Pandecade: Plague Picks

Tom Lehmann, co-designer of Second Edition, On the Brink, In the Lab and State of Emergency:

“I enjoy and like them all. I tend to prefer Pandemic at five epidemics, though. With six-plus epidemics, for me, it starts to feel a bit like being on a treadmill. I prefer to add challenges, rather than more epidemics, to increase difficulty.

With four experienced players, I like to play the Superbug challenge, along with Emergency Event – which make the game a lot more unpredictable – from the State of Emergency expansion.”

“I really enjoyed working on both Reign of Cthulhu and Legacy: Season Two; I love conceptualising and designing characters and worlds, and these two games in the franchise lent themselves the most to creating concepts from imagination. These games take place in a more removed alternative reality than our own.

I just find these types of themes are so much fun. I also loved working on the two styles we chose for the illustrations, more so than any of the other Pandemic styles in the series.”

Rob Daviau, Pandemic Legacy co-creator:

“If I was going to play a Pandemic game and spend a lot of time with it, I would play the standard game because I’d be playing with people who had never played before.

I would take joy out of teaching it and let them make decisions and not alpha-game them. I don’t need to push myself to have virulent strains and seven epidemics – I’m just not that good at it. I did enjoy playing The Cure a couple of years ago with some friends and would like to play that again because I found it interesting.”

Zev Shlasinger, founder of publisher Z-Man Games:

“The base game is fine for me. But I like anything that more events and more actions that can take place to shake things up a bit.” 

Philippe Guérin, graphic designer and art director:

”My personal favorite is Reign of Cthulhu. I like horror and my friends do, too. Don’t know if it’s the best one in terms of mechanisms and balance, but I love the figurines and the colours of the game.

Legacy: Season Two is also freaking awesome. It’s one of the projects I’ve had the most fun on and one that I am the most proud of. But, of course, I didn’t experience it the way it was meant to be… Damn, I really don’t know!”