Category Archives: pandemic

pandemic

Fighting Ebola by playing a game!

charity, pandemic, tabletop

Last night was the Pandemic Party in Wisbech at The Entertainment Centre. Eight of us got together to play the game Pandemic by Matt Leacock to raise funds to help fight Ebola. One customer of The Entertainment Centre had kindly donated some cakes for the evening, which were rather nice. The crew at Bossa Studios creators of Surgeon Simulator the game (it's a great fun game available on multiple platforms click here for more details) kindly donated some “injection” pens to help raise funds for the evening.

Only one of us (not me) had played Pandemic before. So the game was setup for an “easy” setting.

For a first time playing I think we did pretty well. Three of the deadly diseases were cured, before we ran out of player cards (one of the three lose conditions). At the end of the game even though we failed to save the planet from being wiped out by deadly disease, we'd had a fun time.

We finished the evening off by playing a quick game of Zombie Dice. Which amazingly I won! Usually and this will surprise those I play Dice Masters with, I roll badly playing Zombie Dice. During my first two goes my rolls were true to form, and I was not scoring. Then I rolled eight brains before sticking. That's the best I've done in one round ever at this game. A couple of players had decided they liked playing Zombie Dice so much that they are planning to get their own copies. I also think they also took a shining to my dice tray and may also be looking at getting one of those too.

It's nice to see people like a game so much that they plan to get their own copy. Zombie Dice isn't a complicated game. It's a press your luck game. But in a group it's great fun to play. I just didn't warn them this is the start of a slippery slope.

The remaining pens from the evening are being sold off in the shop to add to the total of money raised. Which reminds me once I have a final total raised I'll put it up on here.

So a great evening, great company, all in the name of charity a win win situation if you ask me.

 

 

Not So Random Stuff About Expansions

pandemic, star realms, tabletop

I've mentioned in a previous post that I like games that have expansions. They expand the game! Add new options, modes of play, more players, new scenarios, etc. Basically add more variety. They aren't necessary on the whole but for the odd game they are to make the game more enjoyable.

New Arrival

Today the Harbour Expansion for Machi Koro arrived. It adds the cards to allow a fifth player, new cards and play modes. I'll do a more indepth look in another post.

In the Harbour Expansion is also a teaser for the next expansion coming out later this year!

A Brief Rant

One game I'm playing a lot of at the moment (admittedly using the iPad app) is Star Realms. There are two main expansions for this deck building game, Gambit and Crisis. But can I buy these in the UK? Nope nowhere has them in stock. Ones I can find are in the US and with postage (and possible import duty) really expensive. The Crisis expansion is made up of four individual themed packs, each costing (if available in the UK £3.95 – yeah back to the $1 = £1 exchange rate). However buying them through eBay means each pack is pushing over £10! The Gambit expansion is roughly £20 for a £10 game. It's rediculous. So why is there such a shortage in the UK? This is making the Marvel Dice Masters Avengers vs X-Men shortage last year look like a small blip. I won't even mention how hard it is to source an official play mat for Star Realms, or how my heart sinks at the thought of how hard it is going to be to get the storage box (with exclusive promo card) and the official card sleeves. Poor supply is such a frustrating thing, and there is no excuse for it in this day and age. I understand that companies can be caught be surprise by being a lot more popular than they thought they would be with a game. But still I think the writing has been on the wall that Star Realms would be a popular game.

A Bit of Gaming News(ish) Or What Matt Leacock Did Next

Later this year a new co-operative game based on Thunderbirds is coming out. The game is design by Matt Leacock and published by Modiphius. Matt is famous for such games as Pandemic, Pandemic the Cure, Forbidden Desert, and Forbidden Island. All great co-operative board games. So the early indications are this should be a great game, great theme, great designer that excels at co-operative games, a theme that is suited to co-operative play.

It does look like Matt has a busy year ahead of him. Matt also has Pandemic Legacy coming out later in the year, which he has been developing with Rob Daviau ( designer of Risk Legacy). And is highly anticipated by Pandemic fans ( that includes me ).
As the image above shows there are plans to have two different boxes with different art work on. There was another game last year (name escapes me at the moment) that was released also with multiple variants of the box art. I'm not sure I like this trend. It reminds me a bit of the comic book industry and how they do this a lot (just look at how many variant covers there are for the new Marvel Star Wars comic issue 1). It strikes me as trying to milk money out of collectors.
Then finally in the first part of this year there is a new expansion for Pandemic coming out called State of Emergency.

So there you have it a brief “look what's just arrived”, a rant venting my frustration, and a “look what I'm excited about coming out later this year”.

 

A Pandemic Party This Thursday

charity, pandemic, tabletop

This Thursday sees a Pandemic Party being held in Wisbech at The Entertainment Centre in aid to raise funds to help fight ebola. I wrote about Pandemic Parties previously here. Hopefully if you live locally you will be able to attend, have a great time playing Pandemic the game and help raise funds to fight ebola.

Click HERE to get full details of the event (it's a facebook event page)

 

 

Pandemic Parties

charity, fund raising, pandemic, tabletop

Today I came across a story of board gamers playing a game to help raise funds to fight Ebola. What game are they playing? Pandemic of course.

Pandemic is a collaborative boardgame where you work together to stop the spread of four deadly diseases around the world. It was created by Matt Leacock who also happens to be one of the folks behind this idea of playing the game to raise $100,000 to go to Doctors Without Borders and their fight against Ebola.

So Matt is asking people to hold Pandemic Parties, where people come together to play Pandemic the game (or any game) and donate money to fight Ebola.

When I heard about this I thought wow! This is amazing. It’s such a great idea, and a perfect match between the issue and the game. This isn’t the first charity gaming event by a long shot. And they aren’t asking people to do like marathon events. To me they are asking for something more akin to a MacMillan Cancer Support coffee morning. Come together, play a game or two of Pandemic, enjoy a coffee (or other beverage), have a good time, donate money, leave with a warm fuzzy feeling.

The great thing I think about holding a Pandemic Party is that you can theme it a lot. Petrie dishes to hold the virus counters (I know some folks already use this for the game), players could wear surgical masks and rubber gloves while playing, you could get some injection pens (pens that look like injection needles) and have them stored in a test tube holder and give them to participants.

The nice thing is Pandemic is one of my pile of shame games. So this will be a great excuse to play the game. I’m not sure when the deadline is for doing this, I know nothing will happen this side of Christmas but I will look at organising something for January.

Hopefully after you have looked at the links below you will also feel like holding a Pandemic Party. I do hope so.

You can find out more about holding a Pandemic Party by visiting the official web site .

You can read the original story I read here it also has video to.

And if you want to find out more about the game and see what it is like to play there is the rather excellent episode of Wil Wheatons tabletop.

 

You can get Pandemic from your friendly local gamestore, or online from the likes of Amazon. There is also Pandemic the Cure that is a dice based version of the game.