NSFW expansion is £9.99 with free UK delivery.

We play Unstable Unicorns as below; but if we get something wrong, please let us know!

If you’re ready to destroy your friendships and brag to your friends about your victory, read on.

The goal of the game is simple. Collect as many unicorns as possible and you will be victorious; with your friends bowing to you as the champion of the Unstable Unicorns.

The important things first

After opening your unstable unicorns, you should have a deck of white-backed cards, a deck of black-backed cards, and some reference cards.

Get the white-backed cards, shuffle them well because god knows there’s a cheater among you. Give each player one of these baby unicorn cards and place the rest face down in the middle. This will be known as Kindergarten.

Get the black backed cards and like before, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle them. Make sure you have taken out all player reference cards. Once these have been dealt, the remainder is known as the Draw Pile.

Unstable Unicorns 2 Player Specific Rules

If you’re playing with 2 people, take out two neighboring cards and place one in each player’s stable. Please also remove the following cards, they are not used in the 2 player version of Unstable Unicorns.

All basic unicorns, including Narwhal

extra tail

Queen bee unicorn

rainbow mane

Rainbow Unicorn

Extremely fertile unicorn

Nanny cam

Sadistic ritual

Slower

glitter bomb

Yay!

Autoerotic Asphyxiation (when playing with the NSFW expansion)

Any expansion cards that reference Basic Unicorns

2-6 Player Specific Rules

For those of you who play with more than 2 people, after shuffling the black-backed unstable unicorn cards, give each player 5 cards and the rest make up the draw pile. This one will be next to the Kindergarten, again with the cards facing down.

Give each player a reference card so they can’t complain about forgetting!

The person with the most colorful clothes goes first and spins clockwise around the table.

Your turn – Unstable Unicorns

Unstable Unicorns is played in rounds. Each round consists of four phases.

1) Start of your turn

If one of your cards says “at the start of your turn,” do it now! If you don’t and rush to draw a card from the draw pile, you’ll miss your opportunity and won’t be able to go back, no matter how much you cry.

2) Draw phase

Draw a card from the deck. Dead easy!

3) Action Phase

Play a card from your hand or draw another card from the deck.

4) End of your turn

Make sure you don’t have more than the 7 draw card hand limit. All other cards go to the discard pile.

Keep playing until someone wins. In order to win you have to reach the most unicorns in your stable. If you play with 2-5 players you need 7 unicorns to win, if you play with 6-8 players you need 6 unicorns in your stable.

Card types in unstable unicorns

There are 7 different card types in Unstable Unicorns:

Instant: Can be played at any time and usually prevents someone from playing a card. Once played, this card is discarded.

Upgrade: Upgrade your stable. You can use this card for anyone including yourself.

Demotion: Use this card to give someone a negative effect.

Magic: Play this card on your own terms to create chaos. Once played, this card is discarded.

Magical Unicorn: Place this card in your stable for magic!

Simple Unicorn: Put this card into your Stable.

Baby Unicorn: Each player starts with a baby unicorn. You can only summon more by using special cards.

Hopefully by now you’ve learned how to play Unstable Unicorns, you can put Cards against Humanity on the shelf for now because Unstable Unicorns has a ton of expansion packs from NSFW to Apocalypse. NSFW is best played when you have your crush or lots of booze with you. Your decision!

We now stock Unicorns of Legend – the latest expansion for Unstable Unicorns.

Are you the type of person who likes to imagine the dark thought of a new, potentially deadly disease spreading across the planet like wildfire, infecting cities, then regions, then continents, and finally planets? Does this entirely imaginary scenario play into a macabre desire to explore what a worst-case scenario might look like? Do you also like telling people what to do?

Well, Pandemic board game might be the ideal game to grab from your shelf if you suddenly find yourself spending a lot of time indoors for whatever reason.

A 21st-century board game classic, Pandemic was probably the most influential game of the 2000s – with its tense, cooperative gameplay where up to four players work together to prevent a small epidemic from turning into a disease that is sweeping the globe devours—and 2010’s, when the spin-off Pandemic Legacy helped popularize an entirely new style of board game.

When the pandemic begins, four different diseases – represented by different colored dice – have emerged around the world, and you and your friends play employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Each of you is assigned a different specialty and you must work together to contain the spread of the diseases while developing vaccines for them.

If you can develop vaccines for all four, you win. If any number of other scenarios occur, you lose. (Seriously, there are so many ways to lose this game. It’s mean.)

What makes Pandemic so good — and so unnerving — is the way it quietly encourages you and your fellow players to do just a bit of roleplay as you gather around the table and quietly beg each other to do this or that because it’s the only way to save the world. If Sara is the medic, she should immediately travel to Tokyo where an outbreak is looming, as she is the most efficient at containing it. But if Brad is the scientist, then Sara should also try to visit them on their way to Tokyo to make sure they have the tools they need to make a vaccine.

It’s an exciting game about saving humanity and possibly destroying your friendships as well. If, like me, you’re a fan of giving in to your apocalyptic fears, this is a great way to linger a long time indoors. And if you already know Pandemic inside out (or at least know it well enough to have developed a strategy that will help you win most games), Pandemic Legacy could be your jam.

Pandemic Legacy brings serialized storytelling to the world of Pandemic

Pandemic Legacy combines the efforts of original Pandemic designer Matt Leacock and board game genius Rob Daviau to create a game where your actions actually change the state of the world (in game).

Daviau had already experimented with this form of gameplay in Risk Legacy, which took the popular world-conquest game and added an element of the sequel. For example, if your army conquered France in one game, it would still control France when the next game started. (This type of serialized board game is now commonly referred to as a “legacy” game because it originated in Risk Legacy.)

Pandemic Legacy reinforced what was good about Risk Legacy and made it really great. When a city comes down with a disease, it may not be a place for you to save. Diseases would become resistant to vaccines. The characters you played – which progressed from game to game – could die or otherwise be removed from the game. And these developments could already happen in the first few gameplay sessions.

Each Legacy season – there are two that are sold separately, like TV season DVD box sets – is also designed to be a limited experience, spanning at least a dozen sessions. (The game is structured so that each new session corresponds to a month of the year, but certain mechanics allow for additional sessions beyond base 12.) It offers twists and turns, like a TV series. And the box itself holds secrets in the form of sealed envelopes and tiny boxes that you only open after drawing cards instructing you to do so. You quickly learn that every time you open one of these sealed compartments, things are likely to get progressively worse.

I’m not that deep into the game’s second season, which radically changes many of Pandemic’s core ideas in ways that haven’t always worked for me. But the season has its fans, and even if you’re not one of them, the first season is a suspense-packed classic, especially if you have a good group of friends who don’t mind getting up frequently to wash their hands just because when If you’re playing a game about a global pandemic, you may find yourself thinking about the importance of good hygiene over and over for no particular reason. (A third season, which will conclude the story, is planned but as yet unreleased.)

What takes away from the fun of Legacy a bit is that both seasons are quite expensive and are sold separately. (The first season is just under $60 on Amazon, and certainly more at your local game store.) But the basic Pandemic is pretty darn fun and much, much cheaper (under $30 on Amazon, with a digital app version , which is available for so little money). than 99 cents, depending on whether it’s on sale).

So should you find yourself spending a lot of time with your freshly washed hands in the near future, play Pandemic as much as you can while following social distancing instructions. (You could also gather virtually via a video conferencing program if you’re at all concerned about your health.)

Sure, it might make you think a lot about how a pandemic would affect life, and that might be uncomfortable. But you’ll also have a lot of fun doing it, and you’ll be in a small, enclosed space, sharing snacks, and breathing the same air, and generally just having some time to chill, which would never be a bad idea in any way.

One good thing is Vox’s recommendation feature. In each issue you will find something more from the world of culture that we particularly recommend.

Ultra board games

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Our mission is to create engaging articles such as reviews, tips and tricks, game rules, strategies, etc. If you enjoy the content of a board game on this site, you should consider buying the game. These games deserve it.