Pandemic Board Game (Base Game) | Family Board Game | Board Game for Adults and Family | Cooperative Board Game | Ages 8+ | 2 to 4 players | Average Playtime 45 minutes | Made by Z-Man Games

This game can be a lot of fun for family game nights. It can take about 1 hour to finish the game and keeps everyone engaged at all times. The game would be more challenging if all infections had to be eradicated to win the game instead of winning with finding the cure for all infections.

This is the ultimate game of cooperation. You have to actively plan out how you will work together and what your priorities are each turn or you will fail (you all win or lose together). Definately to complex for kiddos under 8-9, as you need to understand roles, priorities and be able to strategize with other players. The epidemics can quickly allow things to get out of hand, so focus on finding the first cure w/n the first round or two. That will give you a fighting chance. This game is a lot of fun but challenging, so probably not great of you are a casual gamers. It is not extremely had to learn, but hard to master. This game requires a lot of strategy and communication.

We’ve played this game three nights in a row. All adults. Christmas gift for my 21 year old son. Collaborative strategy between players is a huge plus. Game says it’s for 8+ however it appeals to all ages. Game directions are a little complicated so most 8 year olds would probably need guidance. Its a lot of fun - uses critical thinking, strategy and teamwork.

My family has played this 3 times so far and had a blast every time. No play through is the same. One of the biggest things we like is that is all about teamwork, if you dont work together, you will fail. Highly recommend.

Hmmm, I’m conflicted because this game is such a cool idea and I do like it, but it is very confusing at first! The instructions are a bit confusing and we had to reread them several times. It was a little less exciting when we first got going because it took like 45 minutes to figure everything out. I think that once you know how to play it can be a lot of fun, but for a fun game night with friends I don’t know if we’d break this out simply because it would take too long to explain....

Dear Amazon Shopper, This is a remarkable game which pits every player against the spread of a virile disease cutting a swath of devastation across the globe. Instead of regarding your fellow players as adversaries, you all work together to combat the disease as efficiently as possible. This allows for the employment of communal strategy and promotes cooperation among groups. I have used this game as a fun team-building exercise to great effect. Even more remarkable, I was able to get my sister to play Pandemic with me. When I was a child, I was a hypercompetitive terror that scorched the enjoyment out of pretty much any game with my intense desire to win. As such, my sister was scarred for life, unable to play competitive games (board games in particular). Given the cooperative nature of Pandemic, she sat down with me and played a board game for the first time in a decade and we both enjoyed it immensely. This game is complex and difficult. Even with only 4 epidemic cards (the easiest difficulty level) it is a task to stop the disease before a loss condition occurs; everyone has to be on the same page for you to have a chance. Please note that this is a game for adults or children who are extremely patient and enjoy thought-provoking, slow-paced engagement. Dont purchase this game if you want something to play with your toddler. This game seems like it would be a lot of fun for the board-game playing college crowd in particular. So there you have it. A complex, well-thought-out, challenging, cooperative game. If you like strategy and teamwork, theres no reason to pass this one up. Thank you.

Pros: High quality components, challenging, requires strategy Cons: Can be too random, one person can take over if youre not careful Excellent cooperative game. I got this to play with my girlfriend, and weve played with our families and some friends as well. It is very easy to teach since youre all on the same team, so you can show people how to play as you play. It also lets you choose how difficult you want it to be by letting you decide how many Epidemic cards you add to the player deck. When these are drawn, they will make you infect more cities each turn and they will cause all the cities you have already infected to be shuffled and placed back on top, so they will keep getting more disease added to them. The more Epidemic cards there are, the harder the game gets because this happens more often. It requires a lot of foresight and strategy if you want to win, as you always have to be aware of what cities are potentially going to be drawn, and if you get close to the end you need to remember that there are only a set number of turns. Each player has a different ability that they can use, so we have found that it can be easier to play with more people, as this gives you access to more abilities. However, in the games I have played, we have both won and lost with 2, 3, and 4 people playing. It can certainly be tough depending on the game. And thats why Im rating it 4 stars. I really like the game, and, as a side note, the physical game itself is outstanding. The box is very sturdy with spaces inside for all the pieces and cards. The cards are sturdy and the player pieces and disease cubes are all beautiful (everyone comments on how nice the components are). However, the game play can vary greatly. Sometimes youll win easily, sometimes youll win at the last second, sometimes youll get crushed early, sometimes youll lose just when you think youve won it. This can be a good and bad thing. I like that theres no way to figure it out and win every time, but it would be nice if it wasnt as random. (I suppose you could decide where to put the Epidemic cards in the deck, but we havent tried that.) I played with my brother once and we won very easily, and now hes convinced that it is too trivial. All in all, I would certainly recommend it to anyone looking for a challenging co-op game.

After spending a few days playing Ticket to Ride and discovering the world of board games, I realized that Monopoly and Parcheesi were simply not it anymore.. So I went by Amazon reviews and bought this. Ive had it for a few months now and I still havent won one game, just wanted to throw that out there.. I came very close on my last play, one disease short of eradicating.. but fell victim to a nasty outbreak and lost the game. This is one of my two Co-op games, I also own Flashpoint which I have not played yet so Pandemic is the one that I can talk about. I heard a lot of people say that they have more fun losing in this game than winning in others and I get it.. its just a great challenging game and two games are rarely the same...so its always a fun experience and I am pretty sure itll get even better when I start winning. Theres two awesome expansions for this so that when you become an expert and the gameplay starts getting predictable, you can change it up. Ima go play now, cheers.

My girlfriend couldnt keep up with the demands of the pandemic and many civilizations crumbled under our watch, I had to break up with her.

Great difficult co-op game, but easily controlled by single player. If youve got one person who is more strategy oriented than the rest of the group, you can easily have them play the entire game for you. You can also get burnt out REAL quickly if you play too much too fast. I think it took our group a few times before we actually won, and were seasoned gamers. Co-op game based on viruses ravaging the globe. You work together as a team of people ranging from Medic to Archivist, each with different abilities, trying to cure each virus. Turn/action based game where there are more ways to lose than there are to win. Nice for a challenging game, just make sure one person doesnt manipulate the board.