Andie and I had another go at Pandemic: In the Lab this evening. I really like it; it completely changes the dynamic of the base game and, although it offers the potential to slow all players down considerably — for those unfamiliar, it makes the process of curing a disease considerably more complicated than just collecting enough cards — it encourages much more cooperative play, which is good.

The reason for this is that the new "Lab" mechanics allow more than one player to collaborate on putting together a cure for one of the four diseases. No longer is it a case of trying to get five cards of the same colour into the hands of one player (four if they're the Scientist) — instead, one player can "sequence" the disease by playing an appropriately coloured card; another can test the cure by playing another appropriately coloured card; other players still can collect samples of the diseases required to build the necessary molecular structure for the cure itself. Finally, one player only now needs to collect three cards rather than five — because two have already been played to sequence and test the cure — in order to finally cure it. Despite the curing process taking more steps, then, this actually frees up players to stomp off around the world doing a bit of curing while collecting additional samples.

It's still bloody hard, though. Andie and I played on the Introductory difficulty with just four out of the seven Epidemic cards, and we still lost — once without discovering any cures at all, and a second time after discovering two, with the third and fourth on the way. This is pretty much in keeping with the base game of Pandemic, which has a relatively low victory rate — particularly when playing on the more difficult settings with additional Epidemic cards — but has a pleasingly different feel to it all.

So far it seems to be a great expansion. In fact, I've been really impressed with both of Pandemic's expansions to date — On the Brink added a wide variety of new ways to play (which, to my shame, I'm actually still to try any of) plus a bunch of new character roles, while In the Lab's main contribution is this new "Lab Challenge" mode. I'm not sure if I'd want to play the game this way every time, but that's the beauty of it, in a way; you don't have to. The expansions have both been build in such a way that it's easy to pick and choose the bits you bolt onto the base rules. If you want to play vanilla Pandemic with nothing more than the new roles, no problem. If, conversely, you want to play the Lab Challenge with a Bio-Terrorist player and a Virulent Strain, you can. It's your choice, and that's pretty great.

Anyway. Looking forward to playing it more. Now we have a better handle on the way the new mechanics work, I have faith that we can save the world from the terrible plight of Itchy Scrot and Brown Rot once more. Maybe.

I really enjoy the board game Pandemic, as has been fairly well established on these very pages, but I was a little skeptical about trying the iOS version. After all, I have a perfectly good copy of the board game on my shelf — plus its expansions — so what use is a digital version?

Well, it's easier to simply start playing, for one thing; for another, it has a somewhat different "feel" to it than gathering around a board with friends to play. The board game can be played solo too, of course — particularly with the solo rules introduced in the In the Lab expansion — but the iOS version is particularly friendly to either solo or pass-and-play formats. I'd argue that it feels more "right" to play it as a single-player, multi-character strategy game on the iPad, actually; it's much easier to collaborate on cooperative multiplayer moves when the board is right there in front of you, whereas passing an iPad around isn't nearly so practical from that perspective.

I think the thing I like the most about the iOS version, though, is the presentation. Drawing most of its futuristic aesthetic from the newer edition of the board game that came out recently, its visual style is simple but effective, and the background music is excellent. Building in intensity as the Infection Rate increases over the course of a game, it keeps things feeling exciting and dramatic — and the special, super-intense music that plays when an Epidemic card is drawn really drives home the whole "Uh-oh, we might be fucked now" nature of the experience.

The other thing worth considering about the iOS version is that it's a good way for people to try the game out without having to invest in the considerably more expensive board game version. It has a good interactive tutorial that explains the rules to you as you play, and a comprehensive in-game reference manual that goes into full detail about the game rules and all the available cards for special events, player roles and the like. It is, in short, like many iOS adaptations of board games, an excellent way of learning the game before jumping into a session with live tabletop players, or to refresh your memory on how it all works before teaching it to a group of newcomers.

Plus, you know, Pandemic is just a great game, too. It is, for many people, their introduction to truly cooperative gaming — a team of players against the board — and at less than an hour for a game to unfold (considerably less for the digital adaptation) it's friendly to groups who tend to play on "school nights", too.

Give it a shot. And don't worry if you doom the world to oblivion at the hands of Radical-6 (or whatever you call the Blue disease this time around) — it happens to the best of us.