Quarantine
Quarantine Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Contents
- 96 Patient Cubes (24 each of blue, red, green, yellow) — Also called "Patients"
- 32 Gray Disease Cubes infected with "Graysles"!
- 28 Special Room Tiles (2 each of 14 types)
- 16 Starting Treatment Room Tiles (4 each of yellow, red, green and blue)
- 8 Additional Treatment Room Tiles (2 each of yellow, red, green and blue)
- 4 Lobby Tiles
- 8 Bonus Action Markers
- 4 Round Action Disks
- 1 Cloth Draw Bag
Setup
Each player takes one Starting Treatment Room of each color and one Lobby Tile. Any remaining Lobby Tiles and Starting Treatment Rooms are returned to the box. Players each arrange these starting tiles into a Connected hospital (see "Hospital Tile Placement").
Next, turn all Special Room Tiles face-down and randomly draw eight to use for this game. If you draw a duplicate, ignore it and draw again. Once eight different Special Room Tiles have been selected, turn all tiles face-up and place the eight selected tiles (along with their duplicate tile) and the four stacks of Additional Treatment Rooms in the center of the table to form the Market. Then, remove all pairs of Special Room Tiles which were not randomly selected from the game, placing them back into the box. The Market should now contain 24 tiles of 12 different types (eight Special Room Tiles and four Additional Treatment Room Tiles).
Place all Patient Cubes and Disease Cubes into the Draw Bag.
Set the eight Bonus Action Markers in a stock next to the Market. The person who has visited a hospital the most recently is the start player. That player takes the four Round Action Disks but hands the Draw Bag to the player on his left. Play may now begin, proceeding clockwise beginning with the start player.
In a two-player game, remove one of each of the Special Room Tiles from the game so that there is only one of each type.
Sample starting hospital setups: place the four starting treatment room tiles branching out from the lobby tile, according to the rules for hospital tile placement (next page).
Hospital Tile Placement
Throughout the course of the game, each player will build their own hospital by adding, removing, or moving tiles. There are several important rules to remember:
- Each tile added to a hospital must connect to at least one open doorway (tiles contain one to four doorways each).
- Each tile also must be able to connect back to the Lobby either directly, or through a series of doorways.
- It is permitted for an open doorway in a hospital to be cut off by a placed tile as long as the placed tile connects to another open doorway.
- A tile cannot be placed on top of another tile.
- A hospital must always remain as one group of tiles.
- A tile may never be added to a doorway on a Quarantined tile (see "Terminology") unless it also connects to a doorway on a tile that is not Quarantined.
- The entrance to a hospital must always be open, as patients will line up outside waiting for their turn to receive treatment. Therefore, the Lobby tile may never be completely surrounded by other tiles.
If a player acquires a tile that they are unable or unwilling to add to their hospital, they may keep it beside their hospital. These tiles may be added at no cost to their hospital at any time on any of their turns. However, a player may never have more than two unplaced tiles beside their hospital. Any tiles beside a hospital provide no benefit during or at the end of the game.
Terminology
This section clarifies some words and concepts that will make learning these rules simple.
Throughout these rules the word Connected refers to tiles that are next to each other and are joined by doorways. The doorway of one tile must be directly touching a doorway on another tile in order to be considered Connected. The word Adjacent refers to any two tiles, connected or not, that are orthogonally touching.
Each player's hospital has a Wait Line that is represented by zero or more Patient Cubes lined up in the order of their arrival outside the Lobby Tile of their hospital. Any Patient added to a Wait Line is always added to the end of the line. There is no limit to the length of any player's Wait Line. Wait Lines never contain Gray Disease Cubes.
The corners of each tile show a portion of a Nurses Station. A complete Nurses Station is the circle formed when the corners of four tiles meet. Each complete Nurses Station in a hospital will score extra points at game end, but can also be an easy way for Graysles to spread more quickly.
When a Gray Disease Cube is on a tile, that tile is said to be under Quarantine. This means that the tile may not be used for any purpose until it is Decontaminated. Any tile without a Gray Disease Cube on it is considered to be Decontaminated and safe for use by the hospital.
Playing the Game
Playing a turn in Quarantine is as easy as remembering the phrase "Four and Four". Each turn the active player:
A) Must Draw and Place Four Patients/Disease Cubes
B) May Take Four Actions
These actions need not be taken separately. Players may take them in any order, including dividing and mixing the actions up. For example, a player may draw one Patient, then a second one, then take four actions before drawing their third and fourth Patients.
A) Must Draw and Place Four Patients/Disease Cubes:
At the start of each turn, the player on your left draws four Patient/Disease Cubes and, without looking at them, holds them secretly in his hand. The player who is taking his turn calls out "New Patient!" and then receives one randomly-selected Patient/Disease Cube from the player's hand to his left. Each one must be placed before you may draw another. After each Patient is drawn, either place it at the end of your Wait Line or any other player's Wait Line.
On the first round only, all players draw until they have drawn four non-gray Patient Cubes. Any gray cubes drawn are placed in a pile next to the Market called the Stock. This does not apply to subsequent rounds.
If you draw a Gray Disease Cube, it is not added to any Wait Line. Instead it must be used to Quarantine a tile; that is, it must be placed on any tile in the hospital of any player (including a Lobby tile). If the selected hospital does not contain any tiles that are under Quarantine you may Quarantine any tile. If the hospital already contains one or more tiles under Quarantine, the gray cube must be used to Quarantine a tile that is not yet Quarantined and that is Adjacent to any tile already Quarantined.
If you Quarantine a tile that makes up part of a Nurses Station, you may Quarantine a second Adjacent Tile which is a part of that same Nurses Station by taking a Gray Disease Cube from the Stock next to the Market and placing it on the tile. If there are no gray cubes in the Stock, you may not Quarantine an additional tile in this way.
The player may never Quarantine more than two tiles as part of placing a single drawn Gray Disease Cube. However, additional draws of Gray Disease Cubes may result in the Quarantining of more tiles.
This hospital already has a quarantined tile. The newly drawn gray disease cube may be placed into any room adjacent to the quarantined room.
The newly placed gray cube is on a tile which forms part of two complete Nurses Stations. A second gray cube, taken from the stock, may be added to one of the adjacent tiles which are part of the same complete Nurses Stations.
B) May Take Four Actions
On your turn you may take up to four actions.
You may take actions before, after, in between, or even during Patient draws if desired. Each action, however, must be fully completed before another action is undertaken. There are four Round Action Disks included in the game. As you take each of your actions, pass one Round Action Disk to the player on your left creating a stack in front of that player. This will help you track how many of your four actions you have used on your turn. Unless otherwise noted, each action may be taken multiple times. You may use one action to do any of the following things:
ACTION: Admit Patients
You may admit Patients in your Wait Line into matching-colored Treatment Rooms in your hospital. Only one Patient can be admitted to each properly Connected Treatment Room (unless using the Helipad Special Room Tile, described later). The Treatment Room must match the color of the Patient being admitted. As part of a single action, Patients may be admitted one at a time, in order, until the first Patient in line is unable to be admitted. Patients may not be admitted into Treatment Rooms that are under Quarantine. Patients may be admitted into rooms that are isolated by the Quarantined area of a hospital (i.e. "walking through" a series of Quarantined rooms to get to a room that is not under Quarantine).
First the red patient, and then the yellow may be admitted, since there are open treatment rooms of their matching color available. The green treatment room is under Quarantine, however, so the green patient may not be admitted.
ACTION: Cure Patients
You may cure all of the Patients cubes (not Gray Disease Cubes!) of any single color that occupy Treatment Rooms or Special Room Tiles in your hospital. Cured Patients are removed from their Room Tiles and placed in front of the player who cured them as a Personal Supply. Patient Cubes that have been cured now represent earned income that may be spent to acquire tiles or kept for points. Patients cannot be cured if they are in a room that is Quarantined, although you may still cure all other Patients of that color.
ACTION: Open a Tile Contract
You may open a contract to purchase a previously unpurchased Special Room Tile in the Marketplace. To do so, place two or more cubes of any color from your Personal Supply on top of that stack of tiles and move the stack next to your hospital. At any time on your next turn you may take a tile from the contracted stack, if there are any remaining, and immediately place it into your hospital, following the rules described in "Hospital Tile Placement" or keep it beside your hospital to place later. After you have taken one tile, if there is still a tile remaining you should return it to the Market, leaving the price in cubes on top of the tile. In the event that no tiles remain in the contracted stack by your next turn, you will be unable to acquire the contracted tile. In this case you will receive your cubes back.
This is perhaps the most critical element in Quarantine. If you set a price that's too low, other players will purchase the tile leaving you with no tile to purchase. Set the price too high, however, and you may end up paying too much!
ACTION: Buy Room Tile
This action allows you to purchase either a Special Room tile or an Additional Treatment Room, although there are slightly different rules for acquiring each.
Buy a Special Room Tile: This action is only available when there is an open Tile Contract (see above). You may only purchase contracted tiles from the Market or from in front of other players. To buy a Special Room Tile you must pay the exact price, matching all the cubes on top of the tile in quantity and color. These cubes must be taken from your Personal Supply and are discarded from the game (place them in the box). You may now add one of the tiles in the stack to your hospital or keep it beside your hospital, following the rules described in "Hospital Tile Placement."
If you purchase the last tile in the stack, return the cubes indicating the price to the box (if you purchased from the Market) or to the player who opened the contract (if you purchased from in front of another player). At any time that you purchase a tile from in front of another player, that player receives one Bonus Action Marker from the Stock, if there are any. You may never acquire the same type of Special Room Tile twice on one turn.
Buy an Additional Treatment Room: To buy an Additional Treatment Room you must pay two cubes of any color (place them in the box) and may take any available Treatment Room from the Market. Treatment Rooms must be added to your hospital immediately. No Tile Contract is necessary to purchase an Additional Treatment Room. You may never acquire the same color Additional Treatment Room twice on one turn.
ACTION: Move Patients
Take any Patient in your Wait Line and move it to anywhere else in the line.
ACTION: Take Bonus Action Marker
A player may take one Bonus Action Marker for one action and place it into their Personal Supply for later use. On any turn a player may spend one or more Bonus Action Markers. Each action marker spent allows the player to take an additional action. If there are no action markers left in the Stock, this action may not be taken.
A player may always spend as many Bonus Action Markers as they have available. However, a player may never take more than two Bonus Action Markers in a single turn.
ACTION: Decontaminate
For one action you may remove one Gray Disease Cube from any hospital. The Gray Disease Cube is put in the Stock next to the Market. You are permitted to break up the Quarantined area by Decontaminating tiles in the middle of the Quarantined area.
ACTION: Renovate
You may move, reorient, or remove up to two tiles in your hospital. The hospital may be temporarily broken into parts but must follow all tile placement rules by the end of the renovation. No tile that is under Quarantine or contains a Patient may be affected in any way by the Renovate action. Any previously acquired tiles beside your hospital that are added to your hospital during a renovation do not count towards the two tile renovation limit. If, during the renovation, you choose to remove a tile, you may place it beside your hospital.
You may only take the Renovate action once per turn.
End of Turn
Once you have drawn and placed four Patient/Disease cubes and taken up to four actions, your turn is complete. The turn passes to the next player in a clockwise direction, and that player should pass the Draw Bag to the player on their left, keeping the four Round Action Disks in front of themselves for use on their own turn. In this way the Draw Bag is always kept one player ahead of the current player and the Action Disks are always ready at the start of a player's turn.
End of the Game
The end of the game is triggered immediately when either of the following occur:
A) The last tile in the game is purchased B) The last Patient is drawn from the bag
The turn on which a player triggers the end of the game will be the last turn for that player. All other players will receive one more turn. In the case that there are contracted tiles in front of one or more players, the game end is triggered when the last tile in the game is either added to or set beside a hospital.
No Patients will be drawn on this final round regardless of how the end game was triggered.
Scoring
You will score one point for each of the following:
- Every Special Room Tile in your hospital
- Every completed Nurses Station in your hospital
- Every two cubes in your Personal Supply
- Having no Patients in your Wait Line
The little diamond icon on some tiles is to remind you that these tiles are worth points at the end of the game. However, don't forget to collect points for completed Nurses Stations as well!
If there is a tie, the winner is the player among those tied with the fewest tiles in their hospital. If the game is still tied, the winner is the player among those tied with the fewest Nurses Stations in their hospital. If the game is still tied the winner will be the player among those tied who stays healthy the longest.
NOTES: The Special Room Tiles
Each Special Room Tile either provides a new action, improves the function of a basic action, or grants some other benefit. However, in order to function this tile must be legally placed in your hospital and not be under Quarantine. In addition: pictures of pink cubes refer to cubes of any color.
Special Room Tiles that provide a new action will cost one Action Disk to use. These tiles are shown with an Action Disk with a green arrow symbol.
Special Room Tiles that improve the function of a basic action are marked with an Action Disk icon on the tile and also list the appropriate action to use them with.
Special Room Tiles that do not show an Action Disk icon may be used without spending an Action Disk. However, be sure to refer to the tile descriptions (below) for these tiles in order to learn their exact benefits.
It's important to know what each of the Special Room Tiles can do for your hospital. However, don't worry about memorizing them as not all of them are used in any one game of Quarantine. Each tile contains handy icons to help you remember what each room does, but if you forget, you can find the information on the next page.
Supply Room
Any Treatment Room connected to the Supply Room, as well as any other Treatment Rooms of that color in your hospital, can admit an additional Patient.
Maintenance
You may take a free Renovate action every turn. Each renovation allows you to move, reorient, or remove up to four tiles. You are still only allowed one Renovate action per turn.
On Call Room
When you cure Patients you may also cure all Patients of the color of the Treatment Room that the On Call Room is Connected to for no extra action cost.
Gift Shop
Spend one Action Disk to take any non-gray cube from the box (cubes that have been spent) and add it to your Personal Supply.
Security
When another player purchases a tile from one of your open Tile Contracts, they must pay the price to you instead of discarding the cubes from the game.
Pharmacy
Spend one Action Disk to Cure the first Patient in your Wait Line and add it to your Personal Supply.
Purchasing
When you purchase a tile you need only match the quantity of cubes in its price, not their color.
Pathology
Spend one Action Disk to allow you to remove all Gray Disease Cubes in any 2x2 area, including an incomplete 2x2 area. Pathology may only be used once per turn. The Lab can be used to enhance Pathology (use the action for Lab along with Pathology), but you only keep one Gray Disease Cube, returning the rest to the Stock.
Triage
You may rearrange your entire Wait Line when you take the action to Move a Patient.
Containment
This room may not be Quarantined. Use this to break up the spread of Disease Cubes in your hospital!
Cafeteria
At the beginning of each turn that the Cafeteria is not under Quarantine, you may take a Bonus Action Marker from the Stock. If there are none in the Stock, take one from another player's Personal Supply.
Emergency
When a Patient is added to the back of your Wait Line, it may be immediately moved to the ER if it is empty. The ER cannot accept Patients during a regular Admit action. However, the ER can immediately accept a Patient placed in your Wait Line by another player, even while it is still their turn.
Lab
When you Decontaminate a tile, you may keep the Gray Disease Cube in your Personal Supply. Two gray cubes count as one cube of any color when buying tiles or calculating points.
Helipad
Tiles in your hospital need not be Connected. When the helipad is under Quarantine any new tile must follow all placement rules, though any existing Unconnected tiles may still be used.
Quarantine Turn Summary
On your turn, you will draw 4 patients and take 4 actions
Draw 4 Cubes
Draw 4 cubes, one at a time, from the player on your left by announcing "New Patient!" and place each one before drawing another. Drawing cubes may be done all at once, or mixed up in between your 4 actions for the turn in any order.
- Colored cubes: Added to any hospital Wait Line (usually your own), in the order they are drawn.
- Gray cube: Added to any tile in any hospital (usually another player's). Remember to "spread the disease" if there is a complete Nurses Station on the tile where you place the gray disease cube.
Take 4 Actions
- Admit Patients — Move Patients into matching-colored Treatment Rooms until reaching one that cannot be placed. Quarantined rooms cannot admit Patients!
- Cure Patients — Cure all patients of one color (move them into your supply). Patients in Quarantined rooms cannot be cured!
- Open Tile Contract — Pick an available stack of Special Room tiles in the Market, move the stack in front of you and set the "price" by adding at least 2 cubes on top. In the next round, one of these Rooms (if any remain) may be added to your hospital without using an action.
- Buy Room Tile —
- Buy SPECIAL ROOM: Pick an Open Contract and match the price in cubes from your supply (paid into the box). Add the Room to your hospital. If you bought the tile from in front of another player, give them a Bonus Action marker from the stock.
- Buy Additional TREATMENT ROOM: Pick an available Treatment Room from the Market and pay any 2 cubes from your supply. Add the Room to your hospital.
- Move Patients — Select a Patient in your Wait Line, and move it to anywhere else in your Wait Line.
- Take Bonus Marker — Take a Bonus Action Marker from the Stock. You may only do this twice per turn.
- Decontaminate — Remove 1 gray Disease Cube and return it to the stock.
- Renovate — Legally reposition up to 2 tiles in your hospital.
Game Over
Game ends immediately when:
A) The last tile in the game is purchased B) The last Patient is drawn from the bag
Scoring
Score 1 point each for:
- Special Room Tiles in Hospital
- Complete Nurses Stations
- Every 2 cubes in your Supply
- No Patients in Wait Line
Credits
Game Design: Mark Klassen Artwork and Layout: Michael Christopher Artwork Director: Richard "Doc" Diosi Game Development Lead: Kevin Nesbitt Mercury Games Playtesting: Jeff Watts, Chris Kraska, Chris Nyrhila, Dave Malesich
The Author would like to thank: Michelle Klassen, Steven Dueck, Matt Thiessen, Graeme Jahns, Jay Cormier, Sean Ross, Clive Lovett, David Short, Graeme Dueck, Kirt Purdy, Jeremy Wedel, Matt Musselman, Andrei Filip, J.C., Christoph Brandt, Mark Zukowski, Jesse Olivier, Justun Chan, Mark Peters, Don Kirkby, Peter Reinhardt, Jeff Bergen, Greg Vegt, Laura Vegt, Andrew Klassen, Elaine Klassen, Yves Tourigny, Al Leduc, Daryl Chow, Rob Bartel
The Designer is a Member of the Game Artisans of Canada