Your First Three Games of Pandemic

Your first three games of Pandemic are where your group’s habits form. Some of those habits are rules slips, played wrong because nobody checked. They make the game easier or harder than it should be, and you never find out which. Others are legal choices that lose games. This lesson covers both, checked against the current rulebook, which has its own short box of commonly overlooked rules.

Rules slips to catch early

Drawing a replacement for an Epidemic. When you draw an Epidemic, resolve it and remove it from the game. You do not draw another card in its place.

Sharing any card you like. Share Knowledge moves only the City card that matches the city you are both standing in. The Researcher is the one exception: she can give any of her City cards, and a player sharing with her on their turn can take any one of them.

Forgetting you can take. Share Knowledge works both ways. On your turn, you can take the matching card from another player in that city, as long as they agree.

Curing only at a matching station. Any research station can cure any color. A blue cure in a city of another color is fine.

Treating a cured disease one cube at a time. Once a disease is cured, one Treat Disease action removes every cube of that color in your city. A city with cubes of two cured colors still takes one action per color.

Ignoring the hand limit after a share. The 7-card limit applies the moment you receive a card, not just at the end of a turn. Discard or play an Event right away.

Running the Epidemic from the top. The Epidemic’s Infect step draws from the bottom of the Infection deck. Intensify then shuffles only the discard pile and puts it on top. Shuffling the whole deck takes the danger out of the game.

Placing cubes for an eradicated disease. If a disease is eradicated, its Infection cards place nothing. If it is cured but still has cubes on the board, its cities still get cubes.

Letting a chain reaction loop. During a chain, a city that already had an outbreak while resolving that card takes no more cubes from it.

Playing Events at the wrong moment. Events cost no action and can be played on anyone’s turn. They cannot be played between drawing a card and resolving it. Once an Infection card is drawn, it is too late to stop the outbreak it causes. Play the Event before the draw.

The habits that lose early games

Treating everything. A board full of cubes feels like an emergency, so new teams spend every action cleaning. Meanwhile nobody cures, and the Player deck runs out. Treat the cities likely to outbreak soon, and spend the rest on cures. The midgame lesson shows how to tell which cities those are.

Flying away your cures. Every Direct or Charter Flight discards a City card. Before you fly, ask the table: “Does anyone need this card for a cure?”

Careless discards at the hand limit. There are 12 City cards of each color, and a cure takes 5. Every card of an uncured color that hits the discard pile makes that cure harder. Discard cured colors first.

Never meeting up. Share Knowledge needs two pawns in the same city and the card for that city in hand. Plan the meeting a turn ahead, or it rarely happens.

One player runs the team. The rulebook says to give advice freely, but the player whose turn it is decides. When one voice decides every turn, the others stop playing. Our article on the quarterback problem has fixes that work.

Losing is part of learning

Pandemic is built to beat you sometimes, even with 4 Epidemics. A loss is information, if you look at how it happened:

• Lost to outbreaks? Your team let 3-cube cities sit too long. Watch the Infection discard pile.
• Lost to the Player deck? You cured too slowly. Spend fewer actions treating and more on getting cards together.
• Lost to cubes? One color spread too far. Count that color’s supply when it starts to shrink.

Each of these has its own lesson ahead. For now, just name it.

A quick checklist for game three

Before you end your actions, ask:

1. Which city is most likely to outbreak before my next turn?
2. Did I spend a card someone needs for a cure?
3. Where and when can we meet to share cards?
4. Did I propose my plan, and did I hear everyone else’s?

That last question matters as much as the first three. A co-op is only fun when it is played by the whole team. Our Pandemic strategy guide picks up where this lesson stops, for groups ready to move past 4 Epidemics.