Tag: Pandemic

Birthday Week

By

On 10th October 2021

In Blog

This week I had my birthday, and it wasn’t what I hoped for.

My sister in laws cat went missing, and I have some medical stuff to deal with.

So Fosfos, Emma’s cat went missing on Sunday night and it’s not like her to wander, so Monday Emma was busy leafleting in Blyth where she lives.

Tuesday, Lindsay and Megan went up to help her, but she was still no where to be found, thankfully she returned home at 2am Tuesday and woke up Emma for cuddles.

So that was a huge relief.

Tuesday night we went out for Nando’s for my birthday, which I really enjoyed, haven’t had a Nando’s since the day before the first lockdown and I really enjoyed it.

Present wise, Lindsay and Megan bought me the Evil Comes Prepared expansion for Disney Villainous and the Orruk Warclans Battletome, and I bought myself the Stormcast Eternals Battletome and the Charadon terrain box.

At the weekend we were meant to have some of our nephews staying but Gandalf our arsehole of a rabbit developed an ear infection, so he had to be rushed to the vets and needs hand feeding for a bit, so that was not a good environment for the boys to stay over as they are very active.

He is slowly getting better, but he really does fight us when it comes time to give him his medication.

What I Am Modelling

I started off by painting the Negavolt Cultists and Rogue Psykers for Blackstone Fortress.

The Rogue Psykers were finished first.

Followed by the Negavolt Cultists.

I then painted up three Assault Intercessors and a Primaris Captain from Imperium.

After which I turned my attention to two squads of Stormcast Eternals Judicators for the Celestial Vindicators.

So what’s planned for next week then?

  1. Mechanicum Magos Macrotek Enginseer & Servo-Automata x 4
  2. Stormcast Eternals Judicators x 10
  3. Ork Nobz x 6, Painboy, Warboss & Grots x 3
  4. Death Korps of Krieg Infantry Squad x 10
  5. Legio Custodes Caladius Grav-Tank x 2
  6. Blackstone Fortress Spindle Drones x 6 & Guardian Drones x 2
  7. Grand Army of the Republic Phase 1 Troopers x 22
  8. Ork Shockjump Dragsta
  9. Yndrasta, the Celestial Spear
  10. Obi-Wan Kenobi

What I Am Reading

Actually haven’t read a thing all week 🙁

What Video Games Am I Playing

Played a lot more Halo 3: ODST and got that finished and have now started on Halo Reach!

I also played through Sonic the Hedgehog on the Game Gear, emulated via Retroarch and have a play through video of that uploading tomorrow.

What Tabletop Games Am I Playing

On my birthday we played a game of Ticket to Ride: London, and I was three points off wining, but I am happy I didn’t come last again!

On Sunday me and Lindsay had a game off Ticket to Ride: Germany using her new Play Pink train set. And surprisingly I won!

After that Megan joined us to play a game of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, and we managed to close all four gates and save the world from the terror of the Old Ones!

What Am I Creating

I published a Warhammer 40K Battle Report of my Death Guard taking on Megans Orks, which you can see below.

What I Am Backing

Munchkin Mayhem looks amazing, and I have decided to back it, cause well I love Munchkin.

So I went in on the YOU GOT GAME! level, it’s only £12 or so, but I really think it could be a cool game.

What Am I Cooking

Once again, bugger all 🙁

Pandemic: Patient Zero

By

On 7th August 2021

In Book Reviews, Reviews

I have been provided with an advance copy of the new Pandemic book Pandemic: Patient Zero by Amanda Bridgeman, published by Aconyte Books, so here is the honest review I promised in exchange for the book.

So here is an important disclaimer which is always important to put out there first. I have a casual work contact with Asmodee to demonstrate board games for them in stores and at conventions. Asmodee being the parent company of Aconyte the publisher.

I am going to try my best to not let this cloud my judgement in this review, but I accept that subconsciously it might.

What Is Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative board game designed by Matt Leacock, in the game you work together to discover the cure for several diseases rampaging though the world.

Players take on various roles, such as medic, dispatcher, scientist, quarantine expert etc and though the combined efforts, collect enough data and information to find the cures to save the world.

The game is incredibly successful and has three expansions for itself as well as numerous spin off games and variations. As well as the extremely popular Legacy versions of the game.

My personal current favourite is Pandemic: Hot Zone North America.

The Story

The story starts with a nun falling ill in Peru, and quickly the disease she later dies from starts popping up in Brazil and Columbia too.

It’s a new disease to which humanity has no immunity and it rapidly kills those it infects.

The Global Health Agency dispatches a team from its base in Lyon to discover the cause of this disease and hopefully find a cure.

We have a cast who roughly represent many of the possible roles within the Pandemic board game, and a nice mixture of nationalities and genders. There is also an interesting little bit of minor subplot about one of the field team finding it more difficult to traverse the world due to her being from Nigeria rather than the US, UK or Australia.

The story takes us on a hunt for the source of the disease, from Lima, into the jungle and down the Amazon river and then deep into a drug lords village as the team desperately search for patient zero and understand how this disease came into existence.

Conclusion

Look I need to be straight up here, I got Covid early on in the pandemic, it took a third of my lungs from me and has ruined my lungs to the point where I can’t climb stairs without an inhaler.

This book was extremely difficult to read because it quite often referred to Covid in the past tense, when Covid is still very much with us and killing people.

The book itself is well written, it’s a by the numbers virus outbreak kind of story, nowt ground breaking but well done and brilliantly written with relatable characters.

But it feels far too soon for a book to talk about Covid as being in the past, had I known this book would have done this, I would never have read it.

So it comes down to this, if you can handle many references to Covid and a new respiratory disease, then it’s a good book to read, but if like me you basically have PTSD when it comes to Covid, I would strongly advise giving this book a miss for now.

Just for now though, because it is a good book, but frankly it needs a trigger warning, I donMt know why I pushed myself to keep reading, I really shouldn’t have.

I don’t know how to score this book so I am going to ignore my instincts which are to refuse to score it because of how much it triggered my PTSD and made my chest feel incredibly tight.

It’s a well written book with a good story so I will give it a 4 out of 5 stars, but as I said, it desperately needs a proper trigger warning.

The book is published as an ebook on 7th September and will hit bookstores on the 11th November.

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