They explain the game pretty well for a brief overview but I wanted to discuss in detail some more of the game's inner-workings. It has a lot of very well designed but simple mechanics that I am completely blown away by. It's a modern game that I am truly happy to have experienced as a player and a designer.
So from here on, I'll assume you've played the game at least a few times or this post will be bogged down trying to explain details. The game has you playing off the top of the deck to find out what locations are being infected. As you play, Epidemic cards from the player deck has you drawing from the bottom and shuffling the location discard pile and putting it back on top. This is really smart on many levels. One: It guarantees that the same locations will repeat themselves and that feels right. The same locations once afflicted continue to be an issue. When there's a new random outbreak, it joins the ranks of the currently afflicted places and drawing from the bottom ensures it's not a repeat of an already visited place. This allows players to build bases with confidence and work within a known parameter of problems to deal with.
Another thing is the way the player deck is divided up and Epidemics are mixed in. It's split up evenly but still shuffled so you could go 10 cards without seeing the Epidemic, and then see them two turns in a row if they are next to each other. Unlikely but possible so you're always on edge (and yes, this has happened to me before. Not two in one flip, but two on back to back turns). Keeping that randomness in the game keeps it from being stale. There's a rule about revealing your hand which I can see why someone would have it in there (some say it's to keep power players from taking over), but with a team you trust it shouldn't be a problem and it'll just be quicker to play with hands revealed.
The game's base mechanics are very simple but leads to very complex actions. This is something that I love about the game. Fantasy Flight Games has amazing products but they fix all their problems with more rules and components. Pandemic is a refreshing change from that with a clean and elegant design. You get four actions and they're all move, treat disease, or cure in one way or another. The difficult part is to decide what the best course of action is and that's where people will spend the majority of their time and mental space. Sure, you can walk two steps and cure that space of 2 tokens, but is that optimal? There will be disagreements I'm sure but I think that's a good part of the game. It's unpredictable and even the 'best' course of action can be the wrong one due to the nature of the game.
This is a game where elegance and randomness create a fun and exciting game. I would recommend this game for anyone who has a reliable playgroup of 3-4 people (you can play it at 2, but it's not nearly as good). I'm running late on time and will edit this or review this again in the future, I'm sure.
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