The original Pandemic board game was designed by Matt Leacock and was released in 2007 by Z-Man Games. Since its original launch, the base game has received three expansions which introduce new roles and events to the game. In 2015 a Legacy version of the original game was released and went straight to the top of the BoardGameGeek Top 100 Chart. In the Legacy format, players would only play through the story once, over many sessions, ripping up cards and discovering new secrets along the way. Characters can gain new skills or detrimental effects. A character can even be lost entirely, at which point it's no longer available for play. This edition of the Pandemic game won a record four Golden Geek awards in 2015.
The main aim of the Pandemic games is to work together and prevent deadly diseases from spreading around the globe. In the original game, the board depicts several major population centres on earth. Each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. These abilities are represented by a deck of cards.
Within this deck lies the Epidemic cards! These deadly cards accelerate and intensify the diseases' activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the "normal" spread of the infections. Each player will take on a different role and will, therefore, have their own strategies to plan.
If one or more diseases spread beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!