Now that the USA has started making some progress with vaccination, it will come as no surprise that the next installment of the Pandemic Hot Zone series takes place in Europe. There's still plenty time left for the Africa version.
Like its predecessor, it's a fast-playing small box game. Besides the new map, it comes with four new roles: Quarantine Specialist, Containment Specialist, Virologist and Pilot. Also new are the Mutation cards - a trademark of co-designer Tom Lehmann (check In the Lab or Experimental Meds).
I'm curious to find out if you will be able to mix and match roles and cards with Pandemic Hot Zone: North America. Also, I just had this neat idea for after they'd released five or six of these regional games to combine them into a big board and then play some worldwide mega-game.
You can check our session report on Pandemic Hot Zone: North America to get an idea of gameplay.
For the original Pandemic (that I've played lots) you can download official solo rules, or just play multi-handed co-op. I usually do that, and take three roles. The In the Lab expansion also comes with a solo variant.
By the way my favorite Pandemic series is the historic trilogy Iberia / Rising Tide / Fall of Rome. But basically, I buy them all...
Do you live in a big city, JW? If so, maybe it'll be on the map. 🙂 Your idea of combining several games to make a world-wide mega-game sounds cool. Maybe collaborate with Stephen King and add the storyline of The Stand. 😀 I really like Pandemic, which I've played Solo. It says 2-4 Players, but I just played it Solo and it seemed to work.