Originally posted in the UnGeek.ph website http://www.ungeek.ph/2016/10/cult-of-the-new-pandemic-iberia...
It seems that the Pandemic series of games are on a chain-reaction this year! It started with Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu last August and now, history buffs and coop-fans are in for a treat as the next installment to the beloved franchise goes a bit old-school… The mid-19th Century time in the Iberian Peninsula to be specific!
Let’s take a look at Pandemic Iberia!
Pandemic Iberia (and, kids, bear with me for a bit) as mentioned above, is set in the Iberian Peninsula. The peninsula is divided between Portugal and Spain and is the third largest European peninsula, after the Scandinavian and Balkan peninsulas. Take a look at the gorgeous board below:
As you might have noticed, the map shows circles that depicts key cities and ports (edges of the peninsula with the anchor symbol) where players can move through, as noted by straight or broken lines.
Regions on the other hand are areas on the board enclosed by a those lines, so in the example above – Valladolid, Salamanca, and Madrid triangulate to form one region. Take note of this as these are the areas where you will put purification tokens (more on this later).
In this game (insert movie trailer narrator voice here), you and up to 5 players are a part of The Second Royal Philanthropic Expedition where you embark on a journey to discover and treat the 4 major diseases that plague the area, in hopes to gather enough research to control the spread and eventually save mankind and (what else?) THE WORLD, of course! And here I thought you did that a couple of times already…
The tried-and-true, bread-and-butter fundamental mechanics of Pandemic are still present here in Iberia. 200
For those trying this type of game out for the first time, it is is a fully-cooperative, action-selection, set collection game where there is only 1 goal to winning… And that is to research all the 4 major diseases, accurately named and thematically-colored this time by the way!
Red = Typhus – Transmitted via blood
Blue = Cholera – A water transmitted disease
Black = Malaria – a disease that when not treated, can lead to Blackwater fever
Yellow = Yellow Fever – Oh, how appropriate!
Like in previous versions of Pandemic, there are also multiple ways to lose! And this game is no exception!
You can lose in 3 ways:
The Outbreak Track reaches 8 (A massive panic occurs)
Not enough disease cubes are left when needed (The disease spreads out too much)
The player deck is depleted (Your team runs out of time)
You with me so far? Good! Let’s now move on to how the game actually plays out in a turn! To Pandemic veterans, it will feel all too familiar:
Do 4 actions: In your turn, you can do up to 4 actions. We will all go through every action and how it plays out, noting the new ones as we go along. As usual, the same action can be repeated as many times as you want as long as you have enough actions or resources to perform it.
Here are the actions you can do in a turn:
MOVEMENT ACTIONS:
Move by Carriage / Boat – You simply move to an adjacent city connected by a brown line
Move by ships – By discarding a card of a matching color, you can move between two port cities (anchor symbol)
Move By Train – A new feature for the game! As one whole action, you can move to a city connected by a continuous chain of railroad tokens (See Build Railroad below).
BUILD RAILROAD
Another new action! And one of my favorites! To build a railroad, put a railroad token on a straight line (not dashed lines) coming out of your current city. This is a neat mechanic that rewards future planning in later turns, when you effectively make a railway system that makes moving a lot easier! Be careful though, as these tokens are finite (20 to be exact) and you cannot do the action once the supply is depleted, so decide carefully!
TREAT DISEASE
For one action, remove 1 disease cube on the board. Simple right? Sadly though since were playing in the 19th century, even though you have completed a research for a disease, you never really discover the cures for it… So these little buggers still stay on the board! But don’t you worry! Them old-timers can still find a way! 699