How to Teach Pandemic

Pandemic is a great game to host because the board shows the problem. Cubes pile up, everyone can see where, and the table starts talking without being asked. The teach goes wrong in two ways. The host reads out all eight actions and seven roles before anyone moves. Or the host knows the game best and ends up playing everyone’s turns.

This script fixes both. It runs about ten minutes, in the order you would say it. Print the Pandemic teach sheet and set it where everyone can read it.

Before anyone sits down

Set up the whole game first: research station and pawns in Atlanta, cubes sorted, markers on their starting spaces, nine cities infected. Deal roles and starting hands. Build the Player deck with 4 Epidemics for a new table.

Then decide one thing: hands open or closed. The rulebook has everyone play face up in the Introductory game. With new players, do that. It lets everyone see the cure plan.

Minute 1: the goal

Say: “We are one team. Four diseases are spreading around the world. We win if we discover all four cures. We lose if the world gets too sick, or if we run out of time.”

Point at the Player deck. “This deck is our clock. When it runs out, we lose.”

Minutes 2 to 3: the threat

Point at a city with 3 cubes. “At the end of every turn, we flip Infection cards. Each one puts a cube on that city. A city can hold 3 cubes of a color. A 4th means an outbreak: the disease spills into every connected city.”

Point at the outbreaks track. “Eight outbreaks and we lose.”

Then tap the Player deck again. “Hidden in here are 4 Epidemics. When one comes up, a new city gets hit hard, and then the cities we already saw go back on top of the Infection deck. They get hit again.”

Stop. The table now knows what it is fighting.

Minutes 4 to 6: what you can do

Hold up a reference card. “You get 4 actions a turn. They are all on this card.” Then teach them in three groups, not eight lines:

• Moving. “Walk along the lines, one city per action. Or discard a City card to fly. Flying costs a card, and cards are also cures, so every flight has a price.”
• Fighting. “Treat Disease takes 1 cube off your city. Research stations let you fly between them.”
• Curing. “Bring 5 cards of one color to any research station and cure that disease. To pass a card, you both stand in the city on that card.”

Say the win condition again: “Four cures and we win, right away.”

Minutes 7 to 8: roles

Go around the table. Each player reads their own role card aloud, then says in their own words what it might be good for. This takes two minutes and gives everyone something only they can do.

Minute 9: the turn and the talk rule

Read the turn off the teach sheet: “4 actions, draw 2 cards, infect cities. Then the next player goes.”

Then set the most important rule of the night. The rulebook says players should give each other advice freely, but the player whose turn it is decides. Say it out loud: “We plan together. You make the call on your turn.”

That one sentence is your best defense against the quarterback problem, where one confident player runs the whole team. Our article on the quarterback problem goes deeper if your group has a strong personality or two.

Minute 10: start, and teach the rest live

“The highest population card goes first.” Then play.

Teach these the first time they come up:

• Drawing an Epidemic. Walk the table through the three steps on the card: increase, infect, intensify.
• The 7-card hand limit. Mention it when someone first reaches 8.
• Event cards. When one is drawn, read it aloud and remind everyone it is free to play, even on another player’s turn.
• A chain reaction. When the first outbreak spills into a city that already has 3 cubes, resolve it slowly and together.
• Eradication. Explain it after the first cure, if that color’s cubes are nearly gone.

What to leave out

• Charter versus Direct Flight details. The reference card covers them. Explain the first time someone wants to fly.
• Strategy. Let the team find its own first plan.
• Higher difficulty. Five and six Epidemics are for later games.

Coaching during the first game

Ask questions instead of giving orders. “Which of these cities worries you most?” helps the whole table think. “Fly to Cairo and treat twice” plays someone else’s turn for them.

Watch for the quiet player. If someone has not proposed a plan in two turns, ask them first on their next turn. In a co-op, the best teach is the one where every voice gets heard. For more on teaching any game this way, see our guide on how to teach a board game.