Pandemic: Rapid Response Review – A Real-Time Reinvention

Over the years, the Pandemic series has diverted from its roots. However, it’s always maintained or evolved the original formula Iberia added trains, Rising Tide brought objectives and the rains, while Fall of Rome introduced randomness. Pandemic: Rapid Response is something new altogether.

Leaving me wondering, is this still Pandemic?

Rapid Response puts you on a science fiction plane that travels the globe and manufactures needed supplies such as medicine and food. You need to deliver these supplies to locations under crisis.

If that doesn’t sound stressful enough already, you’ll also be under a strict real-time timer.

Although despite being real-time, players still take turns. During your turn, you roll a handful of dice, then carry out actions. Such as moving your pawn throughout the plane, making resources, flying the plane to a new location, recycling waste, or dumping cargo from the airlock.

What you need to do boils down to two questions:

• What does the team need?
• And how can you help?

The state of your plane answers the first question. If not in the right location, you have to move it. Too much waste building up, you need to clear it. Are there enough supplies for the next delivery? If not, your manufacturing supplies.

The second, more interesting, question depends on the dice you roll. You do have a chance to re-roll your dice twice. But after the dust settles, you’re left with a set of actions picked out for you. How you use these actions determines if you win or lose.

Rapid Response isn’t a super complicated board game. But as soon as the sand timer is flipped, everyone gets a -20 IQ debuff. Under this pressure, some people can’t even name a woman. So don’t feel bad if you struggle.

Air crash investigations

When it’s your turn, and you’re figuring out how to make these dice work best for you and the team, Rapid Response is a lot of fun. But here’s the problem. Most of the game it’s not your turn. You’re just one player in a relay race of dice chucking, and you spend most of your time waiting for the baton to be passed.

This straight-up sucks. As there isn’t enough strategy or complications requiring discussion or high-level thinking. Compared to FUSE, a similar game of real-time dice chucking, there’s a lot of communication between players as you’re all constantly making a very quick, but tough decision together. It’s collaboration through compromise.

Meanwhile, in Rapid Response there’s less collaboration and more command and control. Where players are telling one another what to do, rather than coming up with a joint solution.

The one bright spot of Rapid Response is the Crisis Cards. These bring some much-needed variety to the gameplay – which was my main critique of FUSE.

Crisis Cards might force your team to create extra items, drop off cargo unexpectedly, or spend extra dice to fly. They add flavour to each game and create unique moments where you’ll groan, and lament your luck.

Unfortunately, this great addition didn’t go far enough. A lot of these challenges were more annoyances than drama-inducing problems to solve. As such, they felt as non-consequential as minions before a boss fight. Yes, you fought and beat them, but nobody remembers them compared to the boss itself.

No longer Pandemic

Kane Klenko has developed some fantastic real-time dice games. Despite their mechanical differences, they are all excruciatingly difficult. Rapid Response is anything but.

Admittedly we played one difficulty lower than the hardest difficulty, but by our third playthrough, we smashed it. Not damning by itself, since Okey Dokey is an easy game but still a lot of fun. However, because you’re only “on” for your turn, this ease makes spectating even more tiresome.

When compared to the Pandemic series that brought me into board gaming, Rapid Response is lacklustre. It’s missing the logical crunch from previous games. Meanwhile, as a Kane Klenko game, it’s also a long step below previous designs as well.

I started this review with the question: is this still Pandemic?

Even though they share the same graphic designer and theme, it’s so far removed mechanically that I don’t think it is. It’s more like Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, where the latter was an entirely different movie up until the final production. When they slapped the Cloverfield brand on it and called it a day.

The only difference is that 10 Cloverfield Lane is a good movie and well worth the watch.