The team of scientists from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention worked tirelessly to keep the outbreaks at bay. Quarantines struggled to remain in place. Try as they might, the situation was getting out of hand.
As the diseases spread, riots broke out. Citizens turned barbarous. Cities fell. The team moved sluggishly through each city they came to, doing what they could to fight the epidemic, but it was without hope. Their resources were being used up as fast as they could get them for the three virus strains that were talking the world by storm. For every city they brought the cure to, others would erupt with another.
Half the world had already succumbed to the fourth disease. Nothing could be done to stop it.
There was no cure.
As the days wore on, the epidemic spread, crushing empires and exterminating millions. More quarantines were placed, and road blocks forced the epidemic to remain in isolation, but that could only last so long.
With fear in the scientists’ eyes, the medic drew two cards. The first showed him which city in Asia. He needed to head there anyway, for a cure. The next card, however, effectively ended the game:
I love board games! Tonight I was out playing Pandemic: Legacy with some friends, something we’ve been doing weekly for a while now. Whenever I sit down and play that game, I’m not just some player moving pawns around the board, hoping to win the game. Instead, I take the pawn’s place. My character card defines who I am. And when a city is on the verge of an outbreak, I can almost feel myself begin to sweat.
As stressful as that can get in games like Pandemic, the excitement I feel from these games is why I play. Colt Express, for example, lets me see the story of me robbing a train. Formula D puts me behind the wheel of a super-fast race car (and I almost always crash and burn). There’s nothing better than sitting around the table playing games, becoming the characters, and living life from their point of view.
In the near future, I’m going to start writing board game reviews and posting them here on this blog. Besides writing, board games are way up there on my list of things I love. I’ll be reviewing games I already own, and possible some I play at SaltCON this coming weekend. However, I will be acquiring one game that’s currently on Kickstarted that I’ll be reviewing. So be sure to check back here in the coming weeks for board game reviews, and I’ll tell you exactly why you should be playing these games.