[following on from What Should I Play? (Help me decide)]
Clinic: Deluxe Edition – an retraction?
It was my fault, and I was wrong.
I got Clinic back to the table last night after having a while to think through my last experience. This time, I was determined to plan through the random luck, rather than rely on it. My plan? Nothing is off-limits.
This time, the bonus tiles provided me my choice of a Garden or a free Orderly; I opted for the Orderly. The Special Modules available this time were the Operating Room and the Outpatient Services (I built the Operating Room, but didn’t use it much). My selected solo goal was, again, No White Cubes Remaining in the Patient Pool or on any Board.
My plan this time? If I can’t treat a white cube, I will let it turn into a yellow cube instead. But wait, how will I churn through the cubes to make sure I can get all of the patients I need admitted? Well, recruit new, fresh doctors right out of school, and use them to treat the really sick patients (seems backwards, but, okay). And if I don’t have any really sick patients? Well, I’ll just wait until they get worse – thereby rewarding me with more funds, allowing me to build faster, and providing me with those precious Queue Points needed to manipulate the Admission’s Queue.
And that’s the game, really. I’m not supposed to be treating patients, I’m supposed to be making money which merely has a side-effect of treating patients. Alban Viard: you cynic (though I don’t disagree).
I’ve found what I was missing, I believe, and now I quite like this game. It’s a crunchy decision space with very few rules (reminiscent of an 18xx, in that way), and the whole solo game took me about an hour (if you account for having to go upstairs to let a 2-year-old use the bathroom in the middle of the night).
I was definitely wrong, and now I wish I had some of the expansions, as there are some variants in Exp2 and Exp3 that might correct some of the niggles I have (but might be playable with base game only?).
Oh, and I won; there was only a single cube left remaining in the game when I finished, and it was orange. I scored 51 points, which puts me at the rank fellow.