Pandemic took the board gaming world by storm when it came out in 2008, quickly unseating Settlers of Catan as the go-to game for bringing new players into the hobby. Its success is down to several factors: it's an enjoyable, well-designed game, the theme is relatable and not too nerdy (no wizards, space ships or tentacle monsters), and the cooperative nature of the game opened it up to a whole new group of players who may have been traumatized by too many overly competitive games of Monopoly when they were children. Additionally, 2008 was the start of a board gaming renaissance that saw board games move out of the toy and hobby stores to become a mainstream product with wide market visibility. You can now buy Pandemic at my local grocery store.
Re-skins with different themes were a logical way to expand the game's appeal, and although it hasn't got anywhere near as ridiculous as all the tie-in versions of Clue or Monopoly, a Star Wars edition of Pandemic was probably inevitable. What's weird is that it isn't called Star Wars Pandemic or Pandemic: Star Wars. It's just Star Wars: The Clone Wars, with a surprisingly small "Pandemic System" logo in a bottom corner of the box.
Other than the Fall of Rome version I haven't played much Pandemic -- the theme just never particularly appealed to me. I can't really talk too much about how Star Wars: The Clone Wars is different, but I can say that it is definitely, recognizably Pandemic. The world map has been replaced by a map of the Star Wars galaxy (although probably not a particularly accurate one), players play Jedi Knights rather than aid workers, and the diseases are now armies of battle droids. The way the cards work is a little different too, with a mission system replacing the set collection from the original game.
A deck of location cards determines where groups of battle droids will appear throughout the game. If a planet would ever have more than three, it instead gets a blockade ship that must be destroyed before any battle droids. Additionally the threat meter advances by one -- if the meter ever goes past six, the players lose the game, so managing the number of battle droids is critical.
The main innovation over regular Pandemic is the addition of missions that the players need to work together to accomplish in order to win the game. Each game starts with a certain number of mission cards based on the desired difficulty level, anywhere from three to six or more, with two missions revealed at a time. Missions generally involve going to a particular planet with a lot of a certain kind of resource, either clone troopers or ships. Once the required number have been completed, the boss villain shifts into finale mode, giving the players one final objective in order to win.
The game evokes its theme very well, with Jedi Knights fighting off armies of battle droids as they swarm across the galaxy. If I wasn't already familiar with the basics of Pandemic I would think it had been designed specifically as a Clone Wars game. The missions help with this feeling -- episodes of the Clone Wars television series were often about the heroes trying to achieve some objective while the war rages in the background, and that's just the feeling you get as you try to mitigate the swarming droids while trying to get your missions done.
Rating: 4 (out of 5) A great use of both the Star Wars theme and the Pandemic game mechanisms.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars official website
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars on BoardGameGeek