Stats:
No. of players: 2-5
Amount of time to play: 30 min
Age requirements: 13+
Set-up time: minimal

Pandemic Contagion is a card game in which you play a disease. The more cities you infect the more points you get.

Pandemic Contagion Rules Description:

Pandemic Contagion is a stand-alone game not an expansion for Pandemic. You start with your player board, four cards and twelve disease cubes. You shuffle and lay out a certain number of city cards based on the number of players. Then you setup the twelve card event deck and are ready to play.

To start each turn you flip the top card event deck. Each player must resolve the event card on their turn. The event card tells you when during your turn it must be resolved.

On your turn you can take two actions. You can even take the same action twice. Your choices are draw cards, infect a city or mutate your disease. Drawing cards is exactly that, drawing cards. You will need them as they fuel everything else in the game. When you infect a city you must discard cards that match the city’s color. If it is a city you already have cubes in, you only have to discard one card. If it is a new city you are infecting, you must discard two cards. It is also worth noting that any two cards equal one card of any color. You place a number of cubes equal to your infection level on the appropriate city. If you mutate your disease it changes how many cards you draw, how many cubes you place and how resistant you are to events. It costs cards to mutate your disease and you can have a value from zero to four in each category.

You score two ways, during death toll scoring or city eradication. Death toll scoring occurs once two event cards with a skull and crossbones icon are drawn. This also happens one the fourth or sixth ones are drawn. For death toll scoring the player with the most cubes on each city card scores the lowest point value. When a city card has cubes equal to its largest scoring number the city card scores for city eradication. The player with the most cubes on the city card scores the largest number of points. The player with the second most cubes scores the second number of points. And the same goes for the player with the third most cubes. If there is a tie the player that placed their cubes on the card first wins the tie. If you are the player that caused the city to score you get to take the action written on the bottom of the city card.

The game ends at the end of the round when there are only two city cards left or the event card deck is empty. You add the ranks of your disease’s mutation and have one final death toll scoring to determine your final score. The player with the most VPs wins.

Quick Review of Pandemic Contagion:

Pandemic Contagion is a quick-playing, fun card game that is easy to teach and play. It is very accessible and can be enjoyed by your gamer and non-gamer friends, young and old alike. For its size and play time there is quite a bit of strategy in this game.

The components for this game are really nice. The art is good and everything is high quality. There are even small petri dishes to hold your disease cubes. The rules are well-written and easy to read. The only complaint I have is the actual box. It is a tad too small to fit everything well.

I like how the special abilities on the city cards work. The scoring is reminiscent of Smash Up. But the player that causes a city card to score gets a special benefit. This can allow you to chain scoring cards together since some let you move cubes between cities or add cubes to cards. Other special abilities let you get more cards or take another action.

I mentioned it above that I really like how accessible and quick this game is. That makes it easy to get to the table often.

The two player game requires the use of a non-player disease. Its decisions are determined randomly and not by either player. You can also add this variant to the three or four player game. It adds an interesting and different way to play the game.

Since cards are you main resource you almost have to increase the number of cards you draw ASAP. This makes the game a little formulaic early but after the early rounds your strategies open up.

Pandemic Contagion is nothing like the original game of the series. It is not cooperative, not as long and you play the disease. But for a fairly light card game it has decent depth and strategy. It is really accessible and plays quickly too. If this sounds like a game you’d like, you should pick it up.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction 3 out of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6