STAR WARS THE CLONE WARS PANDEMIC Is A Great New Take On A Classic Game
Pandemic is one of my favorite board games of all time. I love a good cooperative game and Pandemic is one that never seems to get old for me. When I heard about Star Wars The Clone Wars Pandemic from Asmodee and Z-Man Games, I was intrigued. Asmodee sent me a copy to review and it has turned out to be a solid new version of the game.
The first thing I look for in a themed version of an old game is how much they change up the rules. This one still feels like Pandemic when playing, but they did so much to change up the rules of the game that it is very distinct. Instead of fighting diseases you take on the role of a Jedi in order to fight the Separatist droid army and a main villain. Droids spawn the way diseases do and a variety of bad things will happen when planets get too many droids. Drawing a card is an action you can take on your turn, but you don’t necessarily discard cards to achieve things. For example, when you decide to fight droids, you can use your cards to add to the damage that you roll on the dice. You will discard cards if you take damage in a fight and have nothing to use to defend yourself. These cards will also be used to complete missions rather than cure diseases and again will not necessarily be discarded. The new variation was a lot of fun to play with and it required different kinds of strategies than the original Pandemic game.
Next up is the quality of the game. The miniatures are all really well done. Not only do each Jedi and villain have a figure, but the entire droid army is made up of tiny droid miniatures. I wish that they had come painted, but it’ll make a fun project to paint them myself so I can’t complain too much about that. The rest of the game is also well made as you would expect if you already own Pandemic.
I think this game can open up to many more expansions. It would be really fun to have an expansion that introduces characters and villains from the original and sequel trilogies. I think it would also be really fun to have a villains expansion where you get to play as a villain against the heroes. That could even just be different character cards for all the characters currently available. I had a lot of fun playing the game and it left me genuinely wanting more characters to play with and villains to defeat.
Overall, I think this game is definitely worth playing. If you’re not a big Pandemic fan but enjoy Star Wars I would actually recommend giving this a try. It's similar, but different enough from Pandemic that you may enjoy it more. I would give the game a 10/10.
