Pandemic Board Game Review: The Best Cooperative Game

We absolutely love playing educational board games and we are always on the lookout for new ones. Carry on reading for our Pandemic board game review.

Can you save humanity? You are part of a team that eradicates deadly diseases throughout the world!

It is a great cooperative game for 2 – 4 players. Or if there are more you can set up teams of between 2 and 4.

As this is a cooperative board game you are all actually playing together to rid the world of disease. So there is no one winner, you either all win or all lose!

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What is in the Pandemic Board Game?

The pandemic board game contains:

• Game board
• 7 Role Cards
• 7 Pawns
• 59 Player Cards (48 city cards, 6 epidemic cards, 5 event cards)
• 4 Reference Cards
• 48 Infection Cards
• 96 disease cubes
• 4 Cure Markers
• 1 Infection Markers
• 1 Outbreaks marker
• Research station
• Rule book

Overview of Pandemic Board Game

This Matt Leacock game from Z-Man games is a co-operative game for 2-4 players. That everyone over the age of 8 years old will enjoy. Another great Z-man game is Carcassonne, check out our Carcassonne review.

The aim of the game is to simply stop the spread of diseases by discovering cures for all 4 diseases.

The teams lose if one of the following happens:

• 8 outbreaks occur leading to a worldwide panic
• not enough disease cubes are left when needed. So a disease spreads too much.
• not enough player cards are left when needed. Your team runs out of time.

How to Play the Original Pandemic?

Each player’s turn is divided into 3 sections:

1. Do 4 actions
2. Draw 2 player cards
3. Infect cities

What I especially love is you can ask the other players for advice as to what your next move should be.

This was especially helpful when playing with my 8 year old son.

What we loved about Pandemic Games

This was our first cooperative game we played as a family, and I have to say it is a great game.

The epidemic cards and the special event cards were really nicely designed.

The instructions are really detailed and easy to read. In fact, there are 8 pages, that show some example moves.

Check out Pandemic for yourself today.

What didn’t we like about the original game?

On the very first game, I found it really daunting.

There are a lot of cards and set up took a while to understand where everything went. But, once we played again it was much quicker to set up.

Even though the setup took a bit longer than I would have liked on the first play, I still definitely recommend this Pandemic game.

Best Cooperative Board Games

As we are now hooked on co-op games I wanted to find similar games! These are the best board games for kids we have enjoyed:

1. World of Warcraft Wrath of The Lich King
2. Pandemic Legacy Season 1
3. Forbidden Island
4. Pandemic Hot Zone – North America

Last Updated on 18 July 2024 by Clare Brown