Clinic: Deluxe Edition

I had never played the first edition of Clinic; oddly, it was the one viard title that had escaped my collection, largely because the reports around it had been mixed. Deluxe Edition does not make a modest first impression. The rules present a great many small mechanisms, and initially it has that familiar air of someone placing another Pipeline-adjacent examination on the table.

At the table, though, those mechanisms connect far more cleanly than the rulebook first suggests. After a round or two, the sequence settles into place: this is a tight economic sandbox in which each choice feeds the next, and an error does not simply disappear into the general machinery. The interesting decision is whether to build cautiously or expose your position to risk.

Caution is available, but it does not appear sufficient if winning is the ambition; risk becomes, in practical terms, compulsory. The interaction described here does not need theatrical confrontation: the pressure comes from the economy itself, and from how ruthlessly it reveals a miscalculation. It is a network of small connections rather than a pile of exceptions, which is a material distinction.

In its basic form, Clinic is a little dry, but it leaves the pleasing afterburn of a properly severe economic game. It did not wholly win me over, though I would happily play it again; the sixteen variants in Deluxe Edition probably contain combinations that elevate it considerably, but I doubt I shall devote the time to mapping them, much as I never did with Friese’s 405. For the right group, and perhaps a very long prison sentence, it is quietly excellent.