Pandemic Has Been Quarantined

Those who know me know my passion surrounding board games: playing them, talking about them, occasionally creating some, and so on. One of my friends named Dave (more on that in a bit) bruoght over, many months ago, this neat game called Pandemic by Z-Man games.

I am not a big fan of co-op games, and this is one of them, as co-op games in my experience, usually involve an overbearing person *telling* many or all people what to do. Granted, the game is usually beaten, as that person knows how to beat the game, but beating a co-op game in this fashion is like trying to "win" at D&D: if you play that way, you're missing the point, and the group as a whole has a less fun experience than playing the game in truly co-op mode.

That said, I love this game. It's not perfect, and I won't regurgitate the rules here, but the gist is, 4 diseases have broken out in various locales around the world, and you and your team of specialists must contain them before the world becomes overrun wuth them. When we played, I don't think we actually won any of our first 3 games. Two were very close and one we just got flattened. Great fun though, and there are various parts of the game which lend themselves to humor, at least in our group.

As an unnecessary aside, I know more Daves than any other males of any other name. There's my son David. There's Dave the program director for the local PBS station, who is part of the usual gaming group. There's Dave in Massachusetts, who I used to game with and still keep in touch with. There's the Dave that I was in a jazz/funk garage band with for years (who is now the local school board pres). I know 3 more Dave's, and I'll just stop there.

Back to Pandemic. I placed an online order for this game on May 02, 2008 via ThoughtHammer. I have had a good experience with them. I still haven't received the game yet. Apparently, Z-Man used a dubious printer in China to get a 2nd print run of the game. There have been more delays.

I don't blame ThoughtHammer for this, as this stuff is out of their control. It does make me pretty wary of Pre-Orders though. So I emailed them Friday, asking if they had any tidbits on where the shipment was at. Here was the response I got:

"We have just recently learned that the shipping container carrying the November '08 Pandemic print-run is now in a U.S. port. Unfortunately, however, this container has been selected by the Department of Homeland Security for x-ray inspection, which could delay movement of the container by anywhere up to a month."

I was disappointed and slightly amused, as you could consider Pandemic in Quarantine, so to speak, I emailed one of my friends named Dave (the program director one) and told him of the delay. I was greatly amused by his response:

"Hilarious. Thank you, Bush Administration, for protecting us from boardgames."

I do hope I get this before Xmas.......