Dice Hospital

To set up Dice Hospital, place the main game board in the center. Each player receives a player board, a set of colored doctor meeples, and a player aid. Shuffle the ambulance tiles and place them face-up in rows according to the number of players. Place the improvement tiles and special staff cards in their designated areas. Roll the patient dice (D6s) and place them on the ambulance tiles, ensuring no 1s or 6s are initially rolled. The starting player receives the first player token.

The primary objective in Dice Hospital is to accumulate the most victory points by successfully treating and discharging patients from your hospital over eight rounds. Players must efficiently manage their resources and hospital layout to heal patients (represented by dice) by increasing their value above six, while avoiding patient deterioration (dice values dropping below one).

Each round of Dice Hospital follows six phases. Phase 1: Intake – Roll new patient dice and place them on the ambulance tiles. The starting player places dice on the lowest numbered ambulance first, then subsequent players place dice on higher numbered ambulances. Phase 2: Acquire Improvements – Players draft hospital improvement tiles or special staff cards. The starting player reveals a number of tiles/cards equal to the number of players minus one, plus an optional extra. Players then draft in reverse turn order. Phase 3: Treat Patients – Simultaneously, players assign their doctor meeples to hospital departments to activate actions that increase patient dice values. Phase 4: Neglect – Any patient dice not treated in Phase 3 decrease their value by one. Phase 5: Discharge – Patients with a dice value greater than six are discharged, earning victory points. Phase 6: Cleanup – Reset doctor meeples, discard unused improvement tiles/staff cards, and advance the round tracker.

Players earn victory points primarily by discharging healed patients. The number of points gained depends on the patient's final dice value, as indicated on the scoring track. Bonus points are awarded for clearing all patients from your hospital. Additionally, blood bag tokens collected throughout the game are worth one victory point each. Any patient dice that drop below a value of one result in a penalty of two negative victory points at the end of the game.

Dice Hospital is played over eight rounds, tracked on the main board. After the eighth round is completed, players tally their total victory points from discharged patients, collected blood bags, and any penalties from deceased patients. The player with the highest total victory points is declared the winner. In case of a tie, the player with the most remaining blood bags wins.