Clinic: Deluxe Edition

This is one of the best heavy games out there. You can take one of the three available actions each turn (you can build parts of your clinic or hire employees or admit patients) and yet when you take this action and when your opponent takes his action decides how optimal your actions are going to be. Despite only three actions that can be taken, there is so much to think about. The treatment room, supply room, hubs has to be placed according to certain rules in order to be able to function and treat patients. The treatment room should have proper Doctors and nurses to be able to treat patients. Also, you can leave your patients waiting with their conditions worsening hoping to treat them when they r critical and earn more. But money is hard to come by because you have to pay for maintainence and salary of employees. So you have to decide whether to treat patients when they they are not very sick and earn less or wait for them to get more sick and then treat. On top of all these, at the end of every round, you decide how much money you can use to increase popularity (popularity is what matters at the end of game). But if you use lot of money in increasing popularity, you might not have enough money to improve infrastructure of your clinic in future rounds.

This game has much more going on. The teach to new players would take atleast an hour and a half. But once the game is taught, the turns should go smoothly thanks to Ian O Toole's brilliant iconography and artwork(this guy is too good).

Whenever I play this game, it reminds me of Lacerda games. Although a Lacerda might be a 10 and this may be a 9. There is lot of replayability in base game and with so many expansions available, this game is sure to be played a lot with a group who like crunchy, brain burning, heavy, puzzle games..