Pandemic

Last night, we took a break from the Red Tide Labyrinth Lord campaign to play the cooperative boardgame Pandemic. This was one of my Christmas gifts from my lovely wife, but we'd not had a chance to play it yet. The premise of the game is that the players are all members of the CDC working to control the outbreak of multiple diseases across the globe before they become so virulent that nothing can be done to contain them.

Since we'd already played Forbidden Island, a cooperative game by the same designer, we were fairly familiar with the basic rules and approach of Pandemic. There are some differences, of course, chief among them being that Pandemic is a more difficult game to beat, since it's designed for older players. Likewise, when we played our first game, I misread the setup instructions and wound up using the "heroic" (i.e., hardest) rules rather than the introductory ones. Needless to say, we lost.

But it was a fun game nonetheless. Like Forbidden Island, it's not a game where you can afford to be lax. Players must quickly adopt an aggressive and proactive play style or else the multiple plagues will overwhelm you. That's a lesson we didn't apply, so, even if I hadn't flubbed the setup as I did, I doubt we'd have won the game, though it might have taken longer for us to lose than it did. I hope to play it again in the future, since it looks like it'll be quite a challenge.