Pandemic Epidemics and Outbreaks, Step by Step

Most of a Pandemic turn is calm: move, treat, draw, flip a couple of cards. Then an Epidemic comes up, or a city tips over into an outbreak, and the table gets loud. That is exactly when rules slip. Someone shuffles the wrong pile, or a cube lands on a city that should have been skipped.

This lesson finishes Level 0 by walking through the game’s three big events in order, checked against the current rulebook. Once these run cleanly, you know the whole game.

An Epidemic, one step at a time

You find an Epidemic when you draw your 2 Player cards. Stop and resolve it right away, before anything else.

1. Increase. Move the infection rate marker forward one space. The track reads 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, so the first two Epidemics do not change the number. That catches new players off guard later, when the third one does.
2. Infect. Take the bottom card of the Infection deck. Put 3 cubes of its color on that city. If the city already has cubes of that color, add only enough to reach 3, and then it outbreaks. Put the card on the Infection discard pile.
3. Intensify. Shuffle only the Infection discard pile and put it on top of the Infection deck. The deck underneath stays as it was.

Then the Epidemic card leaves the game. You do not draw a replacement. If your other card was a City or Event card, keep it, and check the 7-card hand limit.

A helpful habit: before step 3, one player reads the discard pile aloud. Those cities are about to come back, and the city from step 2 is one of them. The midgame lesson turns that habit into a plan.

An outbreak, one step at a time

A city can hold 3 cubes of one color. When it would get a fourth, from an infection, an Epidemic, or a neighbor’s outbreak, it outbreaks instead.

1. Move the outbreaks marker forward one space.
2. Put 1 cube of that color on every city connected to it by a line. Remember the lines that run off one edge of the map and come back on the other.
3. Any of those cities that already had 3 cubes of that color does not take a fourth. It outbreaks next, after this outbreak is done.

That third step is a chain reaction. Resolve each one the same way, with one more rule: a city that has already had an outbreak while resolving the current card takes no more cubes from the chain. That stops two neighbors from bouncing cubes back and forth forever.

Cubes of other colors do not count. A city can hold up to 3 of each color, and only the color that is spreading matters.

Walk through a chain

Here is a made-up example. Two cities are linked, and both have 3 red cubes. An Infection card names the first one.

• The first city outbreaks. The marker moves up one. Every neighbor gets 1 red cube, except the second city, which already has 3. It will outbreak next.
• The second city outbreaks. The marker moves up again. Every neighbor gets 1 red cube, except the first city, which already had an outbreak during this card.

One card, two outbreaks, and a red cube on every city around both. That is how a team at 5 outbreaks loses on a single flip. Resolve chains slowly, and let the whole table count cubes together.

Double Epidemics

Drawing both Epidemics in one draw is rare, but the rulebook covers it. Do all three steps for the first one, then all three again for the second.

The second Intensify shuffles a discard pile that holds just one card: the city the second Epidemic just filled to 3. So that city sits alone on top of the Infection deck, and it will outbreak in the Infect step unless an Event card stops it. Between the two Epidemics, you are allowed to play Event cards.

When you can still step in

Event cards cost no action and can be played on any player’s turn, with one firm limit: never between drawing a card and resolving it. Once an Infection card is face up, its cube or outbreak happens. The time to act is before the flip, or between flips. Resilient Population has its own window: you may play it between the Infect and Intensify steps of an Epidemic, which lets you pull the new 3-cube city out before it goes back on top.

Two roles also change these steps. The Quarantine Specialist stops cubes, and outbreaks, in her city and every city connected to it. The Medic stops cubes of a cured disease in his city. The Quarantine Specialist does not remove cubes placed during setup; she only stops new ones.

The losses hiding in these steps

Two of the three ways to lose happen here.

• The eighth outbreak. When the marker reaches the last space, the game ends at once, even in the middle of a chain.
• Running out of cubes. Each color has 24. If you need to place cubes and that color’s supply cannot cover them, the team loses. This can happen in an Epidemic, an infection, or partway through a chain.

The third way, a Player deck too short to draw 2, happens at the draw, not here.

Run these moments slowly, out loud, and together. They are the drama of the game, and a table that resolves them correctly can trust every win.