Friday Filler: Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe

Now it might seem inappropriate for a new version of Pandemic—the 2008 game of fighting and finding a cure to four outbreaks of different diseases—to be published in the midst of an actual pandemic. It might also seem inappropriate that its subject focuses entirely on North America given the high number of deaths from the Covid-19 virus in the USA. If you believe that to be so, then this review is not for you. However, you would be wrong in your thinking. To start with, the publication date of the new game is entirely coincidental. Second, the subject matter of the new game—just like the original—is about researching, teaching and finding a cure for multiple diseases, which is exactly what scientists are doing right now. So both Pandemic and the new game are about providing medical aid and saving people, undeniably positive rather than negative in both their subject matter and what the players are doing. If you still find the subject matter distasteful, then this review is not for you.

The original Pandemic was published in 2008 to much acclaim. In the game, between one and four players take the role of members of the Center for Disease Control working against four global epidemics—red, blue, yellow, and black—in a race to save humanity. The game was one of the first titles to really distill the concept of the co-operative game, a game in which the players played not against each other, but against the board and the game itself, into something that was simple, elegant, and ultimately, very popular. In Pandemic, the players race around the world, travelling from city to city in an effort to treat diseases and find a cure for them whilst staving off the effects of outbreaks that will spread these diseases from one city to every adjacent city. Too many outbreaks and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Fail to find cures to all four diseases and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Like all cooperative games, Pandemic is designed to be difficult to beat and can be made even more challenging through the various expansions.

The latest addition to the Pandemic family of boardgames is Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe, the second entry in the ‘Hotzone’ family of Pandemic games after Pandemic Hot Zone: North America. Published by Z-Man Games, this again is designed for between one and four players, has players cooperating to treat and find a cure to several diseases, and is played against the game rather than the players against each other. It is however, not the same game as Pandemic, for whilst there are many similarities, there are also several differences. The first of these is that there are only three diseases to find a cure for and the second is that it is set entirely in Europe, as opposed to the four diseases and the global scope of Pandemic. The third is the playing time. Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe can be played in thirty minutes as opposed to the sixty minutes of standard Pandemic. Further there are similarities between Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe and Pandemic Hot Zone: North America, such that their rules can be mixed and matched, although arguably if you have one, do you need the other as another shorter, fast-playing version of Pandenic?

So as with its American counterpart, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe only needs four cards of the same colour to cure a disease instead of five, and there is only the one fixed Research Station instead of multiple Research Stations which can be placed on the board as in Pandemic. This is of course in Genève, the European headquarters of the United Nations and the World Health Organisation as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross. This negates the need for the ‘Operations Expert’ from Pandemic, who can establish Research Stations around the world and the ability of the players to shuttle back and forth between them. The four roles in Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe are the ‘Virologist’, ‘Containment Specialist’, ‘Pilot’, and ‘Quarantine Specialist’.

Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe only has three Epidemic cards. These accelerate and exacerbate the spread of the three diseases in the game, whereas standard Pandemic has three, four, and five, the number used to vary the difficulty of beating the game. Diseases cannot be eradicated in Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe, whereas in standard Pandemic, they can, preventing their appearance during the game. Lastly, rather than alter the number of Epidemic cards to vary the difficulty of beating the game, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe—just like Pandemic Hot Zone: North America—provides a different means to alter the difficulty of play. In Pandemic Hot Zone: North America it was Crisis cards, but in Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe it is Mutation cards, which change how the various diseases in the game work.

Nevertheless, game play in Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is similar to that of Pandemic. Each turn, a player will move round the map treating diseases to prevent there being too many on the board, visiting cities for which they have a card to give to another player, and when a player has the requisite four cards of one colour, rushing back to Genève to find cure for the disease of that colour. Designed for two to four players, aged eight and up, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is won by finding a cure for all three diseases. This is the only winning condition, whereas there are several losing conditions. Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is lost if four Outbreaks occur, the players run out of disease cubes of any colour to add to the board, or when the Player Deck is depleted.

As its title suggests, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is played on a map of Europe. This depicts twenty-four cities across the continent, divided into three zones—the blue zone covering Western Europe, the red zone covering Eastern Europe, and the yellow zone Southern Europe. These cities are connected by various routes along which both the players will travel as they move around the continent and the game’s three diseases will travel whenever there is Outbreak in one city. This happens whenever a city with three disease cubes has more cubes of the same colour added to it. In which case the disease spreads to directly connected cities.

The game offers four different roles. The ‘Virologist’ can substitute one required card to ‘Discover a Cure’, so use three cards of one colour and two cards of another colour, and as an action remove a single cube from the board matching the colour of a card in his hand. When the ‘Containment Specialist’ enters a city with two or more cubes of one colour in a city, his player removes one of them. The ‘Pilot’ can Fly to any city within two connections of his current location, skipping the cities between them, and take another player with him. When the ‘Quarantine Specialist’ is in a city, if that city or the adjacent cities would be infected during the drawing of Infection cards, then no cubes are placed in those cities.

As well as the board, there are two decks of cards, both of which contain a card for each of the twenty-four cities on the board. The Infection deck is used to determine where incidences of the game’s three diseases will occur. Over the course of the game, Infection cards drawn will be reshuffled and added back to the top of the Infection deck to represent the populations of cities being constantly prone to the game’s three diseases. The cards in the Player deck are used in several ways. Each represents a single city and can be used to travel to or from a particular city, so to or from London. Once a player has four cards of a single colour—red, blue, or yellow—then he can travel to Genève and use them to find a cure. To acquire four cards of a single colour, a player can either draw them from the Player deck at the end of his turn or take them from or be given them by a fellow player.

In addition, the Player deck contains three other types of card—the Epidemic card, the Event card, and the Mutation card. When an Epidemic card is drawn it increases the rate of infection—the number of cards drawn from from the Infection deck at the end of a a player’s turn, determines the city where a new occurrence of a disease happens, and shuffles the Infection cards in the discard pile back onto the Infection deck to reinfect cities that have already suffered disease already. The Event cards each provide a one-time bonus, such as ‘Mobile Hospital’ which allows the current player to remove one cube from each of the cities he travels to on his turn and ‘Resource Planning’ which enables a player to look at the top four cards of the Player Deck, rearrange them and add them to the top of the deck. There are only four Event cards in the game.

There are nine Mutation cards in the game, with three different effects, one per disease. Thus, for ‘Resistant to Treatment’, if there are three or cubes of one colour on a city, a player must spend two actions to Treat Disease in that city. There is one of these for each disease. Once drawn, a Mutation card remains in play until a cure for its disease is found. Further, until that cure is found, more Mutation cards for that disease can be drawn and they stack, combining their effects, making the disease harder to treat and easier to spread. In addition, the game’s difficulty can be adjusted by adding more Mutation cards to Player deck. Each Mutation card affects a specific disease in a specific, permanent way. However, unlike the Crisis cards in Pandemic Hot Zone: North America, the Mutation cards in Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe do not feel like a wholly new mechanic, rules for mutating diseases having been previously seen in the Pandemic: On the Brink expansion for the main game. as to which Crisis cards the players will face.

Game set-up is simple enough. Each player is given a role and two randomly drawn Player cards whilst the remainder of the Player deck is seeded with the three Epidemic cards and three Mutation cards. Six cards are drawn from the Infection deck to determine where the three diseases first occur on the board and to form the discard pile. Then on his turn, a player will move round the map, treating diseases, taking or giving Player cards, and so on. At the end of his turn, he draws two more cards from the Player deck, adding them to his hand or immediately resolving them if they are Crisis cards or Epidemic cards. Lastly, he draws Infection cards from the Infection deck—starting at two and rising to four—and adds disease cubes to the cities indicated on the cards drawn. Play continues like this until the game is won by all three diseases being cured or lost by having four Outbreaks occur, running out of disease cubes, or depleting the Player deck.

Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is easy to lose, but challenging to win. Plus winning does feel good. Like any Pandemic game, there is a real sense of achievement in working together, discovering curses to the diseases, and so winning the game.

Time is tight. With a four player game, the number of cards in the Player deck will range between twenty-three and twenty-nine, giving the players between eleven and fourteen turns between them before the game ends. So players need to plan and coordinate their actions from turn to turn, and this is not taking into account the effects of Epidemic and Mutation cards. So the players are constantly thinking, planning, and having to adjust to unexpected events (well, they are not unexpected, their being built into the game and its set-up, so think unexpected timing of events), so game play is both thoughtful and tense. However, since it is a cooperative game, there is the opportunity to discuss what your actions are going to be and that alleviates some of the tension—a little.

Physically, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is very nicely presented. Everything is in full colour, all of the cards are easy to read, and the rulebook quickly guides you through set-up and answers your questions. It even has a list of the differences between Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe and Pandemic. Lastly, the playing pieces are all done in solid plastic. Everything then, is of a high quality.

So is Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe a good game? To which the answer is, yes, yes it is a good game. However, it feels very close in play to Pandemic Hot Zone: North America, and having played one, it is debatable whether it is different enough to make it stand out. The lack of major differences mean that going from one to the other is easy enough and the compatibility means that the different roles and both Crisis and Mutation cards could be mixed into the one game. Yet another problem is that the Mutation cards only have three mutations between all nine cards (there being one of each type per disease) and that does not much in the way of variation.

Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is an efficient, simpler version of the standard game of Pandemic, streamlined for faster play, size, and price. Yet Pandemic Hot Zone: North America already did that and if you already have that, do you really need another version? Had there been more variation in the Mutation cards to make it stand out a little more, then Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe would be worth trying and buying. Without that greater degree of variation, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is a serviceable, playable game that is perhaps of more interest to the dedicated devotee of the Pandemic line of games.

Friday Filler: Pandemic Hot Zone: North America

Now it might seem inappropriate for a new version of Pandemic—the 2008 game of fighting and finding a cure to four outbreaks of different diseases—to be published in the midst of an actual pandemic. It might also seem inappropriate that its subject focuses entirely on North America given the high number of deaths from the Covid-19 virus in the USA. If you believe that to be so, then this review is not for you. However, you would be wrong in your thinking. To start with, the publication date of the new game is entirely coincidental. Second, the subject matter of the new game—just like the original—is about researching, teaching and finding a cure for multiple diseases, which is exactly what scientists are doing right now. So both Pandemic and the new game are about providing medical aid and saving people, undeniably positive rather than negative in both their subject matter and what the players are doing. If you still find the subject matter distasteful, then this review is not for you.

The original Pandemic was published in 2008 to much acclaim. In the game, between one and four players take the role of members of the Center for Disease Control working against four global epidemics—red, blue, yellow, and black—in a race to save humanity. The game was one of the first titles to really distill the concept of the co-operative game, a game in which the players played not against each other, but against the board and the game itself, into something that was simple, elegant, and ultimately, very popular.  In Pandemic, the players race around the world, travelling from city to city in an effort to treat diseases and find a cure for them whilst staving off the effects of outbreaks that will spread these diseases from one city to every adjacent city. Too many outbreaks and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Fail to find cures to all four diseases and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Like all cooperative games, Pandemic is designed to be difficult to beat and can be made even more challenging through the various expansions.

The latest addition to the Pandemic family of boardgames is Pandemic Hot Zone: North America. Published by Z-Man Games, this again is designed for between one and four players, has players cooperating to treat and find a cure to several diseases, and is played against the game rather than the players against each other. It is however, not the same game as Pandemic, for whilst there are many similarities, there are also several differences. The first of these is that there are only three diseases to find a cure for and the second is that it is set entirely in North America, as opposed to the four diseases and global scope of Pandemic. The third is the playing time. Pandemic Hot Zone: North America can be played in thirty minutes as opposed to the sixty minutes of standard Pandemic.

Those are the most obvious differences, but there are others. These include only needing four cards of the same colour to cure a disease instead of five, and there being only one Research Station, rather than multiple Research Stations. This is of course in Atlanta at the Center for Disease Control headquarters. This negates the need for the ‘Operations Expert’ from Pandemic, who can establish Research Stations around the world and the ability of the players to shuttle back and forth between them. The Researcher and Dispatcher roles in Pandemic Hot Zone: North America are slightly different from Pandemic, but these differences are relatively minor. Pandemic Hot Zone: North America has only three Epidemic cards, which are always used in the game, whereas standard Pandemic has three, four, and five, the number used to vary the difficulty of beating the game. Diseases cannot be eradicated in Pandemic Hot Zone: North America, whereas in standard Pandemic, they can, preventing their appearance during the game. Lastly, rather than alter the number of Epidemic cards to vary the difficulty of beating the game, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America provides Crisis cards. During game set-up, the number of Crisis cards can be varied to set the game’s difficulty, plus each Crisis card is different, so adding an extra random element to game play.

Nevertheless, game play in Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is similar to that of Pandemic. Each turn, a player will move round the map treating diseases to prevent there being too many on the board, visiting cities for which they have a card to give to another player, and when a player has the requisite four cards of one colour, rushing back to Atlanta to find cure for the disease of that colour. Designed for two to four players, aged eight and up, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is won by finding a cure for all three diseases. This is the only winning condition, whereas there are several losing conditions. Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is lost if four Outbreaks occur, the players run out of disease cubes of any colour to add to the board, or when the Player Deck is depleted.

As its title suggests, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is played on a map of North America. This depicts twenty-four cities across the USA, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. These are divided into three zones—the blue zone covering the north-east, eastern seaboard, and midwest; the red zone covering the south, south-west, and west; and the yellow zone covering Mexico, Louisiana, Florida, Cuba, and the Dominican Republican. These cities are connected by various routes along which both the players will travel as they move around the continent and the game’s three diseases will travel whenever there is Outbreak in one city. This happens whenever a city with three disease cubes has more cubes of the same colour added to it. In which case the disease spreads to directly connected cities.

The game offers four different roles. These are the Dispatcher which can move any player’s pawn to another city where is already another player’s pawn or move another player’s pawn to a connected city; the Generalist, which can do five actions each turn rather than the standard four; the Medic, which can remove all of the disease cubes of one colour in a city rather than just the one when he takes the Treat Disease action or remove all of the cubes for a cured disease for free; and the Researcher, who can give cards to another player whose pawn is in the same city and the cards do not need to match the city they are in.

As well as the board, there are two decks of cards, both of which contain a card for each of the twenty-four cities on the board. The Infection deck is used to determine where incidences of the game’s three diseases will occur. Over the course of the game, Infection cards drawn will be reshuffled and added back to the top of the Infection deck to represent the populations of cities being constantly prone to the game’s three diseases. The cards in the Player deck are used in several ways. Each represents a single city and can be used to travel to or from a particular city, so to or from Boston. Once a player has four cards of a single colour—red, blue, or yellow—then he can travel to Atlanta and use them to find a cure. To acquire four cards of a single colour, a player can either draw them from the Player deck at the end of his turn or take them from or be given them by a fellow player.

In addition, the Player deck contains three other types of card. When an Epidemic card is drawn it increases the rate of infection—the number of cards drawn from from the Infection deck at the end of a a player’s turn, determines the city where a new occurrence of a disease happens, and shuffles the Infection cards in the discard pile back onto the Infection deck to reinfect cities that have already suffered disease already. The Event cards each provide a one-time bonus, such as ‘One Quiet Night’ which allows the current player to skip the ‘Draw Infection Cards’ phase of his turn or ‘Borrowed Time’ which enables the current player to take two additional actions.

Crisis Cards make the game’s play more challenging and are played immediately when drawn. So ‘Logistics Failure’ forces the current player  ‘Draw Infection Cards’ phase of his turn, whilst ‘Limited Options’ forces each player to reduce the size of his hand from six to five. This is temporary, but does last until another Crisis card is drawn. These Crisis cards are really the new mechanic to the Pandemic family, not only can they be used as a means to adjust the game’s difficulty rather than using the Epidemic cards, they can also add an ongoing, if temporary, effect that will hinder the players’ progress. There are just seven of them in the game, but because only three or six of them are used in the game—depending upon the difficulty of the game desired—there is always a degree of randomness and uncertainty as to which Crisis cards the players will face.

Game set-up is simple enough. Each player is given a role and two randomly drawn Player cards whilst the remainder of the Player deck is seeded with the three Epidemic cards. Six cards are drawn from the Infection deck to determine where the three diseases first occur on the board and to form the discard pile. Then on his turn, a player will move round the map, treating diseases, taking or giving Player cards, and so on. At the end of his turn, he draws two more cards from the Player deck, adding them to his hand or immediately resolving them if they are Crisis cards or Epidemic cards. Lastly, he draws Infection cards from the Infection deck—starting at two and rising to four—and adds disease cubes to the cities indicated on the cards drawn. Play continues like this until the game is won by all three diseases being cured or lost by having four Outbreaks occur, running out of disease cubes, or depleting the Player deck.

Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is easy to lose, but challenging to win. Plus winning does feel good. Like any Pandemic game, there is a real sense of achievement in working together, discovering curses to the diseases, and so winning the game.

Time is tight. With a four player game, the number of cards in the Player deck will range between twenty-three and twenty-nine, giving the players between eleven and fourteen turns between them before the game ends. So players need to plan and coordinate their actions from turn to turn, and this is not taking into account the effects of Epidemic and Crisis cards. So the players are constantly thinking, planning, and having to adjust to unexpected events (well, they are not unexpected, their being built into the game and its set-up, so think unexpected timing of events), so game play is both thoughtful and tense. However, since it is a cooperative game, there is the opportunity to discuss what your actions are going to be and that alleviates some of the tension—a little.

Physically, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is very nicely presented. Everything is in full colour, all of the cards are easy to read, and the rulebook quickly guides you through set-up and answers your questions. It even has a list of the differences between Pandemic Hot Zone: North America and Pandemic. Lastly, the playing pieces are all done in solid plastic. Everything then, is of a high quality.

So the first question is, is Pandemic Hot Zone: North America a good game? To which the answer is, yes, yes it is a good game. However, it might just be a slightly too difficult or challenging for its minimum age range of eight and older.

So the second question is, should you add Pandemic Hot Zone: North America to the Pandemic family of games you already own. Well, that depends, because the real question is, who is Pandemic Hot Zone: North America really aimed at? For fundamentally, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is really just a shorter, more tense version of Pandemic, and if you own Pandemic, it may well not be sufficiently different from Pandemic to warrant adding it to your collection. Though that will probably not stop you if we are honest. Yes, the playing area is different, but really the major difference is the addition of the Crisis cards. Otherwise, the gameplay is just like the original Pandemic. 

The clue as to what Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is lies in the size of the game and two other games—Ticket to Ride: London and Ticket to Ride: New York. Both of these are smaller, shorter implementations of the 2004 classic Ticket to Ride. They offer minor variations upon the standard Ticket to Ride rules and a reduction in both playing time, actual size, and price of the game, as well as providing the designer with a new format in which to explore the Ticket to Ride concept. Similarly, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America offers its designer a new format in which to explore the Pandemic concept as well as reduced size, playing time, and price. Which means that in the future there will be other entries in the Pandemic Hot Zone series.

Overall, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America does not actually have a great deal of new game play to offer the dedicated Pandemic fan, who will probably view the game as essentially ‘Pocket Pandemic’. However, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America’s combination reduced playing time, size, and price make it a less daunting introduction to the Pandemic family of games.

Pandemic Over Arkham

Although there had been cooperative games before, some even dating as far back as 1989 as in the Aliens boardgame or even 1974 with the Eascape from Colditz boardgame, it is oft forgotten how groundbreaking Pandemic was when it was first released in 2008. Although its subject matter was grim—four scientists from the Center for Disease Control attempting to find cures to four epidemics before they wiped out mankind—it was an accessible subject matter, and to most people, the play of the game against the game itself was novel as well as challenging. The rules were also instantly accessible, so that you could open the box, read through and do the setup in minutes before starting play. Once you played, you knew that you had to go back and play again, if only to beat the game itself, because essentially, playing Pandemic was like playing a puzzle. So it was in June, 2008 when playing Pandemic for the first time, it having gone on sale that weekend at UK Games Expo. Since then, it has become a mainstay of the hobby, only receiving attention anew when Z-Man Games published Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 in 2015. Back in 2009 though, a friend commented that the diseases in Pandemic—red, blue, black, and yellow—might not represent diseases at all, but rather they could be cultists devoted to one of the Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos. So the yellow disease cubes could be members of the Cult of the Yellow Sign, the black cubes members of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh, and so on. In 2016, the interpretation of the disease cubes in Pandemic became a reality with the publication of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu.

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu is a cooperative game in which stalwart Investigators work to thwart the summoning of the Great Old Ones in the Lovecraft Country towns of Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport. They must race to find the clues necessary to close the Gates in each of these towns all the while cultists gather and summon Shoggoths—things from an elder age—that will inexorably move towards the Gates and once there summon an Old One whose influence over this section of New England will only further hamper the efforts of the Investigators. Not only do the Investigators have to contend with the difficulty of piecing the clues together to close the Gates and nefarious cultists determined to summon their eldritch masters, there is the chance that they will be sent mad by their very efforts. 

If too many Great Old Ones are summoned and Cthulhu is woken from his slumber, then the Investigators lose. If they are overwhelmed by cultists—that is, when the supply of cultists runs out—then the Investigators lose. If they are overwhelmed by shoggoths—that is, when the supply of shoggoths runs out—then the Investigators lose. If they fail to gather the clues in time—that is, when the supply of Clue cards runs out—then the Investigators lose. If they all go insane, then the Investigators lose. If they seal all four Gates before they run out of Clue cards, then the Investigators win. 

So five ways to lose, one way to win.

Designed to be played by between two and four players, aged fourteen and up, the design of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu is a mix of Pandemic and Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, the old and the new, the latter being the new theme. Though that said, that theme owes much to Arkham Horror with the need to shut several gates to prevent the intrusion of the Old Ones. It is played out on a map of four connected towns in Lovecraft Country—Arkham (green), Dunwich (yellow), Innsmouth (purple), and Kingsport (red). Each town consists of five locations, plus a Gate. One location in each town is marked with a Bus Station, though Arkham has two. Above the map is a line of spaces for Old One cards, each one representing an Old One who will be awakened when a Shoggoth passes through an open Gate and bring its baleful influence to bear upon Lovecraft Country and the Investigators. For example, the awakening of Hastur heralds the appearance of another Shoggoth and the movement of all Shoggoths closer to open Gates, whilst Yig makes Gates closer to seal. At the end of the line of six spaces for these Old One cards is the space for Cthulhu himself. When he is summoned, then the game is over. Under each space is a number, indicating how many Summoning cards are turned over at the end of each turn. This number increases as more Old Ones appear, escalating the game’s difficulty as play proceeds.

The map also has spaces for the Summoning cards and the Player cards. Both decks contain cards corresponding to locations on the map. The Summoning cards are used to determine where the Cultists will appear and spread their influence on the map as well as if any Shoggoths on the map will move towards an open Gate. The Player cards represent clues. If an Investigator can collect five of one colour and go to the Gate in the corresponding town, he can seal the Gate. Seeded into the Player deck are two other types of card. The first are Relic cards, which grant the Investigators a temporary advantage. For example, the Seal of Leng allows the Investigators to block and cancel the effect of an Old One for the rest of the game, whilst the Book of Shadow lets an Investigator look at and rearrange the top four cards of the Player deck. The latter mirrors the effect of the Forecast card from Pandemic, but the use of Relic cards forces a player to roll the Sanity die to determine if his Investigator loses Sanity. The second type of card is the Evil Stirs card, which works much like the Infection card from Pandemic. In effect, it increases the difficulty of the game, making the player roll the Sanity die for his Investigator, reveal a new Old One, make a new Shoggoth appear in a random location on the map, and the Cultists regroup—the cards in the Summoning card discard pile are shuffled and added back onto the top of the Summoning deck. This means that the same locations are open to Cultist influence again and again...

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu comes with seven Investigators—Detective, Doctor, Driver, Hunter, Magician, Occultist, and Reporter, each with their own special ability. These abilities are a mix those new in Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu and those adapted from Pandemic. So for example, the Detective needs four Clue cards to seal a Gate rather than five, much like the Scientist in Pandemic, and the Doctor can do five actions per turn rather than four, much like the Generalist in the Pandemic. Whereas, the Driver moves an extra location with a Walk action and ignores Ithaqua’s effect, which is new to the Pandemic family of games. Each Investigator comes with its own card that explains his or her abilities and this card is double-sided. The front is done in full colour, whereas the back is monochrome and details the Investigator’s abilitis after he has lost his Sanity. For example, the Doctor goes from five actions per turn when sane to four actions per turn when insane. Some card effects enable an Investigator to regain lost Sanity, whilst an insane Investigator who successfully seals a Gate fully recovers his Sanity.

Lastly, it should be noted that instead of wooden cubes and pawns—since replaced by plastic—being to represent the diseases and CDC members as in Pandemic, this game uses fully sculpted plastic figures. Those for Cultists and Shoggoths are anonymous, but those for the Investigators are individually sculpted figures which match the illustrations on the Investigator cards. These are nicely detailed figures and greatly add to the period feel of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu.

At the start of the game, six Old One cards are randomly selected and placed in their slots on the board. Each player chooses his Investigator and is given the matching Investigator card, four Sanity tokens, and a reference card. All of the Investigators start play at the Train Station in Arkham. Cultists as well as one Shoggoth are seeded in six locations drawn from the Summoning deck. These cards also from the Summoning discard pile. Relic cards are added to the Player deck and then each player receives two or more cards from the deck as his starting hand. The number varies according to the number of players. The fewer the number of players, the more cards a player is given. Lastly, the Player deck is seeded with the Evil Stirs cards.

On his turn a player has four actions and can get his Investigator to do the following. Walk to an adjacent location; while at a Bus Station, ‘Take the Bus’ by discarding a Clue card to move to any location in the town on the Clue card or discarding a Clue card that matches the town the Investigator is in to move to any other location in the town; or move through one Gate to another. He can also give a Clue card to another Investigator or take a Clue card from another Investigator as long as the Clue card matches the town they are in. He can also defeat a Cultist or Shoggoth and remove it from the board, though defeating a Shoggoth takes three actions. The later also earns him a Relic card. Lastly, he can seal a Gate by discarding five Clue cards of the same colour as the Gate on the Gate’s location. Notably, using a Gate or a Relic card, encountering and/or fighting a Shoggoth, or revealing an Evil Stirs card, all result in the player needing to roll the Sanity die. This may lose the Investigator one or two Sanity or attract the attention of some Cultists. 

From one turn to the next what the players will be trying to do is keep from being overwhelmed by Cultists and stop any Shoggoths reaching open Gates. They will also be trying to reach the same towns so that their Investigators can exchange Clue cards and so have enough to close the Gates. At the end of each turn, they will receive two more cards from the Player deck—these can be more Clue cards, Relic cards, or Evil Stirs cards. This means that they may not be useful. Also at the end of the turn, a number of Summoning cards will be drawn, these indicating where new Cultists will appear  and occasionally, that any Shoggoths in play should move.

This all sounds easy enough, but the Evil Stirs cards are an ever constant and imminent threat, promising to complicate things, always ensuring that Cultists are constantly recruiting from the same location over and over again—just like the Infection card causes cities in Pandemic to be infected again and again with diseases. In both cases because the Evil Stirs or Infection card empties the discard pile and returns it to the top of the Summoning/Infection deck respectively. Of course, in Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, the Evil Stirs card brings with it the appearance of Shoggoths, ready to move towards the nearest open Gate. 

Just like Pandemic, the order in which the cards appear—from both the Player deck and Summoning deck—can also hamper or aid the play of the game, which is as should be. Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu makes the play of the game easier, but more challenging. Easier by placing fewer limitations on movement and the exchange of Clue cards, but more challenging by forcing the players to regulate two factors which left unchecked will ensure their defeat—the number of Cultists and Shoggoths—rather than the one as Pandemic. Then even more challenging by imposing situational difficulties upon the players with the effect of the Old One cards revealed when a Shoggoth is allowed to go through a Gate.

Physically, the presentation of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu matches the theme. It feels and looks fustier, mustier, just a little ornate, and not at all like the killer elegance of Pandemic. Many of the well done components support the game’s replayability. There is not just the replaying again to beat the game and prevent Cthulhu from being summoned, but also the replaying of the game to beat it at a higher difficulty, which can be adjusted. The increased number of Investigator roles to choose from and the number of Old One cards provides more choice when setting up and playing the game as replayability.

So in looking at Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, the question is, is it still a Pandemic game? To which the answer is yes. The core mechanics of Pandemic are central to the mechanics of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu and anyone coming from the one to the other will adapt with. In fact, the core mechanics of Pandemic remain obviously visible such that the Lovecraftian theme of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu does feel somewhat pasted over the top of them. Yet, that theme also allows the elegant brutalism of the Pandemic mechanics to be pushed and extended, making Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu more challenging and ultimately, more uncaring. Perfect then, for a Pandemic game.

—oOo—

Z-Man Games will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between June 2nd and June 4th, 2017 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

Make a Saving Roll to Heal

Back in 2008, Pandemic from Z-Man Games was a big hit. The game pitched members of the Center for Disease Control against four global epidemics—red, blue, yellow, and black—in a race to save humanity. The game was one of the first titles to really popularise co-operative games, games in which the players were playing not against each other, but against the board and the game itself. The players raced around the world, travelling from city to city in an effort to treat diseases and find a cure for them whilst staving off the effects of outbreaks that would spread these diseases from one city to every adjacent city. Too many outbreaks and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Fail to find cures to all four diseases and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Like all co-operative games, Pandemic is designed to be difficult to beat and can be made even more challenging through the various expansions.

Of course, Pandemic has been made all the more popular with the release of Pandemic Legacy, a version of the game played as a campaign, with various factors having a permanent effect on the board, the cards, and the game itself. Before that, there was another release for Pandemic. Not another expansion, but a standalone game, one that has the same theme and objectives, yet introduces a physicality to its mechanics. Pandemic: The Cure is a dice game, continuing the trend of taking well-known board games and re-implementing them as dice games, from Catan Dice Game and Carcassonne: the Dice Game to Bang! The Dice Game and the more recent, Roll for the Galaxy. In Pandemic: The Cure the diseases have become dice, rolled randomly to determine where they appear. Similarly in Pandemic: The Cure the players’ actions have become dice, rolled randomly to determine what they can do from one turn to the next.

With the dice as disease, the players now have to undertake two tasks if they are to find a cure for each disease—collect samples and then roll to find a cure. A sample is one disease die that has been treated and collecting a sample means that a player must sacrifice one of his action dice to store that sample until the cure can be rolled for.

This rolling of dice has a number of big effects. For starters, and obviously, it adds a random element to the Pandemic design. The original board game was card driven and as the game progressed it became easier to predict which cities were likely to be infected again and again because they had been infected before. The ability to predict which diseases are going to appear and where has been lessened in Pandemic: The Cure because the dice are pulled blindly from a bag and then rolled to see where they appear. Some prediction is still possible—the players can still track the colour of the dice available on the table—but no more than that. Unable to predict exactly what dice will appear and where, the players are forced to be slightly more proactive than reactive than in the board game. 

Another difference between Pandemic and Pandemic: The Cure is that diseases cannot be eradicated. They still keep coming back out of the bag to infect Region Tiles anew and can still trigger Outbreaks, though like the boardgame, once a cure has been found, they are easier to Treat. This further forces the players to track the number of Infection dice in play.

With each player having their own dice and being able to re-roll undesired results, the number of actions a player may have from one turn to the next can vary wildly. Some turns it might be none, others it might be as many as five. As a game progresses though, a player will find himself giving up dice to take samples, so will find himself with fewer actions.

The game consists of a plastic hoop—the Treatment Centre—with peg holes to track both the Infection Rate and Outbreaks; six numbered disks—the Region Tiles—each one corresponding to a continent, plus another disk representing the CDC headquarters; seven role cards and corresponding pawns and sets of action dice; a Cured Disease card and ten Event cards; a cloth bag; and forty-eight Infection dice in four colours.  At game start, the Region Tiles are laid out in order around the Treatment Centre, everyone receives a Role card and the corresponding dice, both in matching colours. Then twelve Infection dice are rolled, the numbers rolled determining which Region Tile they are placed on.

The Infection dice are where the game begins to get clever. The opposite sides of normal six-sided dice always add up to seven; not so here. Instead, the numbers are weighted so that they will always land on certain Region Tiles. For example, rolls of five only appear on black or yellow dice and when rolled are placed on the Africa Regional Tile, whereas rolls of one appear on blue or red dice and are placed on the North America Region Tile. Then are the player dice. All have the same set of symbols—an aeroplane (Fly to any Region), a Ship (Sail to an adjacent Region), Hypodermic Needle (Treat an Infection die and move it to the Treatment Centre), a Bottle (Treat an Infection die in the Treatment Centre and save it for a Cure attempt), First Aid (used to buy Event cards), and lastly, a Biohazard symbol. When rolled, this moves the syringe along on the Infection Track and increases the chance of an epidemic.

Every set of role dice also has its own symbols, representing special actions. For example, the Medic has multiple Hypodermic Needles on some dice which allow him to Treat multiple Infection dice with one action, whilst the Dispatcher has the Helicopter symbol which can be saved to airlift anyone to any Region Tile before the Dispatcher’s next turn. 

On his turn, a player rolls his dice. He can either use them as necessary or he can re-roll, travelling to the different Regions, Treating Infection dice, collecting Samples, and so on. Biohazard results cannot be re-rolled. Just like the board game, the players need to Treat the Infections and find a Cure, which is done by Treating Infection dice and moving them to the Treatment Centre, and from there collecting Samples which can be rolled to find a Cure.  The latter simply involves rolling the collected Samples and beating the target. At the end of his turn, a player draws more Infection dice from the bag and rolls to see where they appear.

Like Pandemic, there is one way to win—find the four cures, and like Pandemic, there are multiple ways to lose. These are  running out of time (the infection rate syringe reaches the end of the Infection Track), too many Outbreaks (eight or more), and too many people infected (not enough Infection dice to be drawn from the bag).

Of course, Pandemic: The Cure is like Pandemic, a co-operative game. The players need to work together and every player’s turn is about discussing the possible optimal actions as well as carrying them out.

Ultimately, the rolling of dice and and the design of the playing area do undermine the game. The problem is that it abstracts the Pandemic concept and hinders a player’s engagement with the game. No longer is he trying to save Istanbul or Shanghai, but rather the world in general. Yet the dice add variability and frustration to the game in equal measure as well as tension—is your next roll going to save humanity or help destroy them? Rolling dice also add a physicality, making the game more hands-on and engaging.

Streamlined and quicker to play, Pandemic: The Cure is Pandemic’s lighter, simpler, and more family friendly brother. Perhaps a little overpriced, Pandemic: The Cure is the slick addition to the Pandemic family.

So This Is It...

Over the past few years, there has been a trend in board games wherein the players have not been competing against each other, but instead co-operate together against the game itself. For fans of the Cthulhu Mythos, Arkham Horror can be included amongst their number, alongside such other titles as Space Alert, Shadows Over Camelot, Red November, and Battlestar Galactica. It should be pointed out though, that both Shadows Over Camelot and Battlestar Galactica add in an element of treachery with at least one player being a traitor. The game I am going to review though, is purely co-operative and lacks that traitorous element – unless of course, you happen to purchase the expansion – but be warned, in playing you do hold the fate of humanity in your hands and that fate is damned difficult to avoid. The game in question is Z-Man Games’ Pandemic.

Designed for two to four players aged ten and up, in Pandemic the players take the role of specialists working for the CDC or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the United States Federal Agency tasked with dealing with health, safety, and research as well as having to combat the outbreak of various virulent diseases. At the start of any game of Pandemic, the specialists will be faced with the outbreak of not one, but four diseases across the globe. They have an hour’s worth of nerve wracking game play in which to not only find cures for all four diseases, but also to prevent mankind from being overwhelmed by any one of them and thus wiped out. They will need to husband their resources, conduct enough research, and get to the right cities to treat the victims and so contain any further outbreaks if they are to win and mankind is to survive. There is only one way to win Pandemic – find a cure for all four diseases, but multiple ways in which to lose. It is a hard, sometimes a very hard game to win, but all too easy to lose...

Inside Pandemic’s surprisingly small box can be found a board, ninety-six wooden cubes, five pawns, six wooden Research Stations, six card markers, over one hundred cards, plus the eight-page rulebook. Everything is done in full colour with sturdy wooden pieces and hard wearing cards. The board itself depicts the Earth marked with the major cities of world and the routes between them. The cities are divided between four colour-coded zones: blue (North America and Europe), black (Eurasia, India, and North Africa), red (Asia and Australia), and yellow (Hispanic America and Sub-Saharan Africa). The board also has room for the game’s two decks of cards and its various markers. The six markers are divided four cure markers – one for each of the game’s four diseases, and one each to indicate the Infection Rate and the number of Outbreaks.

The cards are primarily divided between two decks, one of Infection Cards and one of Player Cards. For each of the cities on the board there is corresponding card in both decks, but where the Infection Deck only has cards that show a city, the Player Deck also contains special cards (which give the players a one time advantage when played) and Infection Cards (which indicate a new occurrence of a disease and increase the number of infection cards drawn). Each of the five Role Cards grants a player an extra ability that allows him to break the game’s basic rules. For example, the Medic role card lets a player treat all of the disease cubes of one colour in a city as a single action, rather than having to expend an action to cure a single disease cube. The other roles include the Dispatcher (who can move the other players around the board), the Operations Manager (who can build Research Stations wherever he is), the Researcher (who can freely give cards to another player when they are in the same city), and the Scientist (who needs fewer cards to cure a disease).

Lastly, there are four Reference Cards – these list possible player actions, and of course, the disease cubes. These are divided between the four colours – blue, black, red, and yellow – that match the coloured zones on the board. A disease of one colour will only appear in its matching zone unless an outbreak occurs and it infects a city in an adjacent zone.

Game set up takes a little doing. Each player randomly selects his Role and receives two Player Cards. The remainder of the Player Deck is seeded with Epidemic Cards, the number setting the difficulty for the game, five being average difficulty. Everyone starts play in Atlanta – the headquarters for the CDC – along with a single Research Station. Nine Infection Cards are drawn and each of the cities that they show is seeded with disease cubes. These nine cards are reshuffled and placed back on top of the Infection Deck. This is an important feature of the game, previously drawn Infection Cards being reshuffled and placed back on top of the Infection Deck each time an Epidemic Card is drawn from the Player Deck, indicative of the fact that once a city has been infected, that it can be re-infected.

Each player’s turn has three phases. In the first phase, he can act, having four action points to spend on movement, on treating diseases, on building Research Stations, or on the special actions listed on his Role Card. In moving, he can simply move from one city to the next or use a Player Card to move to or from the city given on that card. In doing so, he discards the card in question. To treat a disease, a player uses up one action and removes one disease cube from the city he is in. A player needs to have the Player Card for the city that he is in if he wants to build a Research Station there, discarding the card in the process. A player can give a Player Card to another player, but to do so both players have to be in the city marked on the card. Lastly, a player can cure a disease simply by discarding five Player Cards of the same colour whilst at a Research Station – or four cards if the player is the Scientist.

The draw phase follows this, a player simply drawing two new Player Cards. A turn ends with the Infection Phase, in which a number of cards equal to the Infection Rate are draw and single disease cubes added to the cities shown on the cards. At the beginning of the game the Infection Rate is just two, but this will increase up to three and then four as Epidemic Cards are drawn from the Player Deck. The maximum number of disease cubes of any one colour allowed on a city is three. If a disease cube is added to city that already has three – which will happen because cities are likely to be re-infected – an Outbreak proper occurs there. The Outbreak Track goes up by one and each city linked to the Outbreak location is infected by a single disease cube. In the process, it is possible to infect an adjacent city that already has three disease cubes on it and set off a chain reaction...

If an Epidemic Card was drawn during the draw phase, its effects take place before the Infection Phase. It moves the Infection Marker up by one and adds three disease cubes to a new city drawn from the bottom of the Infection Deck. This new Infection Card is added to the discard pile of Infection Cards which is shuffled and placed back on top of the Infection Deck. The Infection Phase continues as normal, except for the fact that cities already infected are likely to be infected again!

So how do you win? Simply by finding cures for all four diseases.

So one way to win, but three ways to lose. A game of Pandemic can be lost if the Outbreak Tracker goes up too high; if the Player Deck is exhausted; or if all of the disease cubes of one colour are out on the board.

If that all sounds very mechanical, then it is. In fact, Pandemic has to be very mechanical because the game has to run itself while the players try and stop this process. And stopping that process takes no little thought and no little effort, which is of course, is made easier because a player is encouraged to seek the advice of his fellow players who are expected to suggest his next best course of action.

Even at best and with that advice, the players are fighting a losing battle. They can never quite get on top of the diseases before an Epidemic Card is drawn and cities begin being re-infected. This leads to a certain amount of Infection Card counting, the players trying to balance their actions between the location of the Disease Cubes already on the board and the Infection Cards that have yet to be drawn. This is because the top cards of Infection Deck are going to be drawn and then refreshed when an Epidemic Card is drawn, giving the opportunity for the players to learn those top cards. The other balancing act is between trying to treat diseases and collecting enough Player Cards, the latter made more difficult because a player can only hold seven Player Cards in his hand.
Of course, once you have managed to cure a disease, everything gets slightly easier. It becomes easier to treat, more so if you have the Medic in play, who no longer has to act to treat, merely pass through a city infected by that disease. If the players manage to develop a cure for a disease and remove all of its cubes from the board, it is eradicated and will not appear again. So any Infection Cards drawn of that colour have no effect. Eradicating a disease is admirable, but rarely is it worth the effort – there being too much else to do.

Despite all of this difficulty, Pandemic is still a good game. Game play is very tense, but also very quick because you do not have that all much to do on your turn. Plus, when it is not your turn, you are still kept busy, discussing with everyone what both you and they should be doing. In fact the game is so quick that it is usually completed in less than an hour. One downside is that the discussion between players can be dominated by a single player, especially if the other players are not as experienced with the game. This lessens though the more times that it is played. The other downside is that it is so very difficult. Of course, the difficulty can be decreased by reducing the number of Epidemic Cards that can be drawn, but once you have beaten the game at one difficulty, you will only want to try at a greater difficulty. The big plus though, comes when you do succeed. The feeling of having beaten all four diseases and saved mankind is not only fantastic, it is also a relief.

I will go further than saying that Pandemic is a good game – it is a great game, a classic even. It is not difficult to learn or hard to play, but is difficult to master or rather beat the game itself. It also keeps everyone involved and it demands that you play intelligently. Pandemic is just simply and frustratingly brilliant.

[As a side note and to keep it within the Reviews from R’lyeh theme, there is even an unofficial variant that re-imagines the players not as specialists working for the CDC, but investigators holding back the forces of the Mythos. Think of the disease cubes as cults devoted to things that man was not meant to know and outbreaks as summoning and you get the idea... In the meantime, the designer of this game has new co-operative board game called Forbidden Island which I reviewed last month.]