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This is the last quarter final and it might be the most interesting one to think about.
Root beat Ark Nova 62-37 in the last round. That result told us something. Ark Nova is BGG number two. It is a better-designed game by most objective measures. Root won because it has personality, stories, and a fanbase who feel strongly about it. Pandemic beat Ticket to Ride: Europe 67-33 on importance. It is the most influential cooperative game ever made and it has probably been played by more people than any other game on this entire list.
One game wins on personality. One game wins on reach. We are about to find out which matters more.
Just want to vote?
How They Got Here
Root entered as seed 15 and has had a strong tournament. It beat the Lord of the Rings Fellowship Trick-Taking Game 62-38 in the Round of 16, Everdell 78-22 in the Round of 32, and then knocked out Ark Nova 62-37 in the last round. That last result was the statement of the quarter finals so far. Ark Nova was the highest-ranked BGG game still in the tournament and Root beat it convincingly.
Pandemic came in as seed 56 and has been quietly building through the bracket. It beat Puerto Rico 57-43 in the Round of 32, came through 80-20 against 7 Wonders Duel in the Round of 16, and then beat Ticket to Ride: Europe 67-33 in the last round. None of those results are dominant but all of them are comfortable. Pandemic has not been pushed to the edge in this tournament at any point.
Root has had the bigger wins. Pandemic has been the more consistent accumulator. Both are through to the last four.
What Root Actually Is
Root is an asymmetric area control game designed by Cole Wehrle and published by Leder Games in 2018. You and your fellow players each control a different faction in a contested woodland, and crucially, every faction plays completely differently from every other one.
The Marquise de Cat is a conventional area control faction. You start with a lot of pieces on the board, you build sawmills and workshops and recruiters, and you score by constructing buildings. You play like a classic wargame, spreading across the map and trying to hold territory.
The Eyrie Dynasties are the opposite. You build a decree over several turns, a list of actions you must take every round, and then you must carry out every item on that decree or collapse into turmoil, losing all your leaders and starting again. The Eyrie is powerful when managed well and catastrophic when mismanaged. It produces the most stories of any faction in the game.
The Woodland Alliance starts with almost nothing. A handful of sympathisers scattered across the map. You spend early turns building support quietly, drawing very little attention, and then at some point you have enough sympathy tokens in enough clearings to start mobilising, and suddenly the player who seemed irrelevant is winning.
There are more factions in the expansions, each with their own mechanics. The Vagabond plays like an RPG character moving through other players’ territory. The Riverfolk Company sells services to other factions. Every faction is genuinely different and requires a genuinely different strategy to play well.
Root plays two to four players in the base game, takes 60 to 90 minutes, and is one of the few games where the experience changes dramatically depending on which factions are in play. It is not a beginner game. The rulebook is manageable but the faction asymmetry means every player needs to learn their own rules and develop some intuition for everyone else’s. The payoff is a game that produces stories unlike anything else I own.
I have a specific memory of playing the Eyrie and building a decree so ambitious that by round four I had to take six actions I could not actually take and went into turmoil three times in the same game. Carl has never let me forget this. I maintain that it was a principled strategic position that simply required more rounds to develop than the game allowed.
What Pandemic Actually Is
Pandemic is a fully cooperative game designed by Matt Leacock and published by Z-Man Games in 2008. You and your team of specialists travel the world trying to prevent four colour-coded diseases from spreading until you can discover a cure for each one. Everyone wins together or everyone loses together.
The mechanism is elegant. On your turn you take four actions from a small menu: move to an adjacent city, fly across the world using a card, build a research station, treat disease in your current city, share a card with another player in the same city, or discover a cure if you have enough cards of the right colour. Then you draw two player cards, adding them to your hand. Then you flip infection cards, placing disease cubes in the cities they show.
The threat escalates automatically. Every time you run through the infection deck, it gets reshuffled with the already-infected cities on top, meaning cities that have been hit once get hit again sooner. The epidemic cards that appear periodically accelerate this process and also add new cities to the high-risk pile. The game creates pressure that ratchets up steadily and then suddenly becomes overwhelming if you fall behind.
Each player has a role with a unique ability. The Medic clears entire city outbreaks with one action instead of one cube at a time. The Scientist can discover a cure with four cards instead of five. The Dispatcher can move other players’ pawns. The asymmetry is much lighter than Root’s but it is there, and choosing which roles suit the group and the situation adds a strategic layer before the game even begins.
Pandemic plays two to four players and takes 45 to 60 minutes. It is the game that introduced the idea of fully cooperative play to a generation of board gamers. Before Pandemic, cooperative games existed but they were niche. After Pandemic, they were a mainstream genre. Spirit Island, Arkham Horror, Gloomhaven, Frosthaven, and dozens of other games in this tournament’s original list exist in the form they do partly because of what Pandemic proved was possible.
It has also been played in almost every household that owns more than three modern board games. That matters in a popular vote.
Where They Are Similar
Both games are about managing a crisis on a map. Root is a crisis of competing factions vying for control of a woodland. Pandemic is a crisis of spreading disease threatening to overwhelm a global network. The spatial element of watching things spread and trying to contain them is present in both, even though the mechanisms are completely different.
Both games also have strong replay value driven by variable setup. Root changes dramatically depending on which factions are in play and which map you use. Pandemic changes because the starting infection pattern and the epidemic card timing is different every game, and the role combination shapes what strategies are available.
Both games are also responsible for a significant number of people getting deeper into the board game hobby. Root is the game a lot of strategy gamers point to as the moment they understood that asymmetric design could create genuine depth. Pandemic is the game a lot of families and casual groups point to as the moment they realised board games could be more than roll-and-move.
Where They Are Different
The most fundamental difference is competitive versus cooperative. Root is a game where one player wins and everyone else loses. There is direct conflict, negotiation, table politics, and the particular satisfaction of outmanoeuvring opponents who are trying to outmanoeuvre you. Pandemic is a game where either everyone wins or everyone loses. The threat is the game, not the other players.
This creates completely different emotional experiences. Root at its best produces rivalry, comebacks, betrayals of alliance, and the kind of stories you tell for months afterwards. Pandemic at its best produces shared tension, clutch decisions made collectively, and the relief of pulling off a cure on the final turn when the board looked impossible.
The learning curve is different too. Pandemic can be taught in ten minutes and played successfully by someone who has never seen a modern board game. Root requires everyone at the table to invest time in understanding their own faction, and the game is genuinely worse if players don’t understand what the other factions are capable of. Pandemic scales to its audience. Root requires its audience to scale to it.
The direct conflict in Root also means the experience changes significantly with the group. With players who enjoy the political maneuvering and understand the factions, Root is outstanding. With players who are less comfortable with direct competition or who haven’t played enough to read the board, it can feel uneven. Pandemic is more consistent across different groups and experience levels.
Which One Is Better
Root is the more interesting game to me personally. The asymmetric faction design is one of the most creative things that has happened in board game design in the last decade and Cole Wehrle executed it exceptionally well. The stories it produces are genuinely irreplaceable.
Pandemic is the more important game in the history of the hobby. The case for it being the most influential board game of the last twenty years is a serious one. It proved cooperative play worked at scale and changed what publishers were willing to make and what players were willing to try.
If you asked me which one I would rather play on a given evening with the right group, I would probably say Root. If you asked me which one has done more for board gaming as a hobby, Pandemic wins that conversation without much debate.
Which one is better as a game is genuinely hard. They are doing different things for different occasions. I don’t think either is objectively superior.
Who Goes Through
Root has momentum and a passionate vocal fanbase. It just beat the highest-rated BGG game still in the tournament. The people who love Root love it loudly.
Pandemic has reach. It has been played by more people than Root by a significant margin. In a popular vote, that breadth of player base counts.
This is the one I genuinely cannot call. Root wins the passionate vote. Pandemic wins the broad vote. Which pool is larger is the question.