Flip 7 Review – Flippin’ Good Time
I’ve reached the stage in my boardgaming journey that I’m not often trying to push ‘normies’ to play games that much, and when I do I’ve very much reconsidered the sort of games I’ll trot out. While I have two budding boardgamers in my 5 and 8 year-old sons, their attention spans and good sportsmanship are still works in progress. Flip 7 is helping work on those issues though and has become something of a phenomenon before bedtime each night, two desperate voices pleading for just one more game.
Flip 7 is a straight up push-your-luck card game, mirroring a number that have come before it like Reiner Knizia’s Hit Extreme and Circus Flohcati, the Ports variation for Pairs or the most obvious, Blackjack. There’s a lineage, even if designer Eric Olsen hasn’t played any or all of them – the rush of ‘just one more card’ as your fellow players work to cajole or discourage you from taking it. The rules to Flip 7 are very simple – sit or draw, but don’t draw the same number twice. To achieve this, Flip 7 contains a numbered deck of cards from 0 to 12, each card’s number also matching how many of that number are in the deck, alongside a few point bonus cards like +10 or x2. Finally, three special action cards round out the proceedings which players keep or force onto others depending on the situation; Second Chance, which cancels out a second draw of an already drawn number, Freeze, which forces a player to sit for the rest of the round, even if it’s the first card given to them, and Flip Three, which is fairly self-explanatory. Special cards must be played immediately, and can’t be held between rounds, which end when every player has either gone bust or stopped drawing cards. Whatever numbered cards players still have in front of them is their score, and the game ends when a player scores 200 or higher at the end of a round. From experience, this can last as few as two rounds or as many as 10 depending on how much the entire group is tossing Freeze and Flip Three cards at the leader. The title of Flip 7 refers to a special scoring rule which will end a round immediately if any player draws their seventh unique numbered cards, also receiving a 15-point bonus to their score.
Like most Push Your Luck games, Flip 7 works best with a larger group who are all in on the joke, sledging one another and ribbing others to take just one more card. While there is some strategy, it also has ample luck to ensure my 5-year-old can wipe the floor with everyone who keeps getting greedy on their card draws and busting with multiple zero scores over far too many rounds. Almost anyone can be taught how to play in a matter of minutes, with a rolling teach eminently possible – Flip 7 even boasts playing up to incredibly high player counts by combining two copies, although I’m not sure I know anywhere that has a table big enough to accommodate 18 players. The art is colourful with a retro feel, the cards coloured teal to the edges which won’t start to show wear for a fair number of plays, the game price low enough that sleeving in anything but the cheapest sleeves will be much of a muchness in terms of price. The included tuckbox in the second edition is serviceable but many might find it best to cut off the hang tag to increase portability slightly and make it easier to remove and store the cards. Publisher The OP has gone to great lengths to ensure Flip 7 will be the talk of tables everywhere, with a giant giveaway in the US and PlayCon attendees in Sydney receiving a copy alongside their entry ticket. This is a bold strategy but one that may pay off as Flip 7 slowly enters more mainstream retail channels – dedicated boardgamers have a game they can teach their “non-gaming” friends, who can then find the game right next to Uno and other competitors with ease. After a Spiel des Jahres nomination this year and ongoing word of mouth, I doubt it will be much longer before Flip 7 sits in most game collections worldwide alongside battered copies of Uno and Monopoly stashed inside a cupboard as equally as it might Age of Innovation and Brass: Birmingham loud and proud on a Kallax.
Flip 7 was reviewed using a copy kindly provided by the publisher.
