Pandemic on the Brink Board Game EXPANSION - Face New Challenges and Save Humanity! Cooperative Strategy Game for Kids and Adults, Ages 8+, 2-5 Players, 45 Minute Playtime, Made by Z-Man Games

We love Pandemic because it is a team player game rather than “I win, you lose.” You have to discuss your plans with the other players to find the best way to cure diseases while battling potential outbreaks. On the Brink is a great add on to the game because it adds a whole other layer to really spice things up. My kids are 9 and 8 and I feel that this game is a good challenge that they can handle. Younger kids may not fully understand the planning but can still be helpful to the cause. It’s a great family game for a range of ages.

The new containers are great. The new researchers , event cards and disease makes the game much harder to win. This extended the playablity of a great game.

Pandemic has become a favorite on game nights in my circle of friends, and the On the Brink Expansion improves the experience in several ways. There are new game modes, new roles, new events, and all of them work well. On the most basic level, the ability to have five players is a big improvement. You have to relearn the board setup some to compensate for how many new events are included to keep from unbalancing the game, but none of the changes are so drastic as to be overwhelming.Aside from this, most of the new material boils down to making the game more difficult. The most basic form of this is the addition of an additional Epidemic card to enable "Legendary" difficulty (I think we lost in ten minutes the first time we tried that mode). The Virulent Strain variation to the rules increases the power of one of the diseases. The Mutation variation adds a fifth disease. All of these are good for the increased challenge, but don't really change the core gameplay too much.The one exceptionally different mode is the Bio-Terrorist variation, which makes one player an enemy to the rest of the group. I, like many of the other reviewers, love this mode. My friends and roommates don't all agree. It is the type of game mode that certainly has the potential to ruin friendships if you play it too often, but I think it injects some welcome variety into the game. That said, it's totally optional and the expansion has plenty of other improvements to justify buying it even if this game mode doesn't prove to be a hit with your crowd.As a last, wonderful feature, the game box comes packaged with a tray that is capable of holding the materials not only for the expansion, but for the original game as well. This way you can actually store the original game and the expansion in a single box. It sounds like a small thing, but little touches and details like that are what separate the good game publishers from the great.

There are a number of options within this set to expand upon classic pandemic, but I was most impressed with the box insert accommodating all of the classic + expansion pieces--allowing me to discard my original pandemic box and keep all the pandemic play options together! Great game, quality pieces, and identical cards.

Overview: On the Brink adds a fifth player option and also provides 3 new variants to play with the base Pandemic game. The first variant turns one of the viruses into a Virulent Strain and becomes more difficult to treat. Another variant mutates a virus and adds a new disease (purple color) that the team has to manage. The last variant has a Bio-Terrorist working against everyone else through hidden movements. Even with the added variants, the basic premise of the game is still the same. Treat and cure diseases as you move around the world map.Set-up: The set-up for the On the Brink expansion takes roughly the same amount of time as the base Pandemic game. Just a few minutes to create the player & infection decks, then infecting cities around the world.Difficulty: Having only played the Virulent Strain and Mutation variants, the learning curve was very similar to learning the base game. These variants require the team to remember new conditions that are in play, and are fairly straightforward. The Bio-Terrorist seems to have new rules on movement and actions, and would require the person playing the Bio-Terrorist to understand the rules well since their movements are hidden.Replayability: Each of these variants seem to add more conditions/events in the gameplay, and I believe you are able to include multiple/all variants for added variability. On the Brink also adds more event cards and role cards.Final Thoughts: 9/10The variants that I have played add some refreshing changes to a great game, although the magnitude of the changes greatly depends on the randomness of the draw. I also like the petri dishes that came with the game to hold the disease cubes. Nice touch. With the new role cards and events, I will probably always add elements of the expansion to the game, even if I don't play the different variants.