Pandemic: The Cure

26th March 2019

Another Tuesday comes round and another evening of pleasant gaming at 'The Sovereigns' in Woking.

We begin the night with Pandemic: The Cure.

Pandemic is a popular board game that was released a while ago. It's a co-operative game in which the players travel the globe against the clock in the search for cures before the hideous diseases ravage the world.

Pandemic: The Cure is another co-operative game. It replaces the game's movement and actions with dice and a push-your-luck mechanic. It also replaces the global board with an errr acrylic ring?!?

The set up

So the acrylic ring is placed in the centre of the play area. 2 pegs are placed in holes in the ring to represent the infection rate and number outbreaks.

6 'region' discs,  numbered from 1 to 6 are placed around the ring. Each disc representing a different region of the world.

The 4 diseases are represented by 4 sets of different coloured six sided dice. They are all put into a bag. When you need disease markers, you blindly draw the required number of dice from the bag and then you roll them and place on the relevant. This gives you both the type and location of disease markers.

It's worth nothing that even though these are six sided dice, they are not regularly numbered from 1 to 6. For example one colour might be missing 3 and 4 and might have an extra 5 and 6. This means that certain types of diseases are more likely to appear in certain regions. This is something important to remember.

Some event cards are laid out, during the game these can be bought to grant the action described on the card.

Just like in the board game, each player assumes a different role like a dispatcher or a scientist. Each role has it's own set of custom dice, a card granting them a special ability or two and a meeple. Before the start of the game, each player places their meeple on to region disc 1.

Gameplay

• At the start of the game a number disease dice equal to the infection rate are drawn from the bag and rolled.
• ​They are placed on the relevant region disc, so  all dice numbered '1' go to region '1' and so forth.
• Some dice may come up with a 'first-aid' symbol. These dice are placed to the side. They can be used to purchase the event cards. Each event card cost 1-3 first aid dice. When spent, these dice are returned to the bag.

Player action.
When a player takes their turn, the first thing they do is roll their dice. This will give them their choices. You 'spend' a die to perform it's action.

• Reroll: At any time during their turn, a player may chose to reroll any number of their unspent dice. There is an exception (see below).
• Biohazard: If any of the results are biohazards they cannot be rerolled. The infection rate is increased for every biohazard symbol that comes face up.
• Ship: A die that comes up as a ship, then the player can move their meeple to an adjacent region disc.
• Plane: A plane result allows a player to move their meeple to any region disc.
• Syringe: The syringe action allows a player to move a disease die from the location that their meeple is on into the middle of the ring. Or they can move a disease die from the middle of the ring back into the bag. Why is moving them back into the bag important? - See below for why.
• Research: This die can be used to try can cure one of the 4 diseases. The die is placed on top any disease die that is on the same region disc as the player's meeple. The die will stay on top of the disease die until that disease is cured, meaning that the player will have less actions from their next turn onwards. Both the research die and disease die are removed from the region disc and placed on the players' role card to indicate this.

Those are the basic actions, each player will have actions unique to the role that they are playing, but there's no need to list them all here.

Once a player has spent all their dice, there are some other actions they will perform.

Give research.
If you are on the same region disc as another player, you mave give them all the researched disease dice of one colour - and your research dice along with them!


Cure disease.
If a player has any disease dice (and research dice) on the role card. Then they can attempt to cure a disease once in their turn.
To do this the player takes all the dice of one colour (of their choice if there are more than 1 colour available) and rolls them and adds them up.
If they get 13 or more then the disease is cured, otherwise not. It's worth noting here that it will normally take at least 3 dice to get 13. Some colours of disease dice may not have higher numbers such as a 5 or 6, that means it will require even more dice to stand a chance of curing a disease.

Spread infection.
The final action of a player is to spread infection!
The players draws dice from the dice bag, the amount that they draw is equal to the current infection rate.
The player rolls these dice and then allocates them to respective region disc.

That's it for what players can do. There are some other rules to note such as:

When things go bad.
There are a couple of things that can go wrong.

• Epidemic: As explained above, biohazard results increase the infection rate. There are several thresholds on the infection rate track. When one of these is crossed; it triggers an epidemic. When this occurs, the active player takes all the dice in the centre of the ring and draws a number of dice from the bag equal to the new infection rate, rolls them and adds them to the region discs (Now you know why it's important to return dice to the bag!).
• Outbreak: If more than 3 disease dice of the same colour are on the same region disc, they 'explode' and spread clockwise to the next region disc, this can trigger multiple 'explosions'. Additionally, every time there's an outbreak, you move the outbreak counter on the ring up by 1.

How you lose the game.
​There are 3 ways to lose this game.

• If the infection rate reaches its maximum, YOU LOSE.
• If the outbreak counter reaches its maximum, YOU LOSE.
• If you need to draw dice from the bag and there's not enough dice, well, I guess, YOU LOSE.

How you win.
The players win the game, if they manage to research all 4 diseases.

That's it for the rules.

Is it a good game?

I like how Pandemic: The Cure manages to replicate some of the 'feel' of the original and also how it replicates the kind of decision making that will be familiar to players of Pandemic.
I also like how they've managed to incorporate a push you luck mechanic.
The game small and portable and has a small footprint on the table.

But...
But, there seems one glaring issue with this game. It seems a bit too easy.

Whenever I've played Pandemic, there's always been a feeling of apprehension that you could lose the game!

After a couple of initial losses, we've never lost the game since really.

Tonight we played the game twice, once on moderate difficulty and the second time on the hardest difficulty.

We won the game both times, I think the second victory seemed even easier.

Maybe we were lucky, maybe we've gotten good at his type of game. I don't know.

But I do know that Pandemic The cure is a good game that is a little disappointing.