I've been excited about Pandemic since I first saw it mentioned (I believe) on very early pre-Essen lists last year.  First of all, I love cooperative and semi-cooperative games, so that was pretty cool by itself.  Throw in the fact that I was a biochemistry major who went back to nursing school and has always entertained an interest in epidemiology, and my anticipation for this game was pushed right through the roof.  Finally, after many delays and much frustration, it  finally arrived here last week.

Last night at game night, I managed to get this to the table early in the evening.  When we finished, we played again immediately.  Later on, we played it for an almost unprecedented third time in one night.  People didn't necessarily think that it was the bestest game ever, but it obviously struck a chord somewhere in their collective game-playing consciousnesses.  

Pandemic is a fully cooperative game.  There is no "traitor" or any kind of competition between players to dilute their interest or intention to work together.  Each player takes on a Role that grants certain special abilities, and even from our limited play so far, it was painfully obvious that a group must make good use of these abilities to have any chance at winning. 

Speaking of winning, the victory condition for the players is to succesfully cure all four of the diseases ravaging the world's population.  A disease is cured when a player can collect and then play a set of five cards of the same color.  Since there is a hand limit of seven cards and it is siginificantly dfficult to trade cards between players, this is harder than it seems.

On the other hand, there are several ways that the game can be lost.  First of all, the players fail if they are not able to win before running through all of the players cards (each player has to draw 2 during every turn).  Next, if all the cubes of one disease (color) are ever on the board, I suppose it becomes the real Pandemic and the game is over.  And third, is if the total number of "Outbreaks" (when a city would receive more than 3 disease cubes of the same color) reaches 8 or more.  What is bad about the Outbreaks is that they can cause chain reactions of more Outbreaks, because instead of getting the 4th cube, all neighboring cities get a cube of that color, which could then cause an Outbreak there if there are already 4 cubes of the affected color.  In fact, that's what happened in the second of our games when Africa suddenly exploded in a soupy mess of the Yellow Plague!

This isn't meant to be a real review or anything, but I just wanted to express my pleasure over a game that has, so far, lived up to most of my anticipation.  We lost the first two games, but in the third we had enough handle on how to work together as well as a healthy bit of luck in the card draws that allowed us to finally win.  Overall, I really like how the game forces both short and long-range planning and cooperation on a lot of different levels.  Especially in the first two games, I felt some real tension as we slipped further and further away from our goal.  The mechanism of how cities are seeded with disease and how the cards from the discard pile of the infection deck are shuffled and placed on top of the draw pile when an epidemic card is drawn is both clever and elegant.  The different role powers are significantly unique and well balanced, and they work together in very cool ways.  

Overall, as of right now I heartily recommend this game to anyone who likes cooperative games or who is interested in the well-represented theme.  Check it out if you get the chance!