Virulence

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.

This is SO fun! It took a little while to figure out how to play, but once we understood everything, it's super easy! I recommend laying out everything as you read thru the rules, and be prepared to do a few trial runs... All of the things we found confusing make sense eventually!

A fun game and a good start for junior high students intending to go to college where most students will have to take a biology/immunology class. I also added some stickers to random cards to this game, where, if you pick up a card with a sticker, an opposing player will pick out an SAT flash card that the drawer will have to define and spell. Very educational. Have fun with it.

I was really excited about this game because I expected it to help my 10-year-old niece learn a little about virology and also be a good teaching aid for my aunt, who is a science teacher. We did enjoy playing the game, but I don't believe it will serve well as a teaching aid for a high-school biology class, nor at other levels. The gameplay is pretty much independent of the science. The vocabulary on the cards serves only as reference for building the sets, but the graphic design on the cards easily overtakes the vocabulary. I did find myself frequently saying the vocabulary terms out loud while teaching the game and while assessing scores, so a player might become more familiar with the terms in that manner, but the mechanics of the game did not require any application of the science. In addition to the game I played with my science teacher aunt and 2 other adult, I played a 2-player game with my 10-year-old niece. The 2-player variant required the addition of a "dummy player," and the gameplay with this variant felt sort of "clunky." It took us a while to catch on to what happened with the cards when it was the dummy's turn. In both plays, I found setup and cleanup to be more cumbersome than expected. All of the cards have the same backing. While I do understand why the bidding cards and viral components, it makes sorting the cards very difficult. It would be useful if at least the bonus cards could be distinguishable from the others.

I bought this for my wife for Christmas and we both found it to be very fun! Simple mechanics (bidding, deck building, card management, card collecting) and very fast to learn! Cool little game for parties or as a warm-up for more complex games. Art is well done, (mostly images of viruses and bacteria) and the tie-breaker dice are also nice to look at. Recommended!

Juego pequeño pero muy entretenido!