Pandemic: Fall of Rome

Kam and I played our first game of Pandemic: Fall of Rome yesterday. Pretty interesting. We won fairly easily, on Introductory difficulty, and got a better sense of how the game works. Will play again.

A couple of notes:

  • It was very unclear to me from the advertising materials that the goal of the game is to make alliances with the invaders rather than to destroy them.
  • I don’t love the dice rolling—somehow, dice still feel more random to me than cards—but it’s pretty well-integrated into the game.
  • I like the Corruption mechanic. For most of the special event cards, in addition to their ordinary effect, there’s an alternative, more powerful, Corruption effect that you can cause to happen by increasing the Decline level (equivalent to Outbreaks level in other Pandemics). I initially assumed that we would never use the Corruption effect, but on the one special event we drew, the Corruption effect was so much more powerful that it was very tempting. (We didn’t end up needing that card at all, so we didn’t have to decide.)
  • The slow-invasion-along-a-route mechanic is interesting, and seems to work pretty well.
  • Kam and I both quite liked the Mercator role (which I randomly drew)—makes it much easier to ally with tribes. The other roles also seem pretty interesting and well-thought-out.

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