Gamehelphalflifed

Clean Power. Dirty People.

You run a nuclear plant for a company that values its investors over its employees. Build the facility, staff it, and finish with the most money - whatever that costs your workers.

Five of the six departments play each game, so the cards and the worker colors change every time. You start with an HQ card, $5, and two Clinic cards tucked above your HQ as your first two rooms. The HQ itself has four action spaces and no printed rooms - every room in the game is a card.

A round

1. Draw and split. The 1st player draws cards and workers - plus any bots, investors or radiation Leaks that last round's cards added to the draft - and divides everything into one pile per player.

The pieces are not comparable, so this is not an exercise in making the piles even. A great card with no worker to run it is a trap. The 1st player is steering everyone off what they need.

2. Draft. Players choose in reverse turn order, and the 1st player takes whatever is left. You are never handed a pile: you take one, and leave the rest thinner for whoever picks next.

3. Turns. Everyone plays at the same time. There is no hand, and everything you drafted this round must be played this round.

4. End of round. Every worker needs a room. See below.

Your turn

Begin by taking every worker out of your clinic and setting them in front of you. Those rooms are empty for the rest of the round.

Then, in any order and as often as you can:

• Play a card face-up. Pay the price on its tag and add it to your plant. An action card brings a new action space and a bot station; an upgrade starts working immediately; an event scores at the end of the game. A card played face-up activates once, immediately, for free.
• Play a card face-down as a clinic room. Free. Tuck it above your HQ. Any facility card can be used this way, so a card you cannot afford is never dead.
• Activate an action space. Place a worker of that card's color on it for free, or a worker of any other color for $2. Your HQ matches everything and charges nobody. A card's bot can run its space instead, and bots need no clinic room.
• Claim a goal. Meet its printed requirement and spend an unassigned worker. Each player may claim a given goal once. Several players may claim the same goal in one round, but every goal claimed this round is discarded at the end of it - so the round a goal is first claimed is the last round anyone can claim it.
• Resolve a Leak. There are four answers. Pay $5; discard a parked worker or a bot on its station; cover one of your most expensive uncovered action cards (never a Waste Management card); or contain it - tuck it under one of your Waste Management action cards that is not already holding one. A covered card is out of play until the Leak is lifted - but an attachment on it keeps working and still scores. Containing is not covering: the container is not covered, it still activates and it still counts, and containing ignores the most expensive rule. If containing is the only answer you can give, you must give it. Covered or contained, the Leak is still yours and still counts for the cards and goals that ask for Leaks.

Activation is all or nothing. You may only activate a space if you can carry out everything the card says.

End of round

1. Investors. Every investor must be in a clinic room, or you are out of the game.
2. Goals. Discard every goal claimed this round, and the workers spent on them.
3. Bots. Each bot returns to its own card's station.
4. Clinic. Every remaining worker goes into a clinic room, one each. Rooms holding an investor are not available.
5. Casualties. Any worker without a room is discarded for good. The bag is never refilled.
6. Check for the end of the game, then pass the 1st player token clockwise.

Investors take a room permanently, and ahead of your staff. They fund you when you are short, and then they never leave. Every loan you take is a room your workers do not get.

The game ends

At the end of a round in which any of these is true:

• a player has 15 or more cards in their facility - clinic rooms and attachments count, Leaks and the cards they cover do not;
• the deck or the bag cannot fill the next draw;
• only one player is left in.

Then, in order:

1. Every player resolves their event cards and collects the money.
2. Every player pays $10 for each investor they have.
3. Most money wins. Ties go to the most workers you still control - a worker locked under a Leak does not count.

Worth knowing

• Color is a rule, not decoration. A card runs on a worker of its own color, or on anyone else's for $2 - which is usually more than the space earns.
• Rooms are the scarce thing, not money. The investor who solves this round's cash problem takes a room off you for the rest of the game.
• Turns are simultaneous, so only the draft grows with the player count.
• New to it? Use the "No Waste Management" table option for your first game. Leaks turn a card you have already paid for into a card you cannot use, and knowing when that is worth it takes a game or two.