Pandemic! (New Board Game)

Last night I was introduced to Pandemic! by Zman games. It was so much crazy fun and unique in the fact that it was a cooperative endeavor between the players against the game itself.

The way it works is that 3-5 players are all assigned various roles and must work together to stop a global pandemic of four diseases.
The roles are:
Medic: Can heal all disease from a city and administer known cures for free
Dispatcher: Can move any player to a city with another player in it.
Researcher: Can trade any data with a player in the city.
Scientist: Can find a cure with 4 color cards instead of 5
Civil Operations: Builds research facilities to allow easier access for scientists and allow faster travel.


In a turn you have four actions: movement, curing, role abilities, ect. After that two player cards are drawn. These are usually color coded cities to move to a cure or special events. The only bad one is the Epidemic card. I think it speaks for itself.

Then, after that is done, you draw two infection cards and infect two new cities. This is where the epidemic card gets bad, because it makes you draw from the bottom of the infection deck, infect the city to maximum and then shuffle up all the previously infected city cards and place them on TOP of the deck, so you will find yourself with rapid reinfection.

Needless to say, we lost more than we won. But it was fun. Crazy fun. This description I have given you is a just the basics, and every game is different. You can find yourself on the easy road to victory only to lose right at the end, or you might struggle the whole way only to win in one round.

I recommend picking up a copy if you have the people to play with.