Pandemic: On the Brink Review – Variety is the Spice of Death

They say that variety is the spice of life, and while that’s not always true, it is in the case of Pandemic. The base game was excellent but got boring after a while simply because there wasn’t enough content in the box. Pandemic: On the Brink adds this content, bringing variety through new cards, events and game modes.

Pandemic: On the Brink brings six new roles, bringing the total to eleven, and eight new events. These can be mixed in with roles and events from the base game, and change the way you play the game. The roles are slightly more complex than the original five, and the events are slightly more powerful.

So while these are welcome additions, they’re not the star of the show. That honour goes to the new game modes, specifically the Mutation Challenge, and the Virulent Strain cards.

Virulent Strains and You!

When playing with the Virulent Strain cards, they replace some or all of the Epidemic cards. When drawn, you perform the same steps as an Epidemic card with one difference: the most abundant disease becomes the Virulent Strain, and a debuff gets attached to it.

These debuffs change the game dramatically, and because they surprise you, they make the game feel more alive. You need to change your strategy with each virulent strain card drawn.

For example, one of these conditions doesn’t allow you to leave a city with a Virulent Strain cube on it. In a game that depends on you being efficient. Having this drag down your efficiency means you’re going to have to think twice about visiting certain cities.

As you can imagine this ups the difficulty significantly.

You might be cruising to a victory, then find yourself strapped on a rocket that could explode at any second. These virulent strain cards bring back the feeling of when you first played Pandemic and didn’t know all the ins and outs of the puzzle. They bring so much fun with them, and make the game alive again!

The second module, the Mutation Challenge, introduces a fifth purple disease. This purple disease is slower and randomer than the other diseases but dangerous.

Deceptively so.

It’s easy to forget about, but you’d be a fool to do so. This purple disease has only half the cubes of the others. So even when things look good, you may be on the brink of losing.

As a module, I enjoyed how it changed the core puzzle. But it’s not something I incorporate often. Usually, my losses come from negligence rather than lack of skill. Which to me isn’t as exciting as the Virulent Strains.

An Essential Expansion

The last, and worst, module is the Bio-Terrorist Challenge. This module leaves me questioning what Matt & Tom were thinking. This challenge changes Pandemic from being a cooperative game to being a competitive one.

One player plays as a terrorist spreading a new type of virus across the globe, in addition to the other diseases already running amuck. Now to be fair, I’ve owned Pandemic: On the Brink for over a decade and only played this module twice – and both times it left a bitter taste in my mouth.

There’s something about making a cooperative game competitive that just feels wrong. Like kissing your sister wrong – sorry Alabamians.

Fortunately, even with this module that I detest, the other two modules are so strong, that this one being a dud doesn’t change my opinion.

That is Pandemic: on the Brink enters that rare realm of being an essential expansion. It doesn’t add a lot but what it adds changes Pandemic monumentally. Increasing both the excitement and the variability so that you won’t want to stop playing.