FLIPTOONS: Much Better On The Table!
I’ve been playing games on Board Game Arena since 2017, and I’ve seen the website grow leaps and bounds since its first inception. There are just so many games available!
There is only one danger of having 1200+ games at our fingertips in my opinion. It’s the temptation to just “click around” on BGA — sometimes my buddies from the Board Boys Podcast will send a random invitation to a new game, and the idea is that we try to play it without reading the rules.
We have one caveat, though. We never base any opinions on the game on this attempt, because let’s face it, even with BGA’s friendly interface, playing any kind of game with any depth without reading the rules will ultimately end in spectacular failure.
That’s what happened when I tried to play FlipToons the first time on BGA without knowing how the game plays. Tried it once or twice, and unfortunately, didn’t get it.
But the fine folks at Thunderworks Games sent us a copy of Fliptoons for our Southern Board Game Fest play-to-win section. (Get your badges now at www.southerngamefest.com for the festival coming up March 20-22 in beautiful downtown Lafayette, Louisiana!)
This past weekend, Mitchell and I were unboxing and prepping a metric ton of board games for the play-to-win section, and Fliptoons was one of them. Seeing the game in person was a different experience. The art popped, and I could really study the mechanics on each of the animal cards.
So, at the end of the night, we decided to play. What a fun little game! Players are trying to build a deck of cards that are played into a two-by-three tableau (with caveats, of course) and score the most points with that configuration. Some cards really combo well off the others, so the idea is to buy cards from the market that will enhance your deck and tune the deck as best as you can so those cards come out at the same time (and in some cases, in the right configuration).
There’s a twist, though, that I just loved. Once one player hits 30+ points, that score triggers the final buy-and-shuffle-and-play. What a surprise! Just because a player hits a big number doesn’t necessarily give them the win (although they get a nice three point bonus for doing so).
Is it swingy? Does chance play a huge part in the outcome? Of course it does, but that’s not a bad thing when the game is this short.
I don’t think this much randomness based into one wild play at the end of the game would work with a longer game, but in what is essentially a short, Abita root beer-and-boudin type experience, it works surprisingly well. I really dig that the game sets up the players for a dramatic reveal of our final tableau.
So, now it’s back to BGA for me to see if the experience translates into pixels as well as it does on the table. I think it will, now that I know what the stakes are.
Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo
https://www.southerngamefest.com
We are in the same facility — the Downtown Convention Center in beautiful Downtown Lafayette, Louisiana — but this time we are expanding the festival to THREE days! That’s right, we are opening up on Friday afternoon for gaming and events! And we are hosting a VFM for the first time!
Plus, we are expanding our food area for even more gaming! As always, we will have:
— a fully curated and stocked library of games
— an awesome section of Hot Games from GEN CON and ESSEN
— a stellar line up of Play-To-Win Games courtesy of ENVOY
— GeauxPub is back with even more play testing and designers
— Tourneys are back!
— and of course, we’ll have our signature Guided Playthroughs!
** Our thanks to Thunderworks Games for providing this copy of FLIPTOONS for our Play-To-Win section at SoBo! See you there! **
Laissez les bon temps rouler!