Board Game Analysis - Game 1: Pandemic

Introduction

The first assignment in the course was to play three different board games and make an analysis of them. Get an understanding of their components, core systems, properties and player behaviours. The goal with the assignment was to get a basic idea of game analysis overall. But most importantly, to get an understanding of game systems in order to prevent us in the future from designing the same game systems multiple times by mistake.

Game Description

Pandemic takes place in a near future where four deadly epidemic diseases have broken out simultaneously throughout the world. You play as two to four members, each an expert in his or her own field to fight against the diseases. You travel across the world keeping each disease in check, preventing them from spreading out of control while researching for a cure against each disease.

Pandemic is unique in the fact that it has cooperative play. Instead of competing against each other to reach the goal or first rank like in most board games, the players are essentially competing against the game itself. All the players either win or lose depending on how well they cooperate and coordinate with each other.

Components

The game board is a map of the world where cities of high population density serve as the game space where player tokens can be placed. The player tokens can only move to other cities that are connected by lines to the city the player token currently stands on, unless using any of the other means of travel (later described).

Each player is given a certain role in shape of one of five cards that lists the roles’ special attributes.
The game relies on two categories of cards: Disease- and player cards. They represent outbreaks of the diseases, epidemics, research and resources for the players. The player cards have all the cities drawn on them. They can be used as either research or means of travel. The player can only keep a total of five player cards. If it exceeds that amount, the player has to discard one or two cards. There are also epidemic- and special event cards hidden among the player cards. The Disease cards also all have one of the cities drawn on them and represent the spread of the four diseases.
The four diseases themselves are represented by small wooden cubes in four colours, placed on the cities.

Six small house shaped blocks can be placed on the cities as research centers.
There are two meters on the board, the outbreak- and infection rate meter, each with a marker.

There are four markers placed on four spots on the game board whenever a cure has been found for each respective disease. On the other side of the markers is a small picture of a sunrise, flipped over when respective disease has been eradicated.

Setup and first round

As mentioned earlier, two to four players picks one of five roles: The Medic, the Researcher, the Scientist, the Dispatcher and the Operations Expert.
Both the disease- and player cards are divided in two piles, the draw- and discard pile. Nine cards from the disease draw pile are drawn to place the first disease cubes on the game board. Three cities gets three cubes, three cites gets two cubes and three gets one cube. The disease pile gets re-shuffled. The players all start at the city of Atlanta along with one research centre.

Game Progression

 At his/her turn, the player gets four action points which he spend on a set of actions:

·        Movement (either by moving to adjacent cities or using player cards).
·       Sharing player cards.
·       Treating a disease (removing disease cubes).
·       Placing a research lab.
·       Finding a cure, using five player cards of the same colour while standing on a city with a research centre.

Each of these actions can be done through different means depending on the player’s role. For example: The Dispatcher can move other players tokens as if they were his own and can move one token to any city with another token.
These five roles essentially specialize on one of the five actions. The Dispatcher on movement, the Researcher on sharing cards, the Medic on treating diseases, the Operations Expert on placing research labs and the Scientist on finding cures.

At the end of a players turn, the player draws two player cards and disease cards are drawn to place more disease cubes. The amount of disease cards that are drawn after each round depends on where the infection rate meter is placed which goes from two to four cards.

If a city that has three cubes received any more cubes, an outbreak is triggered and disease cubes are instead placed on all cities adjacent and the marker on the outbreak meter is moved one level.

If a player draws and epidemic card from the player cards, an epidemic is triggered. A disease card from the bottom of the draw pile is drawn and the city on it receives three disease cubes. All cards in the disease discard pile is shuffled and placed back on top of the draw pile. The marker on the infection rate meter is moved one level.

Five different special event cards in the player pile contain actions that the player can use any time during the game without using an action point. For example: “Government Grant” gives a free research centre that can be placed on any city on the board.

When a cure has been found for a disease, the players can remove all cubes for that disease from a city using only one action point (which the medic can do either way). If all cubes of that disease are removed from the board, the disease is eradicated and cards with that disease does not add any more cubes on the board.

There are three lose conditions in this game:

• If the amount of outbreaks reaches eight.
• If all cubes of one disease are placed on the board.
• If the player card draw pile runs out.

The players can only win when a cure has been found for every disease.

Analysis

Overall game process

The first round went as with any first try on a new game. Even if we studied the game manual thoroughly, we learned most of the rules during the actual gameplay. As such, there was a lot of fumbling, uncertainty, mistakes and misunderstandings.
The black disease in the Middle East started with most cubes and danger zones (three cubes). Therefore, three of the players remained in its vicinity and focused on keeping it in check. With a few unlucky draws from the disease pile and epidemic cards, two of the other diseases started to grow out of hand. The amount of outbreaks eventually reached eight and the round was lost to the game.

The second round when we pretty much had gotten used to how the game works, we tried to even out our zones of control. We kept the diseases under constant check but failed to use our player cards correctly. Instead of using them for research, they were used for travel and eventually the round was lost due to the player card draw pile running out.

It wasn’t until the third round that we started to notice just how useful the Dispatcher role can be. The role essentially made regular movement actions useless and a waste of action points. With his help, the players could always keep the diseases in check whenever it was absolutely necessary, without having to patrol back and forth using their own action points.
We started to pay more attention not just to our own roles, but everyone else’s. Instead of just using our turns out of our own initiative, we started to discuss every turn and action thoroughly. In other words, we started to play more as a team and used each other’s roles to benefit the team effort against the diseases. In doing so, we gained our first victory against the game. This is the game’s strongest point, when you’ve learned how to perfectly cooperate with your fellow players and conquered the game’s stressful patterns.

The fourth and fifth round became more or less a routine. Every player’s action was always discussed and the situation on the game board was constantly analysed. We started to notice that with our new strategy, we had essentially eliminated the individual player from the game. Every player token had merged into one single unit, to efficiently kill off any danger zones and focusing on gathering player cards for research. Since we technically didn’t have a human opponent, it became easy to predict any potential threats the game might throw at us and where to put our focus on.
In other words, the game became too easy, which is the game’s weakest point. Unlike in most board games which are competitive in nature, you don’t feel the exhilaration of victory and the satisfaction of outsmarting or outwitting your opponent. The game starts to feel empty, like there’s no point in playing it any further. It gives off a feeling that you’re cleaning a mess rather than playing a game.

One system that never seems to be put to use is the eradication option. Only once in five rounds did we ever manage to fully eradicate a disease. As this option seems to be only available in a later stage in the game, it’s never really considered. This stage is when we focused on gathering cards to find cures for the rest of the diseases, sometimes even neglecting to remove disease cubes.

Targeted Audience

Most likely, the game is targeted to youths twenty and up, but older teenagers could also fit in with its requirements. There’s a lot of strategic thinking involved with this game and you’re required to be able to coordinate with others. It helps to find interest for this game if you’re experienced with cooperative games and if you’ve heard or read about real life epidemic diseases.

Summary

The game is one of the most interesting and unique board I’ve played. What it mostly gets out of the players is coordinative talking, even though it gives an impression of a chess-esque strategy game. Most of the game process consists of long discussions between all the players on how to proceed. For example: How to spend action points most efficiently, how to make the best use of roles’ attributes (especially in combination with everyone else’s), when to focus on clearing disease cubes, where to place research centres etc.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as it is a cooperative game. But slowly it diminishes your individual effort and all the player objects like the tokens and cards become the cogs for one single machine.  

The game feels chaotic at first as the diseases seem like untameable beasts. But slowly, a pattern starts to take shape which lowers the game’s difficulty considerably.

The eradication option feels almost unnecessary. Even if it makes things slightly more comfortable by not having to worry about a disease or two, it requires further use of action points to move to cities with disease cubes and more points to remove them. This option came late in the game rounds when we instead tended to move towards each other to exchange player cards and gather at research centres to find cures.

Since only up to four players can participate, there’s always at least one role that is left out of the game along with its attributes. We would always shift in which class would be left out, which made different combinations in attributes and a variety of strategies. This helps to make the game less stale. Other than that along with the shuffling of cards, there isn’t much else in terms of variety each round.

Indirectly, the game has a time limit or rather a turn limit. The players always has to pick two cards from the player draw pile at the end of the turns and when the pile runs out, the game is over. This helps in giving the players a sense of stress.

Overall, the game is a fun opportunity to get a sense of coordination and communication between you and your friends. But it’s recommended to play it once in a while between intervals. When playing several rounds consecutively like we did, the game becomes predictable and easy.