Fun for the whole family!

About the game: Pandemic is from Z-Man games and its considered a Co-Operative game. Everyone works together instead of against one another. It came out in 2008 and there is even an expansion out for the game.

Components: There are quite a few components but they are easily organized

- Giant pieces for each player
- Cards for every city
- Different colored cubed tokens to represent the diseases
- Role Cards
- Cardboard pieces representing each of the diseases.
- Little houses representing Research Stations

Gameplay:
The game is pretty simple. You as a team have to cure the four diseases.

Each player takes a role (one of 5), and a piece to represent their role. After the board is set up with the random diseases on x number of cities. Play begins with the person who was most recently sick (a cute addition).

That player can take up to 4 actions on his turn.

Actions:
Moving - Moving a few spaces or flying to a city.
Treating disease - Removing 1 cube of any color from a city your in
Curing disease  - Discarding 5 cards of the same color
Build a research station - Discard a city card, placing a station on that city
Passing cards to another player - Must be in the same city as is on the card

Once that player has taken his actions, he draws 2 cards from the player cards and turns over a certain number of infected cards. Play continues in this way throughout the game.

This is a co-operative game though so everyone is working together to win. You talk with each other to explain what you think will be your best move and then do it. You cannot show each other your hand (other than in your first game). This makes it more difficult to communicate what you have, but its not a huge hurdle.

The Roles all bend some rule in the game, like the Medic can treat all of one type of disease on a city as one action. The Research can give other people cards without having to be on a specific city.

What makes the game interesting is when an epidemic card is drawn from the player cards. At this point a bunch more diseases are put out and the infected cards are put back at the top of the deck. Also the outbreak counter is moved and the infected counter is moved.

The game ends if any of these 3 things occur:

-There are no more cards to draw from the player pile.
-The outbreak counter reaches the skull
-There are no more cubes of a specific color disease to put on the board.

You only win the game if you as a team discover all 4 cures.
 
My Thoughts: This is the perfect family game as everyone is working together. The game comes with 3 levels of difficulty and having only beaten the first level 2 times, I can say the higher levels will be extremely difficult.

The game does not move super quick but its since everyone is involved on every turn this makes it more involved. Also there is an expansion that adds a bit more to the game including making one of the base roles a bit better.

Cost: It costs about $35.

Verdict: This is one of the most unique and fun games I have played. It is very Playworthy!.