Pandemic

We played our new copy of Pandemic earlier this week.  Four players, the easy version (with four epidemic cards).  It was a lot of fun; we caught on quickly, I thought, but then we got creamed, not by disease showing up everywhere, which we were on top of.  We had cures to all four diseases and were managing to get them eradicated, we didn't have too many outbreaks, our epidemic level was only up to three cards.  No, despite our valiantly beating back the tide of disease, we lost because we ran out of city cards to draw, which was kind of unsatisfying. We need to try again to see where we went wrong - it seemed like we were doing good things every turn, but I suppose there's a more optimal way to move around and avoid outbreaks than we were able to spot.  I wish there were some rules that covered that kind of ending (infection rate increases when you're out of cards or something) rather than just losing by default, but I guess that's kind of like cheating at solitaire.

The game actually felt to me like a creative computer puzzle game - the cooperative element was fun, but it would work just as well as a solo game with one player controlling everything.  It was an interesting and different way to play a boardgame - I could see why it was so lauded.  I'll try it some more to see how it goes.