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Awards

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You Might Like

  • Three expansions in one package, plus loads of extras.
  • More roles and events.
  • Plastic box organiser/insert.
  • The Petri dishes!

Might Not Like

  • The one-vs-many aspect of the Bio-Terrorist challenge.
  • The difficulty level is certainly higher (but surely that’s what you want from an expansion).
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Pandemic: On The Brink Second Opinion

Summary

Pandemic: On The Brink is a great expansion to the original Pandemic game! I would highly recommend this game to any Pandemic fans who have been playing the base game on maximum difficulty and consistently achieving the objectives, as it adds extra layers of difficulty that you must keep on top of. Less experienced players will also find the new additions fun to play, but I would recommend starting out with just one of the two new challenges so you are not overloaded.

Game Set Up

I focus predominantly on the Virulent Strain and Mutation Challenges in this review, as the Bio-Terrorist Challenge requires a bigger group to play, and I’ve not tried this as yet. William Moffat covered this element of this expansion in his original review of Pandemic: On The Brink – go check it out!

The biggest addition to the base Pandemic game setup from this expansion is the inclusion of the new Mutated strain (and it’s purple, yay!). A cure vial indicator sticker is added to the bottom of the base Pandemic game board to track cure creation, along with a purple cure vial indicator and purple disease cubes to add to your stash. For all strains, there are also plastic petri dishes included in the box for your to store your disease cubes in.

If you are playing the Virulent Strain Challenge, you must replace the standard green Epidemic cards with the new red Virulent Strain Epidemic cards. You can increase the difficultly by adding a higher number of Epidemic cards, in the same way as the base game, but I would recommend starting with 4 cards as the new Virulent Strain effects can make things very tricky! The “virulent strain”, defined during the first Epidemic, is the disease strain with the most disease cubes on the board at that moment in time. In addition to the usual impacts of an Epidemic, the new Epidemic cards also have one of the following impacts shown at the bottom of the cards in the image below.

It’s easy to see from the effects how these new Epidemic cards can very quickly cause problems, particularly if you have multiple continuing effects in play. Government Interference can be particularly problematic, in my experience, as it severely inhibits player movement when there’s a lot of Virulent Strain infected cities. Unacceptable Loss can also be an immediate “game over” if it’s drawn at a time where you have a high level of Virulent Strain infection!

If you’re playing the Mutation Challenge (either as a standalone or in addition to the Virulent Strain Challenge), it’s important to know that you only have 12 Mutated Strain cubes, so keep an eye on your infection levels. You also have some new cards to add to the decks during setup:

· Mutation Event Cards: in addition to the Epidemic cards, the Mutation Event cards cause smaller outbreaks of the Mutated Strain. These can either add 3 Mutated strain cubes to a single city, 1 Mutated strain cube to 3 cities or add an additional cube to any cities already infected with 2 Mutated strain cubes.

· Mutation Cards: these cards start in the Infection Discard Pile and are shuffled into the Infection deck at your first Epidemic. These cards force you to draw a card from the bottom of the deck and infect that city with a cube of the Mutated Strain. Interestingly this can have a slight dilution effect on infections of the other four strains as, when the deck is reshuffled for the next Epidemic, the cards drawn for the Mutated strain don’t have any of the disease cubes related to the cards’ colour.

In addition to the new challenges, you also have new Role cards and Event cards to choose from. My favorite new Role card is the Epidemiologist: she can take a City card from any player that she’s in the same city as, irrespective of whether the City card matches the city they are in. This removes the need to travel halfway across the board to be in the same city as another player to exchange a specific City card, which can be the difference between getting a cure developed in time and not. I also really like the Mobile Hospital event card: you cure a single disease cube from every city you pass through on that turn. This basically acts like the Medic Role card (once a disease is cured) and can help knock a pocket of infection on the head quickly in a time of crisis.

Playing the Game

There are no major changes to game play for this expansion: players take turns in performing actions, drawing cards from the player deck and infecting cities. For the Virulent Strain challenge, make sure that you mark which of the strains is the Virulent Strain when you draw your first Epidemic card so that you don’t lose track of what strain is impacted by the new effects. I’d recommend using the petri dishes that come with this expansion and popping the Virulent Strain one beside your Epidemic cards so you know this one behaves differently.

For the Mutation Challenge, the cure is developed in the same way as for the base strains (i.e., trade in 5 City cards to discover the cure (or 4 if you’re playing the Scientist)). As there are no purple city cards, you can use any combination of 5 other City cards. Bear in mind when you’re trading in City cards for this cure that you must still have enough of each of the other disease strain colours to complete their cures: choose wisely! As noted above, you only have 12 Mutated Strain cubes so you do have to be quite conscious of the level of infection present and how this will be compounded by the Mutation and Mutation Event cards.

Playing the Virulent Strain and Mutation Challenge simultaneously is very doable, but you are living a lot more dangerously than playing each of them independently! You can be very quickly defeated by a combination of Epidemics pulled close together, which both increase the impact of the Virulent Strain and compound the Mutation strain cards in the Infection deck.

Pros & Cons

Pros

· Higher level of difficulty when adding one or both of the Virulent Strain and Mutation Challenges.

· Developing 5 cures takes longer and therefore you usually get longer gameplay than you would with the base Pandemic game.

· Component quality is consistent with the base game and integrates seamlessly.

· Negligible increase in setup time.

Cons

· It would be useful to have a card for each of the strains to denote the Virulent Strain. Be sure to find some way to mark which strain is the Virulent Strain during the first Epidemic, or you’ll forget which strain the Epidemic effects apply to.

· Mutation cards for the Infection deck are a slightly different shade of green, so you can tell when they’re coming!

Final Verdict

I really love the Pandemic: On The Brink expansion as it gives the game a lot more depth and increases the replayability. The new rules are easy to pick up and there’s not a significant increase involved in the game setup to incorporate the expansion. Overall, I would highly recommend this expansion to Pandemic lovers who are looking to challenge themselves!

Game Scores

· Overall Score: 80/100

· Artwork: 3/5

· Complexity: 3/5

· Replayability: 5/5

· Player Interaction: 5/5

· Component Quality: 3/5

Zatu Score

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You might like

  • Three expansions in one package, plus loads of extras.
  • More roles and events.
  • Plastic box organiser/insert.
  • The Petri dishes!

Might not like

  • The one-vs-many aspect of the Bio-Terrorist challenge.
  • The difficulty level is certainly higher (but surely thats what you want from an expansion).

Zatu Blog

Find out more about our blog & how to become a member of the blogging team by clicking here

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