Saving the world, Cube by Cube

The conceit of PANDEMIC is that players are members of a disease control team, working to manage outbreaks of four different diseases (represented by Blue, Red, Yellow, and Black cubes) threatening to spread out of control and contaminate humanity.

The game plays out on a World map featuring 48 major cities, all of which match one of the four disease-colours, and which may become infected at any time as the game progresses.

Players take actions to move between cities, remove cubes of disease, and swap information (cards) with the aim of curing all of the diseases by collecting, then trading in, sets of five city-cards of each of the four disease-colours, at a CDC Research Centre.

The play is driven by two sets of cards: The INFECTION DECK, which helps spread the diseases across the map, and the PLAYER DECK which provides cards to players’ hands – City-Cards helping their efforts to cure diseases, and/or Event-Cards, which give one-time benefits to assist in winning the game.

If the PLAYER DECK is ever depleted, and not all diseases are cured, then the game is lost. If a disease-cube needs be added to the board, and is not available, then the game is lost. If there is ever an eighth disease ‘outbreak’, then the game is lost.

But, how do you simulate the appearance and spread of a disease, along with major unexpected outbreaks, in a board-game?

The answer is a set of ideas of such elegance and brilliance that, in my opinion, they represent some of the high-watermarks in modern board-game design.

I also like to think that, after he’d come up with the ideas, Matt Leacock, the designer, danced around the room, punched the air, cracked open a beer or two, threw a TV out of a hotel window, married a horse, and bought a lottery-ticket (Or any combination of those things), in celebration of his own genius.

The heart of the game’s brilliance lies in 3 key mechanisms:

• The INFECT CITIES step
• The EPIDEMIC CARDS and
• The OUTBREAK effect

At the end of a player’s turn, the very last thing they do is perform the INFECT CITIES step. This involves turning over a number of cards in the INFECTION DECK, and adding a single cube of disease, of that city’s colour, to that city on the board. Those cards then go into a discard-pile.

BUT…seeded into the PLAYER-DECK are EPIDEMIC CARDS, which help drive the real spread of the disease, and add an element of chaos and unpredictability which is what makes the game so difficult to win.

Immediately before the INFECT CITIES step, at the end of their turn, a player draws two cards from the PLAYER-DECK. If one of those cards is an EPIDEMIC CARD, then, potentially, the REALLY bad stuff happens:

The player must immediately draw a card from the BOTTOM of the INFECTION DECK – this City-card has not been seen in the game up to this point, and it represents a City where a disease has simply appeared. THREE disease cubes of that colour are added to this City…And herein lies the genius:

That ‘new’ card is then added to the discard-pile of the INFECTION DECK, and all of those cards are shuffled then PUT BACK ON TOP OF THE INFECTION DECK!
This means that all of the previously-infected cities are now back on top of the INFECTION DECK, ready to re-infect those cities…

…and the current player then has to carry out that INFECT CITIES step as the final part of their turn.

I cannot stress enough the mixture of horror and admiration I felt the first time I played the game, and realised the brilliant magnitude of this idea.

But Matt wasn’t finished there. Oh no! To make the diseases even more difficult to manage, he also added the OUTBREAK mechanism:

If a city would ever have a fourth cube of a colour added to it that does not happen - instead, the disease spreads out from that city, and you add a cube of that disease-colour to every connected city, and increase the Outbreak Level by one.

And if any of those connected cities already has three disease-cubes of that colour, then they also outbreak to their connected cities, and the Outbreak Level rises again!

Sometimes, something that you felt was under control, can suddenly spiral into complete mayhem in the space of one turn, often signifying the beginning of the end or, if you’re really unfortunate, even the actual-literal-swear-lots End-of-the-End…

PANDEMIC is a game that I have played more times than I can remember, and lost many, many more times than I have won, and its place in my collection, and my affections, is testament to the enduring brilliance and trail-blazing uniqueness of the core ideas and mechanisms of the game.

The fact that a board game, consisting simply of meeples, cards, and cubes, can be elevated to an experience that provides genuine immersion, and delivers real moments of high-drama, is something to be admired and applauded.