[following on from What Should I Play? (Help me decide)]
Another one from the list has come and went from my table.
Clinic: Deluxe Edition – I think it’s my fault. The end
Wait, hang on, that’s not quite right. Let’s try again:
Clinic: Deluxe Edition – It is my fault.
There. That’s better.
What’s my fault? Well, it’s that I thought Clinic would be a thinky “SimHospital: The Boardgame”. But, in actuality, it’s “Alban Viard hates your puny, pathetic plans: The Boardgame (22 of 39) – Oh, and there’s a hospital theme”
I wanted it to be a fun sandbox game. I wanted to marvel in choices abounding. But, instead, I planned an optimal route starting at the first round and extending through, way past the end of the 6th and final round, to meet the objective set before me. There’s no time or space or money available to build a whimsical Clinic. I did not build the clinic of my dreams; instead, I hastily threw together the bare minimum of hospital rooms, run by a barebones crew struggling to keep up with the insanity of this, two-and-a-half-dimensional, isometric hell.
And you know what? I would have won, too, if it weren’t for the luck of the draw when filling the patient pool.
You hear that, Alban? The crux of your highly structured, edge-of-a-knife-sharp design is undermined by random draws.
I dunno. I guess I’ll try to find a good video for the game to maybe see if I’ve internalized the strategy all wrong. I really want to like this game, because it has so many things I love.
I’d hate to be that guy, but I’m contemplating house-ruling the game to be, likely, unrecognizable from the as-published game. Namely, I would change:
- Build Action: You can build as many modules or structures as you can afford.
- Hire Action: You may hire both a Nurse and an Orderly, instead of one or the other.
- Admit Action: You may spend $1 for an additional Queue Point.
- Valet Parking: Pay $1 if you are unable or unwilling to park a the car on your player board. Keep track of valet parked cars. When a patient leaves, take first from valet-parked cars. Pay $1 upkeep for each car Valet Parked during the Admin phase.
These changes, I think, would make it more of a fun, sandbox experience – allowing me in a solo game to build bigger and more interesting Clinics. But… I will resist for now, and see if, perhaps, less is more. But I doubt it