Playing – Pandemic: Rising Tides

Pandemic: Rising Tides

Description: Players race to build four engineering marvels before floods overwhelm the Netherlands
Game time: Approximately and Hour
Players: 3 to 5

The overall Pandemic mechanics are present, with some rules clarifications from previous editions, though there was confusion if the term region meant the land space or the entire section sharing the same color (its the land space for the record). As with Iberia, there are some new mechanics introduced for movement (ports) and some historical information on the objectives (though not as much info as Iberia had on diseases and innovations; I might have to write up a supplemental sheet).

The water flow mechanic replaces the disease outbreaks. Essentially an area with a higher number of cubes will begin to fill up unprotected neighboring regions with fewer cubes. As time progresses, so does the threat level of the sea and the number of dike failures. As a whole, enjoyed it.

Things I would like to see improved in future – clearer defined borders between land spaces, more color differentiation between the yellow and orange / brown (?) regions.
Things I liked in the presentation – the location cards had mini maps showing the affected space (very useful for those of us who knew nothing of the geography much less how to pronounce the place names), an intuitive image on the card back indicative of the card deck purpose (i.e. dike failure cards had a watery wave, player cards had a trifold tulip), a set of alternate objectives that could be drawn at random for variety in future play (some with building objectives, others with population targets, and so on).