Another morning, another "unimaginable" tragedy

207 mass shootings this year. 399 people killed in those shootings, plus another 1644 injured.

Add in the other 33,000 people who die each year from guns and we get a gun death rate of 12 per 100,000 people. That's about half as many people die from breast cancer each year and we spend millions of dollars treating, preventing, researching breast cancer.

Why are guns different?

Why do people want them? There's absolutely no evidence that a gun helps people. A woman is more likely to be threatened or murdered with a gun than successfully use it in self-defense.

I am sick and tired of this gun rhetoric. I am tired of waking up to another death or another shooting.

On average 90 people die from gun violence each and every day. 90 people!!!
That's 90 mothers, fathers, daughters, sons. Odds are that's at least 75 innocent people.

The thing I hate most is the statement that these tragedies are unimaginable. For who? I know what caused this one and the last one and it is easy access to a killing machine. That's what causes these mass shootings, that's what causes 90 plus percent of all of the gun violence in the US.

So, until we do something about gun control, these tragedies will continue to be all too imaginable.

Pandemic Legacy - First Game

So, we finally bought Pandemic Legacy, after a few years of waiting. We realized that the best team we would have for this game would be the two of us, so we bought it.  And last night, we cracked it open and played the first month. It was pretty much the same as the original Pandemic game and we won quite easily, but things are already getting set up for the future months in ways that are going to make it very interesting.

So, first impressions: We shuffled the cards too well. We always shuffle the cards too well. In a two player game, if one color doesn't start aggregating, there aren't a lot of options.

There are a few new things that came into play. First, you have the legacy cards. These have specific triggers for the game. The first card was our objective, which for the first game is to cure all 4 diseases. If you win the game before the second Epidemic card, then you would draw the second legacy card (we did not win this way, as our first draw was a Epidemic. Over 50% of the time, our first draw is a Epidemic card). This second legacy card changed the game dramatically (no spoilers so I won't say what it was, but yep, two Epidemics in and our game plan was out).

Second, you have levels of panic for each city. Each time a city outbreaks, its panic increases, these are permanent and stay for all 12 months. The first outbreak doesn't affect the game play for that city, but each subsequent outbreak does.

Third, if a character is in a city that outbreaks, that character gets a scar. These are permanent. Scars vary, but none are great.

Fourth, you now only get event cards equal to your "funding" level. Your funding starts at 4, so only 4 cards, instead of 6 like in the original.

So those are the major changes for the game, at least for the first month. After you win or lose, you get to upgrade. You can choose from two types of upgrades: characters, disease(if any were eradicated), another starting research station, and unfunded events (which add to a city card, so that the city card is either a city card or an event).

We eradicated two diseases, so we chose a disease upgrade and upgraded the medic. Then, since we won, our funding went down by two...great.

Overall, pretty fun, but the cards were not in our favor.