Not at all, will make me feel less guilty when I take a long time to update.

That's 2 maybe 3 room for another one or two if I just manage.

Every player who wants to play Pandemic will need to select a role. This doesn't strictly follow the rules, but I like it better and, more importantly, it's how the computer version works.

The roles are in no particular order.

CONTINGENCY PLANNER - The Contingency Planner may, as an action, take an Event card from anywhere in the Player Discard Pile and place it on his Role card.

Only 1 Event card can be on his role card at a time. It does not count against his hand limit.When the Contingency Planner plays the Event card on his role card, remove this Event card from the game (instead of discarding it).

As an action, take any discarded Event card and store it on this card.

When you play the stored Event card, remove it from the game

Limit: 1 Event card on this card at a time, which is not part of your hand.

DISPATCHER - The Dispatcher may, as an action, either:

• move any pawn, if its owner agrees, to any city containing another pawn, or

• move another player's pawn, if its owner agrees, as if it were his own.

The Dispatcher can only move other players' pawns; he may not direct them to do other actions, such as Treat Disease.

When moving a player's pawn as if it were your own, discard cards for Direct and Charter Flights from your hand. A hand discarded for a Charter Flight must match the city the pawn is moving from.

MEDIC - The Medic removes all cubes, not 1, of the same color when doing the Treat Disease action.

If a disease has been cured, he automatically removes all cubes of that color from a city, simply by entering it or being there. This does not take an action.

The Medic also prevents placing disease cubes (and outbreaks) of cured diseases in his location.

The Medic's automatic removal of cubes can occur on other player' turns, if he is moved by the Dispatcher or the Airlift Event.

OPERATIONS EXPERT - The Operations Expert may, as an action, either:

• build a research station in his current city without discarding (or using) a City card, or

• once per turn, move from a research station to any city by discarding any City card.

The Dispatcher may not use the Operation Expert's special move ability when moving the Operation Expert's pawn.

QUARANTINE SPECIALIST - The Quarantine Specialist prevents both outbreaks and the placement of disease cubes in the city she is in and all cities connected to that city. She does not affect cubes placed during setup.

SCIENTIST - The Scientist needs only 4 (not 5) City cards of the same disease color to Discover a Cure for that disease.

RESEARCHER - When doing the Share Knowledge action, the Researcher may give any City card from her hand to another player in the same city as her, without this card having to match her city. The transfer must be from her hand to the other player's hand, but it can occur on either player's turn.

Contingency planner sounds like it's got interesting possibilities, I'll take that.

Also, we should probably establish how many of us have never played this game.

I think Researcher and Medic are the most powerful roles. After that, I don't know. Those event cards can really save your bacon though.

Hey, Billytea, if you and Ryan are on board we're good to start a game. 4 is a really good number of players.

Hi Gud. Ryan does want to play, but not in a separate role; he'd like to play a combined role with me. His favourite role is Medic, so we'll go with that if that's ok.

Cool. Anybody else want in?

I'll take Researcher. Have you played the game before, chrismg? It sounds like billytea & Ryan are already familiar with it.

Nope, sorry. No clue.

Cool. It's a great game and it's fun to introduce it to people. It's a co-op game so we either all win or the game wins. The premise is that there are four diseases spreading across the world and our goal is to find a cure for all four before they get out of control.

The game board is a map of the world with cities connected by dashed lines. We all start at the CDC in Atlanta. Atlanta is also the only city with a research station at the beginning of the game. We'll get back to the board in a bit.

There two types of cards in the game player cards, and infection cards. The player cards are cards drawn by the player and consists mostly of cards with a city and color but also has a few event cards (always good) and a few epidemic cards (always bad, very bad). The infection cards are automatically drawn by the game (not literally in the board version, but literally in the computer version) and are all a city and color.

Now I mentioned colors, there are four colors, yellow, black, blue, and red and they represent the four diseases we are trying to cure.

There are disease cubes for each disease that are placed on cities on the board. Each disease has 24 cubes. Each disease has a region, so blue is North America and Europe, Yellow is South America and Africa, Black is central Asia, and Red is East Asia and the Pacific.

At the start of the game nine infection cards are drawn. The first three cities drawn get three disease cubes the same color as the card. The next three cities drawn get two, and the last three get one. The infection cards go into the infection card discard pile.

The number of cubes on a city is pretty important because if a city gets a fourth cube of a particular color, then it outbreaks, spreading a disease cube to each connected city (which can cause chain reactions if one of those cities has three cubes already).

To cure a disease, a player needs five player cards of the same color and be located at a research station. (The Scientist only needs four).

Once all four diseases are cured, the players have won.