Pharmacology

Pharmacology is a dice driven strategy game featuring dice drafting, worker allocation, engine building, and strategic chaining of actions.

Pharmacology is for two to five players (plus a solo mode), playing in about 15-20 minutes per player. Lead a pharmaceutical company to victory by developing the most lucrative drug treatments and vaccines. You’ll need to send your medical workforce to outbreak locations to secure samples, research drugs, and develop vaccines to fight the world’s diseases.

Each turn is a puzzle to solve. How do you maximize your workforce and resources with the dice available to you in the dice pool? Deftly manipulating your drafted dice can create exciting action chains that make for huge turns!

Drafted dice can be used to power locations to generate temporary workers, medical supplies, resources, and money, which can then be used to power other locations to research drugs and vaccines so you can treat diseases to earn points. Outreach Programs provide abilities that can further increase your engine’s potential output.

NOTE: The player mats for Pharmacology will ship outside the box. They must be folded to fit into the box.

Features:

• Unique dice drafting, dice allocation, and action chaining mechanics.
• Simple to learn, but complex puzzles result in feelings of accomplishment every turn.
• Interesting interactions provide layers of depth.
• Build-up to amazing turns with action chains.
• Solo Automa provides a challenging competitor that gives the feel of a multiplayer experience. The Automa can defeat you!

Overview:

Pharmacology uses a unique dice drafting mechanic. Everyone drafts from a common pool of Action Dice, which represent your Workforce. On your turn you will draft dice from the Action Dice Pool equal to your Workforce level, then take your Actions. If there aren’t enough dice in the pool you’ll re-roll all the dice used by other players then select the rest of your dice.

Using the drafted dice, you will work to collect Samples, use and upgrade various Locations, hire Medical Technicians, Doctors, and Scientists, develop Drugs and Vaccines, gain benefits through Outreach Programs, and Treat Diseases. You can also increase the size of your Workforce, boost your score by specializing in certain Disease Classifications, Quarantine diseases for easier research, and use profits to buy Medical Supplies, re-rolls, additional resources, and more. In an advanced game, you’ll also have opportunities to commit acts of Industrial Espionage and file Lawsuits to hinder your opponents.

Any dice remaining in the Action Dice Pool at the end of your turn are passed to the next player to begin drafting their Workforce. Throughout the game your Workforce will increase and actions may allow you to draft additional dice. In this way the number of dice passed from player to player changes, resulting in a new puzzle to solve on each turn!

Pharmacology won the 2017 Manhattan Project Dice Game design contest presented by Minion Games. The late James Mathe loved the game, but it was bigger than what he was looking at publishing at the time. He suggested retheming the game (thanks to Troy Pichelman for the new theme idea) and continuing to work on getting it produced. I'm trilled to finally have it available here on The Game Crafter!