Man, Paltrow and Fishburne must have completely overwritten my memory of who else was in that movie.

We just watched it recently.

PANDEMIC

I have consulted with the brains trust. Quarantine Specialist sounds very interesting, I'd like to give that a go sometime; but with Dispatcher and Scientist already in the game, we just can't go past the Researcher as our pick.

Oh! That reminds me, something I found was helpful when running games before. I found it helped to put all the official stuff in bold. It's probably less of an issue here, but in Battlestar Galactica especially, it helped distinguish between team discussion and final orders.

That seems like a good idea. I'll take Medic because somebody needs to clean up messes.

PANDEMIC

Randomizing play order results in:

Dispatcher

Researcher

Scientist

Medic

PANDEMIC

We've got a critical situation with red plague in Korea and Japan, zombies are overrunning Tehran, red plaque is a problem in Ho Chi Minh City, there is a significant zombie problem in Baghdad, and also some serious yellow plague in South Africa. There also minor situations in Mexico City, Algiers, and New York.

[link]

[link]

PANDEMIC

Hmmm... The Dispatcher can defuse Tokyo right away. The Researcher can give the Scientist a yellow card to start working on a yellow cure.

We could also be a bit more bold and have the Dispatcher move to Bogota and maybe move the Medic toward Tokyo. Then the Scientist could meet up with the Dispatcher in Bogota and grab the Dispatcher's yellow card and be one card from a cure. But... that would be risking a Epidemic popping up before defusing that potential double outbreak in Northeast Asia.

PANDEMIC

If the dispatcher moves to Tokyo, couldn't he move the Medic there without cards on his next turn?

Yes, the trick though, is that we'll draw 6 cards before the Medic's turn and there is an epidemic card in every 12 cards.

Though that's a really good point about the Dispatcher using the pawn-to-pawn movement. If we went the Bogota route, the dispatcher could, bam, move the Scientist to her and hand over Bogota, leaving the Scientist with more actions.

PANDEMIC

I understand the appeal of Bogota, but shouldn't I stay in Atlanta this turn so that I can easily get the Johannesburg card before the Researcher leaves? And, if the Dispatcher moves to Tokyo, that both diffuses that city and sets us up to switch to collecting red depending on the first couple of draws.

PANDEMIC

Yep, yep, yep, you can't get the card from the Researcher if the Dispatcher bamfs you to Bogota. That was a bad idea.

I think the Tokyo move is good, but getting to three yellow cards is good too. Maybe it's best to remove the possibility of a double outbreak. The Dispatcher can always move the Researcher and Scientist together if needed, so getting more yellow to the Scientist shouldn't be too hard.