Pain Doctors: The Game of Recreational Surgery
Pain Doctors: The Game of Recreational Surgery Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
The Pain Doctors Game
A Game for 2-6 Players
Object of the Game
As a Pain Doctor your ultimate goal is to become Chief Surgeon. You have no qualms about doing whatever is necessary to achieve this goal.
After each successful surgery, mark your progress on the Surgery Chart by starting a line in the bottom left corner. The winner of the game is the first Doctor who has either 5 successful surgeries or scores 300 points or more.
Set-Up
Shuffle the Patient Deck and deal three Patient cards face up to each player. Each Patient, as shown on the card, belongs either to the Addicts Ward, the Batty Ward, or the Geek Ward. Each patient starts with 5 Life Points (LP).
Taking Cards Out: In a 2-3 player game, we recommend removing half of the non-number cards (Go to Surgery, Bodyguard, Kidnap, etc.) from the Treatment Deck.
Keeping Track of Life Points: Plasma-colored globules count 1 LP each; red-blood-cell-colored globules count 5 LP each; white-blood-cell-colored globules count 10 LP each. Put the globules right on each Patient card and add or remove as the game goes along.
Search through the Treatment Deck and give each Doctor one Go to Surgery card. Shuffle the remaining cards and deal another 4 face down (for a total of 5) to each player. The Surgery Cards will be used later, when you take Patients to the Operating Theatre.
The Player to the left of the dealer begins the game. Play will continue to the left.
When it is your turn, if you do not have three living Patients (including your Patients in Pre-Op), you must draw one new Patient from the deck. You may draw only one new Patient per turn. Each new Patient starts with 5 LP. After drawing, your turn ends. At the beginning of the game, however, each Pain Doctor has 3 living patients, so you won't have to worry about this for a while (you hope).
Treatment
Assuming, then, that you do have three living Patients, you begin your turn by drawing a card from the Treatment deck. Then choose one of the 6 cards in your hand to play or discard. Basic Strategy: You want to build up the Life Points on your own Patients while destroying the Life Points of the other Doctors' Patients.
If you choose to discard, the card you get rid of has no effect on any Patient. (Discards may not be picked up; the next player may draw only from the deck.) If you choose to play a card, it will come from one of the following categories:
Number Cards: The most common type of card in the Treatment deck awards or subtracts the indicated number of Life Points to the Patient selected by the Pain Doctor who plays the card. Patients in Pre-Op cannot be affected by Number Cards. If the card played says Addict Ward, Batty Ward, or Geek Ward, the selected Patient must belong to the Ward named. If the card says Any Ward, the Doctor playing the card must select the Ward to which it will apply. If the card says All Patients, the same number of points is given to or subtracted from every patient in that Ward, even Patients of other Doctors. Any patient who runs out of Life Points dies, and that Patient card is discarded face-up next to the Patient deck.
Inoculation Cards: There are four of these in the Treatment deck. Play this card on the Patient of your choice (not a Patient in Pre-Op) by slipping it underneath the Patient card and leaving the Inoculation logo showing. The Patient is now immune to the effect of the -2 "Staff Infection" Number card.
Suicide, Swap Patient, Thief: Like number cards, these cannot affect Patients in Pre-Op.
A Suicide card immediately brings about the death of the Patient (your own or another Doctor's) on which it is played. The Patient goes into the Patient discard pile, and any Inoculation or Life Points on that Patient are forfeited.
A Swap Patient card, just as it says, allows you to trade one of your Patients for the Patient of another Doctor. Inoculation and Life Points go with the Patients to their new Doctors.
A Thief card takes 1 LP away from every patient in whichever Ward the Doctor playing the card chooses and gives all those points to one particular Patient in that Ward, also chosen by the Doctor playing the card.
Bodyguard Cards: There are eight of these powerful defensive cards in the Treatment deck. Play this card on the Patient of your choice (not a Patient in Pre-Op) by slipping it underneath the Patient and leaving the Bodyguard logo showing. The Patient is now guarded against Suicide, Swapping, Theft, and the adverse effects of every Number card other than the "Staff Infection" card.
Go to Surgery: Use this card to take one of your own Patients from Pre-Op into Surgery. (See Surgery, below.)
Emergency Surgery: Use this card to send any Patient (Pre-Op or not, your own or another Doctor's, no minimum number of Life Points) directly into surgery and any Bodyguard and Inoculation cards are removed. The Patient's own Doctor performs the operation and scores the points. There is no defense against the action of this card.
Kidnap: Use this devastating card to take any Pre-Op Patient directly into Surgery, where you perform the surgery and collect the Pain Points even if it's another Doctor's patient! If you happen to kill this Patient, the Patient's original Doctor will spend the next turn drawing a new Patient. If the Patient manages to survive the ordeal, he/she is returned to the original Doctor.
Instead of drawing one card and playing or discarding, you may discard all five cards and draw a new hand. This counts as your entire turn and you are not allowed to put a Patient into Pre-Op.
Pre-Op
At the end of your turn, after you play your Treatment card, you may, if you still have three living Patients, send with 10 LP or more to the Pre-Op area. (Sic: as printed; the sentence reads "send with 10 LP or more".)
A Patient moving into Pre-Op no longer needs the protection of Inoculation or Bodyguard, so these cards go to the Treatment discard pile.
You may not send a Patient to Pre-Op if all three Pre-Op slots are already filled. In a game with 4 or more players, each Pain Doctor may have only one Patient at a time in Pre-Op.
You do not have to send a Patient to Pre-Op unless you want to.
Surgery
Surgery takes place immediately whenever a Go to Surgery, Emergency Surgery, or Kidnap card is played.
First, move the lucky Patient to the Current Patient box. The Pain Doctor who will perform the surgery shuffles the Surgery deck — and never, ever offers another Pain Doctor a "cut"!
Surgery Cards: Cards will be turned up one at a time from the top of the deck to be played on the Patient diagram in the Operating Theatre.
Surgical Procedure Cards: Most of the cards in the Surgery deck are Surgical Procedure cards and must be played, face up, to the corresponding Patient body segment on the operating table. You then immediately drain the Current Patient of the number of LP indicated in the upper righthand corner of the card.
As you continue to draw cards, you may get a Surgical Procedure card for a body segment where you have already played a card. If so, you must play it on top of the card that is already there, taking the LP for the new card away from your Current Patient in the usual fashion.
Follow the instructions on the card you play, which may say you must Stop the Operation; may say you Must Continue the Operation; and may permit you to Choose whether to stop or continue.
Wild Cards: In addition to the 18 Surgical Procedure cards, there are 6 Wild Cards in the Surgery deck. These must also be played face up on the Patient, but in this case the Surgeon gets to choose where it will be played. (This choice can be very important: There is a bonus for covering all six body segments.) Life Points, if any, are charged as usual to the Current Patient; but note that 3 of the 6 Wild Cards cost the Patient 0 LP.
After playing any Wild Card, you are permitted to Choose whether to stop or continue the operation.
Scoring the Operation: When the Surgery ends, count the number of Pain Points on the cards showing on the Operating table and chart these for the Patient's Doctor. Remember, covered cards don't score for you even though the cards did cost you Life Points when they were played.
The operation can end in one of four ways:
Surgeon's Choice: The Surgeon may Choose to end the Operation after play of any Wild Card or a Surgical Procedure Choose card. The Patient's Doctor scores the Pain Points calculated as in Scoring the Operation, above, and the surviving Patient, with his/her remaining Life Points, is returned to his/her Doctor, where once again Treatment cards can be played. However, even if a Patient leaves the Operating Theatre with the 10 or more Life Points necessary to go back to Pre-Op, the Patient's Doctor must wait until the end of the next turn to put the same patient back in Pre-Op.
Stop Card: Each time a Stop the Operation card brings a Surgery to a close, that particular card is withdrawn from the Surgery Deck for the rest of the game, so that as more and more Surgeries are performed, there are fewer and fewer Stop cards in the deck. The Patient's Doctor scores the usual number of Pain Points, and if the Patient is still alive, he/she is returned to his/her Doctor as in Surgeon's Choice, above.
Patient's Demise: The Patient may run out of Life Points. If this happens, the Patient dies, the card goes to the Patient discard pile, and no Pain Points are charted.
Bonus for All Six Body Segments: If a Surgeon covers all six body segments on the Operating Table without killing the Patient, the Surgery ends immediately no matter what card was played and the Patient is returned to his/her Doctor, but the Doctor scores double the usual number of Pain Points.
Ending the Game
Have you charted 5 successful Surgeries or 300+ Pain Points? Congratulations, you are the new Chief Surgeon! Now you can brag endlessly about how you managed to beat all your friends in a gruesome game of recreational surgery...
For the truly demented, the scorepads let you chart a longer game to 10 surgeries or 500 points. Remember that you can always change the length of the game to suit your preference.