Blog Post 3/20/17

Today I learned how to properly play Pandemic. I hadn't played Pandemic for a while, so I didn't remember all the rules. I had forgotten about things like outbreaks, both their existence as a game mechanic and how they worked. However, there were a few other rules I don't think I ever really learned. Most of them were defeat conditions, such as the rule that when the player draw pile has been exhausted, the players lose the game. This is an interesting mechanic, as it puts a limit on how many turns the players can take before losing. I honestly didn't really like this mechanic. It felt unnecessary, as players were already motivated to perform actions in as few turns as possible by the threat of the disease spreading, which happens at the end of every turn. As well, in my experience playing Pandemic, very rarely did we reach the end of the deck before either winning or losing by some other condition; removing this wouldn't seem to massively impact the game's difficulty by making it too easy. This also limits the options players have, meaning that players can't adopt long-term strategies, since there is no long term.