The board game Pandemic World of Warcraft doesn’t look much like Pandemic

When Z-Man Games was announced World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King – A Pandemic System Board Game I rolled my eyes so hard it could have been audible. The original Pandemic It’s iconic, and the games in the Pandemic Legacy series are downright brilliant. But honestly, I thought to myself, how much more mileage can we get out of this thing?

It turns out that quite a lot. Now that i’ve put on Wrath of the Lich King on the table and simulated a full game, it really is a very clever adaptation. I’m not sure it really evokes the feel of the original board game, but nonetheless, I’m excited to introduce it in front of my regular board game bunch and see what they think. Is that how it works.

Pandemic (or the Pandemic System, as Z-Man now refers to it) is built on a few basic concepts. First there is a deck of cards filled with landmines that appear semi-randomly throughout the game. On PandemicThese landmines are called epidemic cards and spread the contagion around the world. On Wrath of the Lich King, those landmines are the Scourge and scatter undead creatures all over the map.

In traditional PandemicOnce you have more than three Contagion Cubes in a location, that location more or less explodes, sending even more Contagion to surrounding areas. That makes Epidemics extremely bad when the board fills with disease. Just one bad throw of the cards, and it’s game over when various locations explode and the world is ravaged by disease.

Things work a little differently in Wrath of the Lich King. Epidemics spawn larger and more powerful undead monsters called Abominations. There are only three in the box, and if it runs out (meaning he hasn’t done his heroic duty and hasn’t killed them yet, putting them back in reserve), then the Scourge marker moves up. The higher the Scourge marker goes, the more undead will appear on the map. Eventually, the heroes are simply overrun.

Oh also? Abominations activate, move across the map, and chase the closest hero. They are pretty bad and hard to kill, so freedom of movement is a top priority. Get it right and you can get the little bastards into the corner of the map. Get it wrong and you will die.

Another central concept of Pandemic he’s using cards from players’ hands to create vaccines, effectively neutralizing one of the different diseases on the map. Gather four or five cards of the same suit, deal them in the right place at the right time, and that’s a troublesome disease checked off your list.

On Wrath of the Lich King, missions replace disease. Instead of collecting all the cards and turning them over at once, players peck at those missions step by step, using a combination of dice rolls, cards in their hand, and cards in the hands of other players. It evokes the same cooperative play style as the original. Pandemic, but rearrange the elements a bit to make it feel more like fighting in a video game. I love it, but again I’m curious to see what my home group thinks of him in practice.

Image: Z-Man Games / Blizzard Entertainment

The production value is quite high on this one. The game board itself is large, thick, and brightly colored. Instead of dozens of wooden cubes, the set includes 47 plastic miniatures. The downside is that they are of the old school PVC variety, which means that some of them have dropped weapons and / or crooked bases. That means it will be a real headache to paint them. But the pegboards are clear and colorful, and include various 3D structures to boot. The game is packed with fan service, so if you are a big fan of World of Warcraft, then it makes absolutely sense to choose it.

However, if you’re looking for the next game in the Pandemic universe, I’m not sure it feels like the original enough to scratch your itch. You can reserve your copy at Asmodee’s website, which says the game will begin shipping on November 30.

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