Pandemic Review by Countzero

The world is being gripped by deadly viruses and its up to a small team to find cures and help the worlds population before a pandemic starts.

Pandemic is a cooperative game from Z-Man games that has taken the gaming community by storm. Its very easy to play but you can rack up the difficulty factor if you find things a bit to easy.

So, what do you get when you open the box.

• A nice glossy board depicting the world and its major cities
• 5 large wooden pawns
• 6 Wooden research station markers
• 2 decks of cards, one for players one for the diseases
• 5 role cards
• loads of coloured cubes
• some cardboard tokens
• Rulebook

All in the game components are pretty good, the cards and board look really nice with good quality artwork. The pawns and research stations are a little on the large side, which can cause a problem when everyone is at the same city or location.

Setup is very straight forward, role cards are shuffled and one is dealt to each player. There are 5 roles in the game, each one having its own special ability in the game.

The medic can remove more cubes in cities that he visits.
The operations expert can build research stations without using cards.
The dispatcher can move other players pawns
The scientist can find cures easier
Finally the researcher can swap cards with players.

Once everyone has a role they are dealt some player cards. These correspond to the cities on the board and are used to travel around the board and also to be spent when finding cures for the diseases. The number of cards dealt depends on the number of players. But first you must seed the deck with a number of epedemic cards. These are bad and the number you put into the deck determines how hard the game is. 4 is easy up to 6 which is very tough.

Next up is the seeding of diseases around the globe. There are 4 different coloured diseases, Red, Yellow, Black and Blue. I wish they had put names to the diseases but you can easily make up your own names. The top 3 cards from the disease pile are turned over and 3 cubes of the corresponding colour are placed on that location. 3 more cards are them turned over and 2 cubes go onto these locations. Finally 3 more cards are turned over and 1 cube is placed on these locations. The world should now have 9 infected cities and its up to the players to find the cures for each disease while stopping the infections on the board from spreading.

Each player then has 4 action points to spend. These are spent in a number of ways. Moving along a movement track between locations costs 1 point. Discarding a card from your hand to fly to that location costs 1 point. Discarding the card of the location you are on to fly to any other location costs 1 point. Flying from one research station to another costs 1 point. Removing one disease cube from a location costs 1 point. Building a research station costs 1 point. Finding a cure is 1 point and lastly trading a card is 1 point.

There are a number of different things you can do but they are mainly broken down into travelling or doing actions. Sounds complex, well its not and its very easy to start moving your pawn around the globe and making some headway into curing the infections on the board or working towards finding cures. Each of the different roles alter some of these actions, the medic for example can remove more cubes and the operations expert can build research stations with paying the exact card cost.

Once you have spent your 4 action points you get to draw 2 player cards. These are generally more locations or one of a few special cards.
After this its time to spread the diseases. You have to draw a number of disease cards from the disease pile and place one cube on each location. Pretty straightforward at the start but as the cubes start mounting things can get out of control. If you ever have to put a fourth cube on a location you instead trigger an outbreak. This means that you instead place one coloured cube of that disease onto every city that connects to the city that had the outbreak. This in turn can trigger more outbreaks. Each time you trigger an outbreak the outbreak track increases by one and when it hits 8 its game over.

Whats makes things worse is the epedemic cards that you seeded the deck with. If one of these is drawn the disease discard pile is picked up, shuffled and placed back on top of the disease pile. So in effect the cities that have already been infected and going to come around again.

So how do the players find cures? They need to discard 5 cards from there hand that are all the same colour. So 5 yellow cards would find a cure for the yellow disease. The scientist only needs 4 which makes life a little easier for him. You also need to be in a location with a research station.

When the players get all 4 cures they win the game, they loose if the outbreak marker hits 8 or the player deck runs out.

I have played Pandemic many times with differing numbers of players. Most games have been very tense and hard won with the players only just scrapping a win. Either with only a few player cards left in the deck or with the outbreak marker coming close to its limit.
As a cooperative game it works really well, the 5 roles are all needed and I personally don't think that they are unbalanced. I am happy to play with any of the roles although the researcher and scientist combo can certainly find the cures the quickest. But all that time researching allows the diseases to spread. After a couple of games you should have the abilities of the different roles down and know how best to use them in conjunction with the other players.

The theme in the game is pretty good, as I mentioned earlier it would have been nice to add names to the diseases but that's pretty trivial. I have also seen other users use coloured zombies instead of the cubes.

Whats not to like, well the board can be a little cluttered at times. Smaller pawns would help this or making the board a little bigger. Also its very easy for a seasoned player to just run the game and tell everyone what to do. These are pretty minor points compared to all the good things in the game.

The second print run should be hitting shelves very soon and with an expansion due in 2009 things are looking good for Pandemic.

Summary

Presentation: Game looks good and plays very well if a little tense at times. 9/10

Clarity of Rules: Excellent rules will get you playing very quickly. 8/10

Game Length: Games take about 60 minutes to play sometimes a little quicker if the players have a good run. 9/10

Value: Good quality components that are well made 8/10

Overall: This is currently my favorite co-op game. It plays really well and doesn't take too long. (8.5/10 not an average)

Kingsburg Review by Count Zero

Kingsburg Review by Count Zero

The king is dying and the kingdom is going to be passed on to one of his loyal ambassadors, its up to you to prove that you are most worthy of the realm. You have to do this by building various buildings in the country and protecting the land from invading armies.

The artwork on the box of this game is amazing, it gives a good feel for what you are going to get when you open up the box. Inside you get one large board that depicts the 18 different advisors that you will influence in the game. 5 smaller board that each player uses to mark which buildings they have build. A large bag of coloured dice, three in each colour and some plain white ones. Various cardboard tokens to be used by the players to mark there buildings and to gain other dice rolling advantages. Some wooden tokens to mark victory points and times in the game, a small deck of cards to depict the various enemies that attack in the winter season. Finally a nice colour rulebook that explains the game very well with good use of examples. The components are all very well made and the main boards artwork is very nice. It's a slightly cartoonish fantasy theme that works really well.

The game is played over a period of 5 years, with each of the years broken down into 4 seasons. The game starts in Spring and all players roll there three coloured dice. The values are totaled and the playing order is adjusted with the lowest going fist.
Now comes the basis of the turns. The dice that you have rolled are placed on the advisors, the dice can be broken down or placed as one. So for example if you total was 9 (3+2+4)you could put all three dice on the master hunter who is advisor number 9. Or you could place two dice totaling 5 (3+2)onto the soldier. Once you have placed some or all of your dice the next player places his. He cannot at this point place his dice on an advisor who already has dice on them. Once everyone has placed on one advisor the starting player can then place any remaining dice. This goes on until everyone has placed there die.

Each of the 18 advisors helps the players in one of several ways. Mainly through giving them resources, either wood, stone or gold. They can also supply troops for your army, spy on the Winter enemy or give victory points.

The advisors are then played and players recieve there resources or abilities. Now comes the spring build phase, here players spend there resources to build the buildings on there build mat. The starting buildings are relatively cheap, a single wood for a palisade or a wood and a stone for a tower. Each building is worth a number of victory points and generally gives the player some abilities. The more expensive the building the more victory points it provides and the better its power. The tower gives +1 to your army, the Inn gives a +2 token each summer which can be added to a dices value. (A 6 could be used as an 8).

After this has happened its time for Summer, again the players roll there dice, adjust there starting order, influence there advisors and recieve there benefits. Building happens again and hopefully the players will start scoring some good points.

Autumn is played in the same way with an added phase. When Winter comes a random army is going to attack the realm, anyone who has used there spy ability will know the strength of the attacking army and will hopefully have prepared. Players can now buy armies at the cost of two goods for an army. Once everyone has bought there armies the king will send in reinforcments. A single dice is rolled and added to everyones army strength. The enemy card is now flipped and will display the enemy type, goblins, zombies etc. The card will display the stregth of the army and each player thats army is greater than that will defeat the enemy and recieve the cards bonus. This is usually victory points or resources. Anyone who doesn't defeat them as the bad effects of the card played. Usually loosing victory points, resources or in the worst case buildings.

The first year comes to an end and by now everyone should know what they are planning for the other 4. There are a couple of extra events in the turn order. At the end of Spring and Summer the king will help the loosing player and give the winning player extra victory points. This is a nice little bonus, being the loosing player gets the kings favour in Autumn. This allows them to influence an advisor who already has dice on them or to build twice in a build phase. This little bit of help can bring the loosing player back into the running.

The next 4 years are played exactly the same with the winter enemy getting harder and the players building effecting the game. By the third year some building that produce victory points should be in play and the defensive bonus of other buildings should take the edge off of the winter phase.

After the end of the 5 years whoever has the most victory points wins.

It all sounds easy enough but there are several things that effect the outcome of this game but mainly its a planning game. What buildings you build really effects your game, the buildings are in a basic technology tree. You have to build a statue before the church, and a church before a cathedral. The higher up the tree the better the building and victory point bonus. The winter attack is also a key point in the game, early in the game the kings help will generally be enough to defeat the enemy but by year 5 the winter phase can dramatically effect the players. If you haven't built up your army you may loose your most powerful building and the victory points that it was worth.

Kingsburg was better than I expected. It plays really well and once the first year is played everyone will know what the have to do. I really think that this game will be nominated for the SdJ as its a great gateway/family game.

If you are interested there is a java version available here http://mitglied.lycos.de/thunderfall/

There will also be an expansion out for the game towards the end of the year.

Summary

Presentation: The game looks great, its well put together and the components look the part. 9/10

Clarity of Rules: The rules are really well written, there are plenty of examples to help you play. 8/10

Game Length: The game takes about 90 minutes which will get shorter once everyone has played a couple of times. 9/10

Value: Good quality components that are well made 8/10

Overall: This is a great game that would be an ideal gateway game for friends or family. (8.5/10 not an average)