Clin9ic solo rules

One book to rule them all: week June 5 - June 11

Clin9ic is a microgame about managing a hospital. It’s based on its big brother/sister Clinic from same designer remade as part of Nano9games (nine cards, nine cubes, nine dice).

Summed up

Similar to the big brother/sister, you choose a goal to strive for and difficulty setting (easy, medium, hard). You start with a single hospital floor, modules fixed in place. However you'll be able to add stuff/upgrade, just in a more abstract way.

Game lasts six rounds, each with three phases:

1. Actions

You use all three action cards, but shuffle them, rotating some, flipping others to form a stack. Then arrange the cards so four action icons are visible in a row, then choose either first three or last three actions to do.

• Build - entrance, parking, garden, conveyor/helipad, floor or pillar

• Hire & move - hire doctors, nurses, orderlies Based on number of entrances, you can hire what's on your chosen action "sections" depicted (up to six possible hirings). Each hiring box has increasing cost from left to right. And you need to have car spaces for new staff. Moving is done for new hires, all arive at first floor printed entrance. They need to be moved to correct stations. This costs time.

• Admit patients & move Similar to hire, this is goverend by chosen action "sections" and you can use up to your entrance count. However for each patient you could admit but don't you lose popularity. Again you need to have car space for them and move them when newly admitted.

2. Business

• Patient care and income This is where you treat patients, for that you need apropriate doctor. You can choose to "neglect" patients. Each module can take only 1 doctor and 1 patient being treated.

• Expenses - upkeep for modules, staff salary If you are unable to pay, you lose popularity.

• Gain popularity - buy popularity for money

3. Administration

As with Clinic, doctors slowly lose expertise and untreated patients get worse. If any patient dies, you suffer minus five popularity penalty.

Based on your chosen goal, you count different things. The "real" game is in popularity victory. You lose popularity at the end for time spent, lack of structural integrity, untreated patients and gain for popularity track, doctors and modules on additional floors.

My thoughts are revealed

Rulebook

The rulebook seems more complex than the game suggests, but there are lots of things to explain if you’re not familiar with Clinic. Could be improved a bit in clarity at places, but overall well laid out.

Overall

I was eyeing Clinic for a long time and I’m a fan of small games. I think they managed to capture the essence of the big brother/sister, but somehow it feels like this was done in too restrictive format and it hurts the design a bit in my opinion. A lot of things are tracked in an abstracted way, but you still need to keep them in mind and track a lot in your head too, based on the clinic layout. I’m unsure what to think about it, but it brings me back to what I thought about the first trio of Nano9games. They are nicely done, but I wish they didn’t use as restrictive design with the number of components.

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Clin9ic has launched on Kickstarter as part of wave two Nano9games series and the campaign will run for 19 more days. There’s a Kickstarter exclusive expansion for all three games.

All images taken from the game page on Board Game Geek.

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