Virulence: An Infectious Card Game

Juego pequeño pero muy entretenido!

This game neatly combines card auctioning with set building to create a fun, quick, competitive card game. Quick Overview Players each have identical hands of bidding cards, numbered from 1 to 6, indicating different levels of virulence. A dealer then deals out a number of cards from a deck, equal to the number of players, plus an additional card on top of the first card in the "lineup." The cards in the lineup can contribute to your cause, either by providing victory points or contributing to sets of cards you're trying to accumulate, or by providing even more powerful bidding cards, thus making your bidding hand more "virulent." Or, cards in the lineup might be harmful. They might include vaccine cards which reduce victory points or weak bidding cards that reduce your hand's virulence. For any given lineup, you want to select a virulence card of the appropriate strength, relative to the choices of your opponents, which allows you to acquire useful cards and avoid being stuck taking penalty cards. Over the course of the game, you'll want to accumulate cards that provide individual points, as well as sets of cards that provide points based on the number of cards in a set. The result is a relatively simple game to learn and play, while providing interesting choices for the players. 2 Player Variant Often, these sorts of auction games don't work well with only two players. But Virulence has a clever 2-player variant. Basically, you create a "dummy deck" of bidding cards. Shuffle the dummy deck and, after players select their own bidding cards, you randomly draw a card from the dummy deck. If you selected a bidding card that has a lower virulence value than the dummy deck, then the dummy player acts before you can select a card from the lineup, removing most of the valuable cards before you can choose. This makes your decisions about which virulence card to play more interesting and complicated. Kudos to the designers for figuring out how to make a two player auction game that plays really well! Educational Value Other reviewers have indicated that this game "teaches while having fun." I'd like to hear more from them, as I'm hard pressed to say that a player learns more about how viruses work through playing the game. Certainly, the game introduces terminology and concepts that can inspire students to investigate further, but I have a hard time seeing how the mechanics and gameplay align with how viruses work. If you're looking for a game that introduces concepts that inspire learning, this may be for you. If you're looking for a game that teaches through gameplay, I'm not sure this does it. Final Verdict Virulence is a solid, fun game that's easy to learn, easy to teach, quick to play, while providing an engaging gaming experience. I highly recommend this game.

Kids love it, adults love it, passive learning with little effort... there is no down side to this game! My husband who is an immunologist got a huge kick out of it.

Our teenagers and us enjoyed this game, once we go past the cumbersome and somewhat confusing directions (best to play a round or two to get the idea, fairly simple concept but lots of rules). It used various scientific terminology, but other than the theme, is not particularly educational - ie doesn't actually teach you how viruses work. No need for any knowledge of cellular biology to play.

Great family game. 8yo plays easily and can't get enough! This is a set collection game that goes quick. We usually play more than one game when we play. This game sparks kids' interest in what viruses are and how they are structured, killed, spread, etc. Basic Concept of How to Play: Cards are placed face up and each player bids for first pick of the cards. Points are talleyed at the end. Each card is worth points or negative points. Some cards earn more the more you obtain.