Crandall: New Model Typewriter, 1886 [Beautiful Machines]

from The Martin Howard Collection, http://www.antiquetypewriters.com

 

 

Quin, Liam R. E.: “Typewriters from the Martin Howard Collection” (2008)

See more at Antique Typewriters.

Storytelling With Maps

Here’s a fine site for map lovers. Storytelling With Maps uses annotated maps to explain and teach. I found it through the interactive map of the journey of Odysseus, but there are plenty of other interesting ones as well, such as Santas Around the World and the flight of Wiley Post.

They’re not deep, but they’re a good way to link facts and events to geography.

Pandemic [App o’ the Mornin’]

Four diseases are spreading across the planet, and your goal is to find the cure for each in this adaptation of the award-winning co-operative boardgame.

Pandemic (F2Z/Z-MAN Games, iPad: $6) is a tense game, with many ways to lose and one way to win: cure four diseases by matching sets of cards. Along the way, if you run out of cards, draw too many outbreak cards, or have all the disease groups on the board, you lose. Fortunately, you’re not in this alone. Other players are working with you against the enemy (disease), and by communication and coordination it’s possible to race to the finish before virus outbreaks destroy the world.

Each player takes on a character with a particular skill: the Medic can remove three infections in one action, while others can only remove one; the Dispatcher can move people; the Operations Expert can build for free; the Researcher can uses cards even if they don’t match her location; and so on.

Characters get four actions and draw two cards per turn, with new infections added after each turn. The cards can include new cities (which are also color coded to match the viruses), special events, or epidemic outbreaks. You can use the cards to travel, trade, or curse diseases.

The map shows cities across the world, connected with lines allowing for direct travel. A player can move to an adjoining city using one action, or use special abilities to move around the map. As infections multiply, the chance of them spreading increases, so players also use their turns to cure diseases.
The Epidemic card moves the infection rate marker and the game forward. One city gets three infections, and discarded infection cards are placed back on the top of the deck, meaning new infections will break out soon. Since each city can only host three infections, any fourth infection causes an outbreak and all cities connected to the first receive one infection.

If you gather enough matching cards, you can cure an infection, and all the same color cards are removed from the board. The disease has been eradicated. Do this four times and you win.

The proper use of character skills, co-ordination and co-operation with other players, and a bit of luck are all part of the game. For a board-game conversation, it achieves a very high level of tension thanks to music and pacing that accelerates as the threat grows.

The problem, however, is that it lacks multiplayer support (with the exception of pass and play). Fortunately, the nature of co-op games is such that they convert quite well to solo play. Rather than playing with other people in the various roles, you’re performing all the roles. It makes for an effective game even without other live players.

Content: Pandemic is not gross or overly detailed, but it deals with outbreaks of diseases that cause mass deaths. The subject matter is, of course, quite grim, but the game doesn’t make light of it.