Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative game that has a lot of flexibility from game to game. The theme is a little challenging to get people on board with.... but the artwork, title and gameplay ultimately make this game click with a larger audience. I would say it is a good game... a nice co-op. But it only just a decent game overall. I would give it 3.5 stars.

A co-op game that is fun and relatively easy to learn and plays in a short amount of time. Each game tends to be very different and they are usually tense to the end. It's fun to give each disease a name and then watch it spread or try to cure it. The city spots are way too small for all the stuff that can go on them, though; a single pawn is larger than a city space!

This is a Euro, through and through. An abstracted map, some wooden blocks, stacks of cards, and role selection. Even with all that, the theme is great (diseases are spreading! The CDC is on the scene!), there is a lot of tension as you try to rein in infections, and the player interaction of constantly trying to meet up and exchange cards to quell the next outbreak makes this a "secret AT game". You can play with the Euro crowd and get away with it--they'll never notice!

I like the components--the dark world map looks nice compared to all the Risk map clones out there. The cards are decent enough stock, and the cubes, are well, quite wooden I guess. They're wooden cubes, there's nothing to harp on. I wish the board was a little bigger, just because it can get a little confusing when an epidemic starts spreading cubes everywhere. Well produced rulebook, too.