Assuming You Haven't Had Enough Pandemic Already....

It's common for a successful board game to spawn many expansions, new editions, and spin-offs. (I've certainly helped make my share of those in my career.) But few games have been re-mixed as much as Pandemic. I've played a fair number of the versions, but one that I hadn't tried until recently was the highly regarded (by the BoardGameGeek community) Pandemic: Iberia.

In many ways, Iberia sticks closely to the core Pandemic formula -- there are four types of diseases spreading across the game board. Players must work cooperatively to keep outbreaks in check through clever movement, trading of cards, and usage of special player-specific powers. I actually found it a bit refreshing to be back playing something so close to "regular Pandemic" after playing through the very different Legacy versions.

But Iberia does have a few twists from "good old-fashioned Pandemic" -- fairly small but incredibly meaningful twists that make this a notably different experience. First, this game is set in a specific time and place (Spain, 1848) that predates any understanding of how to cure or eradicate the diseases spreading around the country. You're only mitigating and researching these diseases in the hopes that a cure will one day be found (beyond the scope of the actual gameplay). In mechanics, this means that you can never make it impossible for the four diseases to appear on the board; your goal is to "research" all four diseases before they overwhelm you.

You have some new tools at your disposal to aid in this. In Pandemic: Iberia, you can construct a railway network over the course of the game. Player spend early actions to create connections between cities; later in the game, you can "fast travel" to anywhere on that rail network for a single move, making it much easier to get players to the location they need to be.

You can also distribute purified water into small regions on the board, tokens you can discard to prevent a disease marker from being added to any city touching the region. The system for this cleverly makes it easier to distribute water using cards of colors you've successfully "researched"; so just when a card stops being useful for one purpose, it becomes very useful for another purpose.

I think these changes collectively give Iberia a better sense of tension than its regular Pandemic cousin. I've only played a couple of times, but in those plays, it seems like Pandemic: Iberia never really lets you off the hook. In the classic game, lucky draws and/or smart plays can make it so that victory is assured. You can get out ahead of the rate at which problems arise, and coast to an easy victory. (Not always, but sometimes.) Iberia feels like a more breathless sprint to the finish, where you can't be sure if you'll win or lose until everyone around the table is taking their very last turn.

Then, assuming you do master this version and it ceases to challenge your group, there are options to ramp up the difficulty. One of the more intriguing is to assign abilities to each of the diseases that reflect the time-period-accurate diseases of malaria, typhus, yellow fever, and cholera. I don't know that my group will ever need such a challenge, but it's nice to know that it's there.

I certainly think that Pandemic: Iberia feels like the most replayable non-Legacy version of the game that I've experienced. I'd give it a B+. If you once loved Pandemic but don't find yourself playing it as much anymore, you might want to check out this version.