Board Game Analysis – Pandemic

Me and a group of fellow students have played a board game called Pandemic and this is my analysis of it.

Pandemic is meant to be played by two to four players. The game board consists of a world map of earth with capital cities used as locations. Each location/city on the game board has a color. There are four different city colors, the same amount of colors as there are diseases in the game.

The goal of the game is to work together to find the cures to all four diseases before any of the loose conditions happen.

Before I list the loose conditions I will familiarize you with the core game system and its components.

Core game system

The core game system revolves around components called disease cubes. These cubes are essentially tokens colored in their respective disease color.

When the game begins, disease cubes are spread across the game board randomly by drawing infection cards. The infection cards only have one property, which is the city that it is supposed to interact with. At the end of each player’s turn, he or she draws two types of cards, player cards and infection cards. Infection cards result in the placement of disease cubes in the cities that are displayed on the cards. Player cards can be used in several ways, one of which being to collect five of a certain color in order to cure a disease.

There are two major tasks any player can focus on, the first one being removing disease cubes from locations/cities and second one being finding cures for diseases. If more than three disease cubes are placed on any one city, an outbreak is triggered and disease cubes are placed on adjacent cities instead of the targeted city and an outbreak counter is heightened. This outbreak can cause a chain reaction, causing more outbreaks if any of the adjacent cities also have three disease cubes on them.

The loose conditions of the game are:

• Emptying the supply of unused disease cubes of any color.
• Emptying the draw pile of player cards.
• The outbreak counter reaching a number of eight.

A typical turn

A typical turn starts with the player figuring out what to spend his or her actions on. A player can choose to do up to four actions in one turn and in any order. This is the most interesting system in the game in my opinion and I will go through it in greater depth later in this analysis. The system creates strategy and promotes discussion among the players.

When the player has spent the actions he or she will draw two player cards. The player cards consist of city cards, special event cards and epidemic cards. City cards can be used in many different ways of which I will explain later, but one I have already mentioned. They can be used to cure a disease if a player owns five cards of the same color. Another type of player card, the special event card has a unique action attached to it that allow the player who holds it to perform this action. The action is instant and costs no player actions to use. It can also be played on any other players turn. The effect of these special event cards differ greatly. An example of a special event card is the “forecast”-card which lets the players choose what upcoming cities will be hit by disease cubes by choosing the order of the top infection cards draw pile. The last type of player card, the epidemic card, sets off an epidemic which greatly spreads the disease cubes on the game board. Using any of the player cards in almost any manner discards the card and it is removed from the game.

After the drawing of player cards, a number of infection cards are drawn to continuously increase the number of disease cubes across the game board. The number of infection cards that are drawn is based off a counter which is heightened whenever an epidemic cards is drawn (the epidemic card is a type of player card, as mentioned above). For each card drawn a disease cube is added to that city in the city’s color.

When the infection cards have been drawn and the disease cubes are placed on the game board the turn is over and the next players turn begin.

The most interesting system

In my opinion the most interesting system in the game is the player action system. During a player’s turn he or she can choose to do up to four actions of any allowed type and in any order. The player has the freedom to choose what to do with each action, but that is not all. Players need to work together in order to succeed in the game which promotes discussions on what to spend the player actions on. This freedom and the strategy, discussion and team work that this creates is why I think that this system is the most interesting in this game.

In short a player has a choice of moving, removing disease cubes, researching cures and trading cards with other players.

In more detail the different player actions are:

1. Move – Standard: Move the player pawn to any adjacent city.
2. Move – Fly to: This action moves the player directly to a certain city. The player must own the player card of that city and it is discarded when performing this action.
3. Move – Fly from: This action moves the player from a certain city to any city on the map. The player must own the player card on which he or she is standing and it is discarded when performing this action.
4. Remove disease cube: Remove one cube from the city at which the player pawn is located.
5. Build research facility: Place a research facility on the city in which the player pawn is located. The player must own the player card for this city and it is discarded when performing this action.
6. Treat disease: If a player owns five cards of a certain color, he or she can treat or cure the disease of that color.
7. Trade cards: Trade a card with another player located at the same city.

Regarding the strategy connected to the player actions, there are five different player classes. Each class does one type of the available player action especially good. Since the player count is between two and four, there is always at least one player class not present in a play through. This adds some depth to the game, since each play through there will probably be some variance to the player classes existent in it.

Target audience

Pandemic should appeals to strategists who like discussion. The box recommends a player age of ten or higher. This is a very social game and I would recommend good friends to play this for fun or players that want to get to know each other better to play this game since there will be consistent dialog between the players.

Pandemic is a cooperative game which should make it appealing to non-competitive players. Victory or defeat is shared among the players, which probably makes the game more fun for players who does not enjoy playing competitively.

The game is based around strategy, which should appeal to intellectual players that want a logical challenge.

The best

The best side of the game in my opinion is the balance. We played a total of five times and in more than half of the play throughs the win and loose conditions were one or two player turns apart from each other.

I would consider us mediocre or slightly above mediocre players in skill and we lost our first two play throughs. Each time we lost, we were very close to winning the game as well. We then proceeded to win our last three play throughs after gaining deeper knowledge of the dynamics of the game.

To balance this game to a degree such as what they have done is impressive. It has probably seen its fair share of game testing and who doesn’t like a polished game? This is the best thing about Pandemic.

The worst

The worst side of the game is in my opinion is one of the player classes. Each player class has an improved action type. The player class I am referring to is the class called “The Dispatcher”. This class is specialized in the movement player action. His abilities make him able to move any other player pawn as if they were his own and additionally he is able to move a player pawn to any other player pawns location on the game board. You can easily see that with his abilities the choices you will have are increased tremendously.

Since this game is to a large portion focused on strategy and promotes players to think many steps ahead, having the dispatcher in the team makes it extremely hard to choose what to do since the options are nearly endless.

I am aware that this problem only exists when this particular player class is in play and that it gets worse with more players participating in the game but this was the only big thing that really made the game less enjoyable in my opinion.

You could argue that this player class adds depth and is a good thing but I would argue that it is bad, simply from experience with it. Sometimes having restrictions in games is good and this is one of those times.

Summary

To draw parallels to what a pandemic of this scale would look like in real life, this game makes the players think strategically much like you would in such a situation. Having good communication would also be key and that is one of the main features of Pandemic. Also sending in specialists to travel across the world to defeat the diseases is really the core theme of the game and I think they nail it really well.

The heavy focus on strategy in this game is one of the major key features of it and when playing it for the first time it actually isn’t that difficult to get a grasp of the rules and how to play the game. Having a semi deep core of strategy dynamics and still making the players feel like they know what they are doing is something I like about this game. As with any strategy game, or perhaps any game at all, when having played it for a while you get a greater understanding of the dynamics and therefor are better at manipulating the game to your favor. Us losing two games and then winning three made this a joyful experience, we got a feeling of knowledge and skill progression. A thing that made the game a challenge was noticing the most imminent loosing condition and to try and prevent it. These conditions can be relatively hidden and it is satisfying to find them in time to do something about them.

We played a few games with four players and then a few with two. After doing that my reflection on the balance is that it is very well balanced in this department as well. Having fewer players in the game means that you have less special abilities to make use of, but the ones you have come more often. This is balanced I think. Then you have the aspect of how many players the player cards are distributed amongst. Having fewer players in the game means that the chance of one player finding more cards of the same type is higher since the cards are distributed among fewer players. This is an advantage. The coverage of the game board, however, is worse with fewer players which mean a disadvantage. To balance this must have been hard but in my opinion it is balanced and they did a good job with it.

There is also an option in the manual to play the game at different difficulties which could potentially make the longevity of the game better. Personally I was getting bored of the game after our five play throughs and even with this difficulty option I would rather not play any more of this game right now. Perhaps I’m not part of the target audience or the game isn’t meant to be played five times in one week.

All in all I think Pandemic is a great game and I’m impressed with the polish and balance of it.