Dice Hospital FAQ
83 questions players ask · Updated Nov 12, 2026 · Full rulebook
Components
Game Setup
Phase 1 - Patient Intake
- Can you move patients between wards after Patient Intake, or rearrange them before new patients arrive?
- Who becomes first player for the next round?
- Do you gain a Blood Bag when you take the lowest ambulance?
- Who decides which ambulance and order dice of the same value go in during Patient Intake?
- What happens to the dice on an ambulance nobody claims?
Phase 2 - Hospital Improvement
- In a two-player game, how many departments and specialists are offered each round, and who picks the extra one?
- Is there a limit on how many improvements a player can collect?
- Can you discard an improvement for a Blood bag, and how many can you discard each round?
- Can you swap out the offered departments or specialists in the middle of a round?
Phase 3 - Hospital Activation
- Can you heal the same patient more than once in a round?
- Can you use a Blood Bag on a die that is already treated?
- Is a die healed with a Blood Bag considered treated?
- Can one Blood Bag both heal a die and change its colour?
- Can a Blood Bag earned by a Haematology Technician or Pathologist be used straight away?
- Do patients have to sit in the same ward for a department's healing effect?
- Can a specialist with a colour-specific ability use a department of another colour?
- How do you tell which of several same-colour specialists you used?
- Can two meeples use the same department in one round?
- Does a die recoloured by a Blood Bag go back to its original colour before it is discharged?
- Can you apply only part of a room's or specialist's effect?
- Does a colour-based Specialist ability trigger when its department treats a die of another colour?
- Does the Consultant's ability need a coloured department tile?
Hospital Healing Effects
- Does a Specialist's extra heal trigger once per activation or once for each patient healed?
- How does a Cardiologist, Radiologist or Microbiologist pick the second patient?
- Must the Triage Nurse's two extra patients differ from the dice the room just healed?
- Do rooms like the Triage Centre and Radiology need an exact number of patients?
- With a room that heals three consecutive same-colour patients, can a specialist heal a fourth?
Phase 4 - Neglected Patients
Phase 5 - Discharged Patients
- Does a die whose colour was changed still block the all-wards-empty bonus?
- If two players discharge the most patients in a round, does the Administrator's bonus apply?
- Is a patient of value 6 discharged?
- Does the Admissions Nurse trigger for each discharged patient, and does returning a patient to the bag count as a discharge?
- Do you get the 5-point bonus for empty wards even if you had only a few patients?
General
Optional Rules
- Can an Event card set aside a starting department?
- If an Event card sets aside Specialists, is a Specialist you get later that round set aside too?
- What does the event that lets the lowest-scoring player heal a die by three steps cost?
- Where do patients healed by Event cards go?
- Can Event cards be used in solo play?
- Is there an official timed variant?
Solo Play Rules
- In solo, do dice used for completed Medical Reports go back to the bag, and can discharged dice pile up across rounds?
- In solo, is a top-row Medical Report refilled from the deck when a bottom card is completed?
- In solo, how many Specialists and departments are offered each round?
- Can the Experimental Medicine mini-expansion be used in solo play?
- In solo, are three starting patients set to 3, 4 and 5?
- How do you get Blood bags in solo play?
- Can the Automa take ambulance 1 when it is first player?
- What happens to Automa dice that cannot be placed during activation?
- When an Automa improvement card shows a hex and a specialist cross, which improvement is removed?
Experimental Medicine Mini-Expansion
Dice Hospital: Community CareExpansion
- Does the helicopter count as a sixth ambulance in a five-player game?
- Are there enough nurse meeples for five players with the Maternity expansion?
- What happens when the pink Maternity meeples run out?
- Is the jump in the Maternity scoring track at 16 dice intentional?
- How do you set up the dice for a fifth player?
- In a two-player game with the Investments module, do you still use the base game's extra upgrade setup?
- How many meeples can a player place on the Investment Action board in a phase?
- If an Investment token covers the Trainee's default ability, can you still use that ability?
- Should the base game's blue specialists be swapped for the Investments specialists at setup?
- Does the solo Automa work with the Community Care modules?
- Is Community Care language-dependent?
- Can mother and baby dice in the Maternity module die from neglect?
- When is an empty City row or column refilled?
- Are 1s and 6s re-rolled when refilling City tiles?
- Who takes the casualties when City patients die?
- Do City bonus tokens go back to the supply when a patient on their tile dies?
- How can you tell which module a component belongs to?
- Where can the helicopter land in the City expansion, and can ambulances pass it?
- Is the Intake Tracker reset each round in the City expansion?
- How is player order decided when two players tie on the Intake Tracker?
- How are new patient dice placed on the City tiles: one at a time, or all rolled first?
- Can two players' ambulances share a corner tile with two City Entrances?
- How does the Community Care round tracker work?
- Can rooms meant for other colours, or grey dice, treat a pink mother or baby?
- Can the 4D Scanroom's two other patients be pink?