Plague Inc

This was a game I Kickstarted and talked about a little bit while I was waiting for it to be produced here. It is based off a PC and mobile game with the same name which I played a lot and really enjoyed.  With the Kickstarter version I got the 5th Player expansion and the Patient Zero expansion included.  5th Player just adds tokens and a player board to play 5 player.  The Patient Zero pack included a few new event and trait cards.


The PC/Mobile Game

In the mobile and PC game you control a disease trying to wipe out every human on the planet.  As you start to infect people and spread to new countries you will earn DNA points which let you evolve new traits and symptoms which make your disease more deadly and more infectious.

When humans discover your disease they will start working on a cure so it becomes a race against the clock as you started trying to mutate, kill off people or just destabilise whole countries to slow down their research into a cure.

The game play was pretty simple but fun to play and as a mobile game I enjoyed it because you could just play while you were waiting around.  I did have the PC version but while it was fun I did have access to better games on my PC so didn't play it as much on that.

The game also included multiple different types of disease, Bactria, Viruses, Fungus, Parasites, Bio-Weapons and Neurax Worms with more added fairly regularly.  Each played quite differently and that did give it some replayability. 

Overall I really like the game and that was why when I heard about the board game version I decided to back it.

The Board Game

The board game has the same goal as the PC version, create the most deadly disease and try and kill as many people as possible.  It is multiplayer though so you are competing against other diseases and trying to kill the most people off.  There is a solo play rule set included using a Plague Bot but I haven't tried that out yet.  So far most of the games I have played have been 2 or 3 player and I do think it is better with more people because there is more competition for each country. 

How does it Play

The winner is the player who, at the end of the game, has the most DNA points.  Players earn these throughout the game in a number of different ways.

At the start of their turn a player will score 1 DNA point for every country they have the most cubes in.  Next they draw a country card and can choose to either lay the card on the board or discard it to discard their hand of trait cards and draw back up to 5.

Next up is the evolution phase.  Players can spend DNA points they have earned to put new trait cards down on their player board.  There are spaces on the player board for these and they can either put them in an empty space or discard a trait that is already there and put a new one on top.  Players do not get back the DNA points for traits they discard.  These traits can increase the infectivity level of the disease, the lethality or give it new traits like waterborne, cold resistant or airborne which help it spread to new places. 

Next players will Infect and spread their disease.  They will have a Infection level based on what is on their player board.  They get to place one new token on the map for each level of infectivity that they have.  There are rules about where you can spread to so some of the trait cards might be needed before you can spread into new countries or continents. 

Finally comes Death.  If a country has every space filled with a disease token and the active player has control of it they roll the death dice.  If the result is equal to or lower than their lethality the country is destroyed and the country is removed from the board and players get their tokens back.  Each player get DNA points equal to the number of tokens they had on that country and the killing player keeps the country card.  Each player that had tokens in the destroyed country also gets a event card.

The game ends when all the country cards have been played and a player is either wiped off the board or can't take any action on their turn.  Once this happens end of game bonuses are added to players scores with extra DNA for having the most tokens left on the board, killing the most countries in each continent, killing the largest country and the cost of any current traits players have on their player boards.  The winner is whoever has the most DNA at this point.

My Thoughts

Plague Inc is a really easy and fun area control game.  I really like that players have to use their victory points to buy upgrades so it does give you a real dilemma from time to time trying to decide whether upgrading one of your traits to a better one is worth losing the victory points you spent on it earlier.

It can have a slight "take that" feel as some event cards will let you remove or block your opponents tokens and you can move into places you know they were planning to go next turn or spread into a country they control and try and take control off of them.  The interaction between players is definitely better with 3+ people.  At two we found that most of the time we would avoid going into countries the other controlled and just work on our own.  There was some interaction but generally we just stayed clear of each other.  It is still enjoyable at 2 players but with more you find you are competing for countries a lot more or just trying to get into each others countries to try and get a victory point when they kill it off.

The game comes with a doublesided player board letting players choose to play as either Bactria or a Virus.  Both have some build in special abilities that change the way they play, but do take up one of the evolution slots so you lose the ability if you evolve over it.  Bactria is the most forgiving and easiest to play, Viruses evolve a lot fast and much more randomly.  So far I haven't used the Virus side but think I might during my next game.  I do hope they bring out others as expansions because like the mobile game the different disease types which work differently should help with replayability. 

There is a companion app for the game which I have downloaded and used.  It has a few functions which are useful.  It does have some guides to help you learn the game and has a breakdown of all the cards in the game so can help with learning those.  It also plays the music and sound affects from the Mobile/PC game to help build the mood while you are playing.  It has a name randomiser to help players name their disease.  

What I mainly use it for though is the Score Tracker.  It makes adding up final scores much simpler I find because it adds all the bonuses on for you while you go.  It then shows your a scoreboard with everyone's break down on it.  Finally it keeps track of your top scores from each game so you can see who has done the best.

Overall

Plague Inc is a really fun game and I am glad I Kickstarted it.  It is a nice addition to my collection which doesn't really have many area control games and plays in about the same time as games like Ticket to Ride but with a bit more strategy involved I think.