Andie and I are having a night away because like the good person I am I booked a nice evening in a hotel with a nice meal. Andie’s currently somewhere between falling asleep and watching the morbidly fascinating spectacle that is the ’80s gameshow 3, 2, 1 on Challenge TV, while I’m… well, writing this.

I don’t remember ever watching 3, 2, 1 as a kid but I’m sure it must have been on at some point in my childhood, since it seemingly ran until 1988. I knew of its terrible, terrible mascot — a dustbin called Dusty Bin — but not what format the show took. Having somehow watched half (at the time of writing) of a single episode, I’m still a little bewildered. Oh well.

Besides watching questionable (though apparently ludicrously popular) ’80s TV, we also had a go at the new Pandemic expansion In the Lab earlier. This adds some interesting new mechanics to the base Pandemic game, namely a separate Lab board in which you have to process samples of the four types of disease and make use of several different pieces of processing equipment to sort them into appropriate dishes. To treat a disease, you must then collect a specific combination of cubes, categorise the disease, test the cure and finally produce your medicine.

It’s a really interesting twist on the base Pandemic mechanics because it totally changes the flow of play. It also slows down your actions significantly, which puts you significantly more at risk of losing the game through running out of cards. After just one game, I haven’t quite grasped what you need to do differently, but I’m intrigued to try it again, either with other players or with the new solo rules that are also introduced in In the Lab.

Pandemic and its two expansions probably make up one of my favourite games in my collection, and one of the most interesting things about its fully-expanded form is how flexible it is. There are lots of different “roles” for the players to play, each with their own special abilities, and several different variants to try out. There’s even a competitive mode where the team as a whole competes against a “Bio-Terrorist” player who moves around the board invisibly, somewhat similar to Mr. X in Scotland Yard. I haven’t yet tried the latter form of the game, but I’m keen to give it a go the next time it’s my pick at games night, I think.

Anyway. It is late and 3, 2, 1 is still burbling its surreal nonsense all over the television. I feel I should probably see the peculiar show through to its conclusion now, then tomorrow we’re off to see the house we’re currently in the process of buying. Scary.

Hope you’ve had a good Valentine’s Day, regardless of whether you’re in a relationship or not. If you are, I hope you had a good time with your partner of choice. If you’re not, I hope you found something entertaining to do with your time. (I hear the Titanfall beta is quite good.)

Good night!