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Pandemic is a brilliant game as a standalone, but the On The Brink (covered separately in my second opinion) and In The Lab expansions add interesting new dimensions that make the game incrementally more challenging. As a scientist, I love the realistic nod to the process of synthesizing a vaccine to the viral strains. Be warned: this expansion is not for the faint hearted, as action economy can quickly become a killer!
In this review, I will focus on the Lab Challenge (with and without the Virulent Strain and Mutation Challenges included). The Solo Game and Team Game variants were covered in Nathan Coombs’ review, which you can find here.
Game Set Up
Pandemic: In The Lab is set up in the same way as you would for the Pandemic base game, with a couple of important additions.
· The Lab Board: in addition to the normal Pandemic board, you also have the addition of the Lab Challenge board. The petri dishes from the On The Brink expansion should be placed in the five lab phases on the left of the board, and will act as your virus processing stations. On the righthand side of the board you have areas for sequencing, characterizing and testing your vaccines. You start with a single Sequence card on the top line, which will allow you to get started on a cure from the start of the game. Once all phases on the Lab board are completed for each virus, you have produced a cure (more on this later)!
· Virulent Strain Challenge Cards: there are two new Virulent Strain Epidemic cards present in the In The Lab expansion, that add additional difficulty to the On The Brink Virulent Strain challenge. One of these requires you to use two actions per treatment of a single disease cube and the other two Virulent Strain disease cubes to each connected city in which an outbreak occurs. These are both continuing effects, meaning that they occur in perpetuity until the disease is cured (in the case of the disease treatment effect) or eradicated.
· Mutation Challenge: Worldwide Panic Variant: expanding on the On The Brink Mutation Challenge, the In The Lab variant increases the rate of infection for the mutated strain. When setting up the game, you add mutation cubes to the first city drawn in each of the infection phases (1 mutation strain cube to the first city with 3 disease cubes, 2 mutation strain cubes to the first city with 2 disease cubes and 3 mutation strain cubes to the first city with 1 disease cube). Additionally, instead of adding a single disease cube per Mutation Card, you add 2 mutation strain cubes per mutation card. The game comes with additional mutation strain cubes to increase your supply to 24 cubes. The increased rate of infection also means that your mutated strain can also become your Virulent Strain, if played in combination with the Virulent Strain challenge.
· New Event & Role Cards: three new Event cards are added in this expansion which pause chain reaction outbreaks for a round, increase the rate of disease treatment by 1 cube for a round and reduce the number of city cards required to complete the next cure (subsequent to completing a prior cure). The six new Role cards are particularly interesting as three of the cards (Local Liaison, modified Epidemiologist and modified Research) add specialized Lab Challenge bonuses. These help massively with action economy in the game, and I would strongly recommend having at least one of these in play when attempting the Lab Challenge.
· Cure Vials: these cute little vials replace the plastic cure icons from the original game and should be placed next to the Lab board.
Playing the Game
I’ve played this expansion with both the Virulent Strain and Mutation Challenges from the In The Lab expansion also included, but for the bulk of this review I’m going to concentrate on the Lab Challenge mechanics.
Straight off the bat, I’m going to give you a key piece of advice: make sure you’re progressing your Lab Challenge actions on every turn by at least one step, or you’ll run out of time to research all the cures. Take advantage of any bonus In The Lab actions that your Role has every time you’re at a research station too, as they are a free action and shouldn’t be wasted. Note that you can only take these actions when you’re at a research station, so it’s a good idea to as many of these on the board as possible and spread them out so there’s one within easy reach wherever you are across the map.
Play progresses as with the standard Pandemic game: players take a series of actions, then draw two cards from the deck (potentially triggering an Epidemic) and finally perform an infection step to conclude their turn. In addition to the standard actions that a player can take on their turn, they can also now do the following Lab Challenge tasks, with a view to synthesizing cures for each of the diseases:
· Sequence a Disease: the disease sequencing step allows you to open or reset a research line, in order to discover the cure for that disease. The game starts with the top research line already open, but a disease sequencing action can be used to change the card on the open line (generally to something easier!) or open the bottom research line to allow two diseases to be researched simultaneously. Sequence cards vary in complexity, so I would recommend having a look through these before you start playing to better understand the requirements. Some Sequence cards relate specifically to one viral strain, while other relate to multiple different strains, as indicated by the coloured vial or vials in the top right corner. To complete a cure, you must place disease cubes of the indicated colours onto the Sequence card to “decode” the disease.
· Characterize a Disease: this step determines which of the diseases will be cured on that research line. A City card should be added to the characterize space on the Lab board, ensuring that the colour assigned matches the specifications on the Sequence card. Once characterized, the appropriate coloured cure vial should be placed over the vial symbol on the Sequence card. Characterization must be performed before any disease cubes are moved onto the Sequence card. Note: when playing with the Mutation Challenge, you must use a City card that relates to a city infected with the mutated strain. This is important to bear in mind when moving around the board and curing the mutated diseases, as you can inadvertently slow down your progress to creating a cure.
· Process a Sample: this is where our lovely petri dishes come into play! When taking the Treat Disease action, a single disease cube per turn can be placed into one of the two leftmost dishes to collect a “sample”. You can place disease cubes of multiple different strains into the same dish but bear in mind that the subsequent processing steps might result in the loss of some disease cubes when you advance them to the next phase. One of the following two sample processing steps must then be taken, as an action, to advance the disease cubes towards the research lines:
1. Centrifugation (not a word I thought I’d ever type in a game review!): all cubes of a single colour may be moved to the centrifuge. Cubes of any other colour must be discarded.
2. Separation: a single cube of each colour present in the dish can be moved to the separator dish.
If you have a sufficient number of the correct types of disease cubes present following the Centrifuge or Separator steps to complete some or all of a Sequence card, then you can move these directly to the card using an action. Alternatively, an additional action can be taken to move the cubes to the Growth dish. The Growth dish allows you to double the contents of either the Centrifuge or Separator dish, which can be a quicker way to complete the more complex Sequence cards. I would recommend consulting with all players involved to develop a strategy to get the correct cubes for the Sequence card in the lowest number of Processing steps! You can generate more than the required number of disease cubes off a colour during processing, and simply discard these at the end of the process when loading onto the Sequence card, but remember the more cubes you have here the less there are in the supply.
· Test a Cure: once you have at least one disease cube on a Sequence card you can test a cure for the disease in question. To do this, place a City card of the correct colour into the Test a Cure slot (the one with the syringe!) on the Lab board. You can then remove a single disease cube from any city of the cure colour. When playing with the Mutation Challenge, as for Characterizing a Disease, the City card used must be one infected with the mutation strain (but doesn’t need to be the same colour as the one played for the Characterization step).
· Discover a Cure: when you have characterized a disease, completed the Sequence card and tested the cure you can finally discover the cure for a disease. To do this, trade in an additional three cards of the cure colour (or three random cards for the Mutation challenge) to complete the cure. Note that if you’re playing the Scientist Role, you only need to provide two cards at this stage. Once you’ve completed a cure, you immediately refill the Sequence card slot with a new card, unless that was the final cure of the game.
As noted above, these Lab actions can only be taken when you’re at a research center, so it’s important to have a spread of research centers across the board. The Operations Expert Role can be a game changer here, as they can get research centers down without discarding City cards.
More so than in the base game, I found that the Role card combination you end up with can be critical. Ideally, I think you need the Operations Expert, one of the “disease maintenance” type Roles (i.e., the Quarantine Specialist or Medic) that can mop up high concentration areas and at least one of the modified cards from the In The Lab expansion that gives you free Lab Actions. The win/lose criteria are the same for the base game, with the end goal being to have all diseases cured to complete the game!
Pros & Cons
Pros
· More realistic process of identifying, developing and testing a cure for the diseases
· Added difficulty for more experienced players
· New game board and pieces integrate seamlessly with the original game
Cons
· Action economy is really tough to manage - we failed on so many occasions simply by running out of cards. You must make sure you take lab actions every turn or you will run out of time to develop all cures.
· Role assignment can make or break your success in a game, more so than in the base game
Final Verdict
Pandemic: In The Lab adds interesting new dimensions to the prior On The Brink expansion and base Pandemic game. While the action economy can be a real challenge even for experienced players, players will find this expansion a great way to up the ante on an already exciting game!
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