Pandemic : On the Brink

A solid expansion for Pandemic.

The good news: The new roles work surprisingly well, with roughly one new role related to - but playing differently than - each existing role. The revised Ops Expert is much more playable, as the role remains useful after the opening stages. The new disease rules are interesting, and will provide a variety of challenges for people who've mastered, or grown bored of, the basic game - especially the strong mutant virus rules, which allow for one disease to gain new rules as the game goes on, getting more dangerous with each epidemic. And the bioterrorist adds a difficult chase-the-hidden-player variant vaguely reminiscent of Fury of Dracula.

Bad news: The expansion is quite expensive for the amount of components you get, although the production quality nicely matches the high standard of the original. Also, the new Petri dish storage boxes are very nice - but _slightly_ too large, such that you can't _quite_ fit everything easily in the original box. It goes, but the lid won't close snugly.

Summary: If you're new to Pandemic, you don't need this yet. If you've played a couple of games and you like it, but you're not sure you'll play more than every month or two, it's nice but not a must-have. If you love Pandemic but the repetition is starting to set in, or if your group actually wins Pandemic all the time, get this set.