How to Play Pandemic: Setup, Turns, How to Win
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Pandemic at a glance
- Players
- 2–4
- Play time
- 45 min
- Age
- 8+
- Complexity
- Medium
- Mode
- Cooperative
- Publisher · Year
- Z-Man Games
- Works for
- 2 players, Family (mixed ages)
- Less suited to
- Under 8, Groups (5+)
Pandemic is a cooperative board game for 2 to 4 players, ages 8 and up. A game takes about 45 minutes. Your team travels the world, treats 4 diseases and races to discover all 4 cures. You win or lose together, never against each other.
The game beats new teams often, and that's normal. This guide follows the current Z-Man Games rulebook. It covers setup, the 8 actions, the epidemic steps and the 3 ways to lose.
How do you set up Pandemic?
The board shows 48 cities in 4 colors. The box adds 96 disease cubes (24 per color), 6 research stations, 7 role cards, 48 infection cards and a player deck of 48 city cards, 5 event cards and 6 epidemic cards.
- Put a research station in Atlanta. Every pawn starts there.
- Place the outbreak marker on 0 and the infection rate marker on its first space, showing 2.
- Shuffle the infection cards. Flip 3 and put 3 cubes on each city. Flip 3 more for 2 cubes each, then 3 more for 1 cube each. That's 9 cities and 18 cubes.
- Deal each player a random role.
- Shuffle the city and event cards and deal starting hands (table below).
- Split the rest of the player deck into as many piles as you have epidemics. Shuffle 1 epidemic card into each pile, then stack the piles, smaller ones at the bottom.
| Players | Starting hand |
|---|---|
| 2 | 4 cards each |
| 3 | 3 cards each |
| 4 | 2 cards each |
| Difficulty | Epidemic cards |
|---|---|
| Introductory | 4 |
| Standard | 5 |
| Heroic | 6 |
The player who most recently was sick goes first, as the rulebook puts it.
What are the 4 actions on a turn?
You get 4 actions per turn. You can repeat the same action. There are 4 ways to move:
| Move | How it works |
|---|---|
| Drive or ferry | Move to a city connected by a line |
| Direct flight | Discard a city card to move to that city |
| Charter flight | Discard the card of the city you're in to move anywhere |
| Shuttle flight | Move from one research station to another |
And 4 other actions:
- Build a research station. Discard the card of your current city. There are 6 stations; if all are out, move one.
- Treat disease. Remove 1 cube from your city. Once that color is cured, remove all of its cubes.
- Share knowledge. Give or take the card of the city you and another player both stand in.
- Discover a cure. At a research station, discard 5 city cards of one color.
What does each role do?
| Role | Special ability |
|---|---|
| Medic | Treat removes all cubes of 1 color; cured colors vanish where the Medic stands |
| Scientist | Needs only 4 cards of a color to cure |
| Researcher | May give any city card when sharing knowledge |
| Operations Expert | Builds a station without discarding |
| Dispatcher | May move other pawns as if they were the Dispatcher's |
| Quarantine Specialist | Stops cube placement in the current city and its neighbors |
| Contingency Planner | May take back a used event card and play it later |
What happens after your actions?
Two more steps, every turn:
- Draw 2 player cards. Your hand limit is 7. Discard down at once, or play an event card.
- Infect cities. Flip infection cards equal to the infection rate. Add 1 cube of the city's color to each.
Epidemic: 3 steps
When you draw an epidemic card, do these in order:
- Increase. Move the infection rate marker 1 space. The track reads 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4.
- Infect. Flip the bottom card of the infection deck and put 3 cubes on that city.
- Intensify. Shuffle the infection discard pile and put it on top of the infection deck.
Intensify is the nasty part. The cities that were just infected come back up soon.
How does an outbreak spread?
A city never holds more than 3 cubes of one color. If it would get a 4th, it has an outbreak instead. Move the outbreak marker up 1, then add 1 cube of that color to every connected city.
Say Atlanta has 3 blue cubes and gets infected again. Atlanta outbreaks: Chicago, Washington and Miami each get 1 blue cube. Chicago already had 3, so it outbreaks too and spreads to its own neighbors. Atlanta doesn't outbreak twice in the same chain. That single infection card moved the marker 2 spaces.
How do you win or lose?
You win as soon as the team discovers cures for all 4 diseases. You don't need to remove every cube.
You lose at once if any of these happens:
- The outbreak marker reaches 8.
- You need to place cubes of a color and none are left.
- A player needs to draw 2 player cards and the deck can't supply them.
The deck works as a timer. With 2 players, more cards sit in the deck at the start, so you get more turns before it runs out.
How does the player count change Pandemic?
| Players | Starting hand | What feels different |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | 4 cards | Each player takes more turns; 2 roles only |
| 3 | 3 cards | A middle ground |
| 4 | 2 cards | 4 roles, but each player acts less often |
The rules don't change between counts. Some groups play solo by running 2 roles at once; that is a house rule, not an official mode.
How does Pandemic compare?
| Game | Players | Play time | Age | Mode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pandemic | 2–4 | 45 min | 8+ | Cooperative |
| Codenames | 4–8 | 15 min | 10+ | Two teams |
| Catan | 3–4 (5–6 with expansion) | 60–90 min | 10+ | Competitive |
Pandemic is the only fully cooperative game in our guides so far. Talk is constant, as in Codenames, but everyone is on the same team.
What does On the Brink add?
On the Brink adds new roles, more event cards and pieces for a 5th player. It also brings optional challenges that make the diseases harder to stop. It needs the Pandemic base game.
If you like Pandemic, try these
For a team game with lots of talk, read our Codenames guide. For trading and building against each other, try Catan. Everything else is in our board games section.
Sources
- Z-Man Games, Pandemic rulebook (current edition)
- Z-Man Games, Pandemic game page (players, age, play time and box contents)
- Czech Games Edition, Codenames rules, 2nd edition (2025)
- CATAN GmbH, CATAN game page and rulebook, 6th edition
How we check rules and build the intro card: our methodology.