Review
Coughing rather than sleeping badly?
Viroid
Cooperate to Destroy Mankind
Viroid is a collector’s item for board game lovers, published in a limited small print run of 200 copies: If you like cooperative games and feel at home with a topic as featured in Pandemic, you will also be comfortable with Viroid. In this game, for once, you as a player can be evil, because in Viroid players embody illnesses and to infect mankind - there more deadly outcomes of the illnesses the better. A challenging and thematically interesting game, albeit a game that comes with a price due to the small print run and the fact that it was partially manufactured by hand. But, a personal certificate for one’s own copy has a certain something going!
Viroid is a cooperative game in which players try together to infect and infect mankind all over the world and, finally, to extinguish it completely. Therefore, you have, similar to Pandemic, an image of the world on the board. Again, we have many cities all over the world, where we interact and can create havoc among the population in our guise as pathogenic viruses or germs. Cities are connected by land routes, shipping lanes and airplane routes. And this is where the comparison with or similarities to Pandemic end. There are two main differences that make Viroid a completely different game: Its complexity and - partially as a result of that complexity - its long duration. Therefore, the game is mainly targeting the group of expert player and is less suitable for a casual game among friends. While players are doing their worst as pathogenic viruses, mankind, unfortunately, is not inactive and is permanently researching for cures, sometimes with little success, sometimes with rather more success. Therefore, it is also a question of playing for time whether mankind will win or players will win as viruses.
At the start of the game, players take a joint decision on which type of pathogenic virus or germ they want to play. For a first game, bacterium is the most suitable, as it begins with balances traits. It is important and necessary, that all players must play the same type of pathogen.
The chosen pathogen must be improved and upgraded in its traits and develop new abilities as well, at that point each player on his own is challenged to find out what is important for him. On the one hand, there will be abilities that are the result of regional circumstances, and, on the other hand, abilities on which individual players must specialize to ensure a joint win, because one player will not be able to develop all abilities on his own.
Every player marks the actual abilities of his pathogen on his player board. Basic abilities of a pathogen are their resistances. A pathogen can become resistant to cold, heat and medication; the intensity of its resistance is marked on three tracks on the player board.
Another important ability or trait is the type of proliferation that the pathogen uses to spread among humans. You can develop four different types of proliferation - via small animals, productive livestock, via insects or via blood bottles. Each of those abilities can be employed in two levels by a player. To enable an even faster proliferation over all the world for a pathogen, there are extended proliferation abilities like spreading via birds, which allows for covering long distances, over land and also over water; making use of shipping lanes and airplanes for those movements is part of those abilities.
The resistance and proliferation abilities of the pathogen are very important characteristics, but how dangerous is our pathogen, after all? This is also an area where you need to develop abilities again: the quantity of propagation that a pathogen can manage per round and how quickly the onset of the illness can result in the death of the infected human are both again individual abilities for each player’s pathogen. The speed of deadliness is even determined by two abilities - its severity and the mortality rate.
So, you need to develop many different traits and abilities of your pathogen to be successful in exterminating mankind. Some of the abilities mentioned above can be improved directly, others need to be developed via so-called symptom strains. Each pathogen can, during the game, develop up to three symptom straits, for instance cough or cysts or anemia. The symptom strains must be acquired during the game; a player has a bigger number of strains to select from at his disposal, and then those strains can be developed according to their individual strain development path. The development in levels often provides an improvement of traits I have previously mentioned. A very special improvement of individual symptom strains is necrosis, which allows for a very important ability for all players, I will come back to it later.
The aforementioned abilities have only one purpose: To allow the pathogen/germ to spread without any limitation on the board, the world that is, and to infect and kill as many humans as possible. For the proliferation across the board you need minimum abilities at all times: Each city has a minimum condition for individual or all three types of resistance to enable a pathogen to proliferate in this city. So, for instance, in African cities, heat resistance is usually an important topic. Furthermore, each city sets parameters for the types of proliferation that are possible there. The population of each city is represented by several slots for population cubes within the city limits. Population of a city can vary in strength from two to six slots; an empty slot represents healthy population. Those population slots are each assigned to one type of population; one part of a city’s population, a slot, that is, can, for instance, only be infected by small animals; this, by the way, is the most common type of proliferation worldwide in Viroid. When conditions for resistances and type proliferation are met by a pathogen/germ, a player can proliferate in this city - he may place one of his cubes of his color on the corresponding population slot in the city. This indicates that this part of the population is infected. Of course, such a part of the population can also die. If this happens, the colored cube is replaced by a gray cube.
And how do we play? We play in turns, until all players have won or lost the game together. At the start of his turn, the active player draws an event card and resolves it immediately. Events can be positive or negative for the player; at the start, effects are more often positive, later in the game events are usually negative. The card also indicates the success of mankind’s research efforts: With the exception of the starting cards, a card indicates in which city or, later in the game, in which cities successful healing happens. This results in the removal of one colored cube, if present, from the city. Such a removal can happen to make a city free of infection, there is no colored cube left in the city. This is considered to be successful research for mankind, indicated by the advancement of a marker on a separate research track. If this marker should encounter the second marker on this track, which indicates that mankind has discovered a remedy for the pathogen, the game is lost immediately. This is one of the game-end conditions.
Another situation can evolve when healing happens: A city has, after a healing, only healthy and dead population, that is, only empty slots and grey cubes. If that is the case, the city is put under quarantine, and can no longer be infected by the usual, standard means of infection; this restriction can be ignored, if a player has already managed to develop the symptom of necrosis. It is also not possible to enter a city under quarantine; to enable proliferation across a city under quarantine, you need the extended proliferation ability of birds; cities under quarantine can therefore be enormous obstacles for all players.
Finally, the event cards provide income for the active player. In Viroid, DNA points are handed out for the purpose of improving the ability of a player’s pathogen. At the start, the event cards provide a player with rather a large amount of DNA points, the amount decreases, however, steadily during the game. Another way to acquire DNA points is your own proliferation.
When the event has been resolved, you then resolve the infection phase. During this phase, you proliferate from city to city, beginning in a starting city and over varying distances, depending on your abilities. First of all, your infection points on your board determine the intensity of your proliferation, that is, they determine the maximum number of infections that you can do in your turn. You must, however, be able to combine each of those infections with a type of proliferation, so that this ability also comes into play at this point. Each ability in proliferation can only be used for one infection; for instance, if you want to proliferate twice, using the proliferation type of small animal, you must command this ability already on level II. If you then have also sufficient resistances, you can proliferate into an adjacent city or in a city that you have already infected previously, as long as there is still healthy population in the city. To do multiple infections in a city has big advantages, in that this city is not immediately turned into a quarantined city after a healing, or the advantage of prohibiting a further research success of mankind. If you want to proliferate over greater distances or not over land, you must use your abilities for water ways, airplanes or birds, once per round only and in addition to a simple type of proliferation. It is also important to remember that each infection provides one DNA point of income, a fact, that is often forgotten.
When the active player has resolved all his infection possibilities, this player can now do a mutation of his virus or germ, improve its abilities, that is. In this mutation phase, a player must pay for the desired mutations with DNA points. DNA points are, however, not forfeit at the end of a round; you can accumulate them for use in later rounds. At this point, you must use both tactic and strategic planning, as, on the one hand, a missing ability can reduce your proliferation ability in the next round, but, on the other hand, you will have to accumulate DNA over several rounds to pay for special abilities that will definitely be needed later. In your turn, you can do any number of improvements, the only restriction is the number of DNA points that you are able to spend.
At the end of the active player’s turn, severity and mortality results of the pathogen virus or germ come into play. Because at that point, people might die as a consequence of their infections. In Viroid, this is resolved by rolling dice. The severity of the pathogen assigns the number of dice that a player is allowed to roll, and the mortality indicates when a result provides success. If success was achieved, the active player must replace one of his colored cubes on the board by a grey cube, for each successful dice result. If possible, he must distribute the dead population over more than one city. Each success here also provides one DNA point, that you can only spend in your next turn at the earliest. One of the goals in the game is to achieve a certain number of dead population on each continent. Therefore, in this phase, grey cubes are not taken from general stock, but from pre-set individual stock on a continent. This is important to successfully achieve one of the end-of-game conditions.
One end-of-game condition has already been mentioned - mankind has managed to discover the cure for the infection. As is usually the case in cooperative games, there are a few rules or conditions for a lost game. In Viroid, players lose the game, when a certain number of players is no longer represented on the board or when the stack of event cards has been used up before players have managed to win the game. To win a game, there are two conditions to meet: First, each city must be either infected by one of the players or completely exterminated; complete extermination is indicated by the presence of grey cubes in all population slots. Second, the stock of grey cubes on each continent must have been completely used.
De facto, there can be a third condition or event besides those two mentioned above: Players throw in the towel. Because, during the game, more and more connection paths are interrupted, which can result in inaccessibility of certain cities; if those cities are not exterminated or infected, winning the game is no longer possible.
Viroid can be played in different levels of difficulty. Similar to Pandemic, special event cards are shuffled into the stack of event cards, a certain number of them in relation to the desired level of difficulty. Those events “Massive Research“ speed up the advance of the Research Marker of Mankind towards the cure.
Viroid is a simple game, at least in its game flow; the complexity comes from the multiple options for the upgrade and extension of your abilities and the consequences resulting from them. So, as a long-term purpose, it is surely a target to make your pathogen so strong that it kills a good number of infected; but if you start towards that aim too early, you permanently fight against the extinction of your pathogen. Is DNA points usually are available in lower and ever even lower numbers, the challenge here is to acquire the most suitable abilities at the best moment in the game. Because proliferation on the main board can only work, when your pathogen has developed the suitable and necessary resistances in relation to neighboring cities. This is a main and important facet of the allure of this game. Another facet are the events, which can annihilate the best possible planning, be it due to healing of population or to the interruption of connection paths or increase of proliferation difficulties in a city. As the basic flow of the game is simple and does not change until the end of the game, those events are the salt of the game and make it varied and interesting.
As one of the disadvantages of the game one could remark on its duration, which is rather long for a cooperative game. The duration results, among other facts, from the price to pay for expanding your own abilities. If those costs were lower, the game flow probably would speed up and that would have consequences for the duration of the game.
Players: 2-4
Age: 12+
Time: 150+
Designer: Malte Meinecke
Artist: Christian Fiore
Price: ca. 100 Euro
Publisher: Ostia Spiele/Danta-Spiele 2018
Web: www.danta-spiele.de, www.ostia-spiele.de
Genre: Cooperative development
Users: For experts
Version: multi
Rules: de en
In-game text:
Comments:
Complex development game
Simple rules
Harmonious atmosphere
Compares to:
Pandemic
Other editions:
Currently none
My rating: 7
Bernhard Czermak:
A cooperative game with the purpose to extinguish mankind is of interest from the topic alone; the implementation of the topic is as good - challenging and thrilling to the very end.
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 3
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 3
Interaction (brown): 3
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0