Use Up All Your Sick Days
Use Up All Your Sick Days Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Party Game (3-8 Players)
Components
- 70 days of the week cards (the deck)
- 7 event cards
- 10 tired worker tokens (use any tokens)
- 7 solo/co-op calendar markers
- 6 pizza tokens (use any tokens)
Days of the Week Cards show a number, a name, a suit (worker), and an image of the worker.
Event Cards show what to say/do to play on this card, and Tired Worker Tokens.
Setup
Put a random 1-Monday card in the center of the table as the starting Play Pile card. Shuffle the deck and 2 random event cards. Keep the deck within reach of all the players. Every player draws 7 cards. Players can see their cards, but not other player's cards. Give every player 2 Tired Worker tokens (1 token each for 6-8 players). They are all the same, just different art.
Game Play
Any player can go first.
On your turn, you can play a card on top of the Play Pile with the next day of the week or the same worker as the card last played on top of the Play Pile. (Note: You can play a 1-Monday on a 7-Sunday.)
There's no turn order, you can play a card after any another player, but you can't play after yourself, and if you play at the same time as another player, you both draw 2 cards.
FLOW, Simple Version: If no one can play a card, the player who played last plays any card from their hand. They don't get punished for this.
FLOW, Advance Version (optional to use instead of simple version): As a turn, instead of playing a card from your hand to the play pile, you may do one of the two Doctor's Note actions:
- You may play a card from your hand face down in front of yourself and say "I'm sick" to make a Doctor's Note. You can only have one Doctor's Notes at a time.
- You may play a Doctor's Note from in front of you onto the play pile face up and say "I'm back". This is the new day and worker to follow.
To make and play a Doctor's Note, you still need to follow the normal rules of playing a card. Draw 2 cards if someone else plays at the same time as you (they do too). You cannot make and then immediately play a doctor's note, and you cannot make or play one after you played a card from your hand. If you accidentally make a mistake, draw 2 cards.
Punishment
If you ever make a mistake, leave the card you played or wanted to play on the Play Pile and draw 2 cards from the deck.
If the draw pile ever runs out, flip over all but the top card of the play pile to make a new deck. No shuffling needed.
Types of mistakes:
- Play at the same time as someone else. If a card leaves the other cards in your hand, that's considered 'playing'.
- Play another card after you played before someone else played. You cannot just play all your cards, you must alternate with others.
- Play the wrong card. I.e. you play a card that's not the next day or the same worker.
- Wrongly accuse someone else of playing the wrong card. I.e. they play the same worker but you call them out for the wrong day.
- Play on top of an event card without celebrating. See the event cards section below.
What if everyone plays at the same time? Everyone draws 2 cards, and then anyone may play next. (which often leads to more drawing if many people try to play at the same time again!)
Winning
If you play all your cards (and don't need to draw cards): put a Tired Worker token back in the box and draw 7 cards. If you have no tokens when you play your last card, you win the game! The game continues until all but 2 players win. (i.e. 2 winners for 3 players, 6 winners for 8 players)
Event Cards
Every game use 2 random event cards. Event cards are wild. They can be played on top of any day of the week and any day of the week can be played on top of them. But instead of saying the day of the week when you play on top of it, you must celebrate the event with certain phrases or movements, or draw 2 cards as a punishment for forgetting.
If multiple players celebrate, they are punished as normal (leave the card they wanted to play on the play pile and each draw 2 cards).
- Birthday: Sing "Happy birthday to you!" when playing on top of it.
- New Years: Cheer "Happy new years!" when playing on top of it.
- Valentine's Day: Make a heart with your hands then play top of it.
- Water Cooler: Stretch your arms before playing on top of it.
- Look Busy: The last player to 'look busy' (type on table) draws 2 cards.
- Coffee Break: Relax! No one can play for 10 seconds. Draw 2 if you do.
- Pizza Party: Cheer "Party!" when playing on top of it.
- Setup Pizza Party: Put 1 pizza slice token per player minus 1 in the middle of the table (i.e. 3 slices for 4 players).
- Pizza Slice Tokens: When someone plays Pizza Party, you may grab a pizza token from the middle. When you make a mistake and need to draw 2 cards, you can put the pizza back in the middle of the table instead.
Solo/Co-op Game (1-6 Players)
In solo/co-op, you are HR, everyone's best friends. You manage a small department of tired workers. You can bribe them with all the pizza parties, but what they really need is 3 extra days in a horizontal or diagonal row, although not necessarily next to each other. Make everyone happy to win before they quit!
Setup Solo/Co-op
Choose a difficulty level. This setup will walk you through level 1.
Make a calendar with the 7 days of the week tokens in order. Setup the deck and token pool for level 1 by removing all cards and tokens of 4 other suits (like yellow, orange, red, and purple). Place the deck above Tuesday. Every player draws 4 cards. Solo can put their cards above Wednesday-Saturday or can hold them in their hand. Put the 6 tired worker tokens and 2 ready pizza tokens and 4 used pizza tokens above Sunday. Put unused materials (Tired Worker Tokens, days of the week cards, and event cards) back into the box. The player who most recently read rules goes first.
Solo/Co-Op Game Play
Communication: Players cannot talk about cards in the game, they can only talk about trivial matters like the weather. However, at any time, players may spend a ready pizza token to mark a spot on the calendar (typically to mark a spot they don't want others to play on).
Winning and Losing: The game ends and you win if all the workers are happy. Otherwise you lose (count how many cards you were missing) if you can't play on your turn or (if used) the automa can't draw a card.
The Board: The board is a grid of 7 days (columns) and between 4 and 8 weeks (rows) depending on the difficulty level.
Gameplay: Players take turns clockwise doing one action each. You cannot skip your turn. In solo, you play alone.
Turn Actions
On your turn, do one of these actions:
- Play a card from your hand onto the top open spot in the column matching its number. Play in the top row if it's the first card in the column. Otherwise play in the very next row below any cards already in the column. This is the core action of the game.
- Discard a card from your hand face up above the Monday column, to the right of the deck. This is most useful when discarding happy workers that you don't need to play anymore, but it's also needed sometimes to avoid doing a worse move.
- Use a discarded card as a Doctor's note. Put it face down into the top open spot in any column (but it can't touch another Doctor's Note). This is a blank card, not helping any worker. But this can help fill in spaces if someone needs to play another card in a lower week in the same column. Anyone can peek at this card at any time to remember what it was. Doctor's notes are used like scaffolding to play cards in lower weeks.
Pizza Actions
At any time you may spend 1 or more ready pizzas to do a special action. Pizza Actions don't count as Turn Actions, so you still must play, discard, or use a discarded card face down on your turn. Flip the pizza upside down to show it's used.
- (Multiplayer Communication) Place the ready pizza token in an open spot in any column on the calendar. When someone plays a card onto this spot, return the pizza to your supply pile on the NOT ready side. You may do this any time as long as there are ready pizzas in the supply. This is the only way you can communicate about your card knowledge to people, and can use it in creative ways like when you want to tell players you have a card that would work here others shouldn't play there. The spot is considered more like a warning than a reservation as it only flags the spot, doesn't block it. This Pizza action is unused in SOLO.
- (Refresh Hand in solo/multi refresh) Shuffle the cards from your hand into the deck and draw 4 new cards. Put a ready pizza on the NOT ready side. You may only do this on your turn and you may spend as many ready pizzas as you want to do it again.
Regaining Pizza: When a week is full (a horizontal row has 7 cards in it), flip a pizza to the ready side.
Common mistake: You don't ready a pizza as a reward for getting three of the same worker in a row. Succeeding your goal is a reward by itself.
If you don't have much space, you can stack your cards to make shorter rows.
Difficulty Levels
The game scales to your skills! If you beat a level, go to the next one. If it was way too easy, skip ahead 2 levels.
- Level 1. Can't Lose: 6 suits, 2 ready pizzas, 4 weeks max, remove 0 random cards
- Level 2. Easy: 7 suits, 3 ready pizzas, 5 weeks max, remove 1 random card
- Level 3. Okay: 8 suits, 4 ready pizzas, 6 weeks max, remove 1 random card
- Level 4. Normal: 9 suits, 5 ready pizzas, 7 weeks max, remove 2 random cards
- Level 5. Hard: 10 suits, 6 ready pizzas, 8 weeks max, remove 2 random cards
- Level 6. New Intro: 6 suits, 2 ready pizzas, VS automa
- Level 7. Not Bad: 7 suits, 3 ready pizzas, VS automa
- Level 8. Fun: 8 suits, 4 ready pizzas, VS automa
- Level 9. Challenging: 9 suits, 5 ready pizzas, VS automa
- Level 10. Ultimate: 10 suits, 6 ready pizzas, VS automa
- Level 11. Oh No: 10 suits, 0 ready pizzas, VS automa
For levels 2-5, you must work around random cards removed from the deck during setup (you can't look at these all game). You also have Max Weeks, which limits how many cards can be played in each row.
For levels 6-11, the challenge comes from a meddlesome automa. This is designed for solo but can be used in co-op.
Automa Rules
Management is forcing you to use AI to 'improve' your job as HR. Finish making all the workers happy before it's too late!
Every time you play a card into the schedule, the automa draws a card from the top of the deck. You must choose for the automa to play it into the matching column or to discard the card.
Draw back up to 4 cards at the end of the turn after playing the automa (otherwise it's easy to forget to play the automa).
Remember that the automa doesn't play if you discard cards, only if you play a card from your hand face up or a card from the discard face down.
If the automa can't play, the game ends and you lose.
Event Cards (Solo/Co-op)
If you lose a level, replay that level with a random event card added to the deck to make the game easier. When you beat a level, remove all the event cards and go to the next level.
Birthday, New Years, and Valentine's Day directly help the schedule. The others are blank cards like Doctor's notes, giving you a special action but also filling up a spot of your choice. Sometimes you want to fill up a spot though, so use these wisely.
- Birthday: This card reserves the spot for a future card. Anyone may play directly on this card. You can also play in the same day in the next week down.
- New Years: This is a wild card, but only works as a third card for a worker in the same horizontal row. This may be used multiple times in the same row.
- Valentine's Day: This is a wild card. It works as a third card for a worker in the same horizontal or diagonal line, but it may only be used for one worker type.
- Water Cooler: When you play this, you may immediately play as many cards from the discard as Doctor's Notes in any columns as you want, and they may touch each other.
- Look Busy: When you put this on the calendar, you may draw one card from the discard pile back to your hand.
- Coffee Break: When you put this on the calendar, everyone may shuffle any number of cards from their hand into the deck and draw back to 4 cards.
- Pizza Party: When you put this on the calendar, refresh 1 pizza token per player.