Virulence A Contagious Card Game

Virulence is a fast and simple addictive card game where players take on the role of a virus. Players compete to infect a host cell (bidding using virus cards) to replicate their own viral components, allowing players to earn points upfront, or build the power of their winning hand.

All players simultaneously place secret blind bids that determine the order in which they select from the available viral component cards. Players want to be one of the highest bidders in as many rounds as possible, but the real challenge is doing so without wasting their best cards. Each player starts with a deck of identical cards, 1-6. Players will use these cards during the betting phase of the round, which is used to determine the order in which players will draw cards from the viral deck. Each time a card is played it is discarded, and players will need to burn all their cards or spend an entire turn to recover their discards.

Earned viral component cards can help a player build their hand power, allowing them to win critical deals later in the game, or combine into point pools in a varying number of ways. Some of these viral cards are added directly to the player's deck (always replacing a card so that each player has the same total number of cards to play). These cards mean that as the game progresses, players will begin to have divergent sets of cards.

Other cards in the viral deck of cards are scoring cards, each of which is placed face up in front of its player and scores under different circumstances - some are for building groups, while others require having the majority, and some even offer points direct or the ability to modify the dice rolls for the tiebreaker.

Content:
• 35 ante cards (virulence and recombination)
• 81 Viral Component Cards
• 4 bonus cards
• 4 dice of 6
• 1 Regulation

Virulence is ideal for the science classroom or game night with family and friends. It is easy to learn, but it is exciting to master and the speed of its games will make everyone want to repeat. All of the concepts covered in Covalence are concepts that can be found in a basic high school chemistry course, and it does so in a way that is fun and intuitive for everyone.

Scientific concepts: Structure and components of viruses, genome, helical structure, icosahedral structure, spherical envelope, virus replication, vaccines, mutations.