Since Pandemic became a huge board game hit, there have been other games were you cooperatively battle to deal with various diseases.
Build a Cure is one of those.
鈥淵ou and a group of scientists were caught in a nuclear test failure. You were able to make it to a safe house right in time to avoid the explosion, but the problem now: surviving.
The only safe house you could find was a storage facility for some of the world鈥檚 worst diseases. During the explosion all containment vials were broken, and it is only a matter of time before the diseases set in.
Help is on the way, but they have to wait for the radiation levels to drop. Due to the level of risk, the rescue team is unable to release any diseases from the safe house, so all diseases have to be cured in order to attempt the rescue,鈥� relates the game background in the rule book.
Like many co-op games there is but one way to win, in this case curing all the active diseases.
The game wins in a variety of ways however;
鈥� Failing to cure all of the active Diseases before you run out of resources.
鈥� Having five uncured Diseases in play at the end of any player鈥檚 turn.
鈥� Having four uncured Diseases in play when a Contagion card is drawn.
So the key here is battling collectively the diseases players acquire individually.
鈥淲hen a Disease is drawn, it is assigned to the player that picked it up, along with the Negative Effect stated at the top. The Disease cannot be transferred to another player. The only way to avoid a Disease is to play an Immunity card from the active player鈥檚 hand,鈥� details the rules.
That each disease impedes what a play can do, draw one less card, take one less action etc, is the real hardship imposed by 鈥榖eing sick鈥�. In a game where you are essentially playing against the clock in a sense, you need all the cards and actions and abilities possible to try to survive.
Game play revolves around players collecting elemental components 鈥� cards -- needed to cure particular diseases, playing them so they can be bonded together, and finally eradicating the disease.
Build a Cure is a co-operative card game at its heart, and a solid one at that. It may suffer from obvious theme comparisons with Pandemic, a modern classic that this one can鈥檛 match. I have done that here myself, and it really can鈥檛 be avoided given the theme. But, if you get past that to look at this one as a card game that works on its own merits you find a solid game that is well worth exploring.
聽Thanks to fellow gamers Trevor Lyons and Adam Daniels for their help in running through this game for review.
