Game Overview

Wow! Captain Flip is a night and day difference from Lost Ruins of Arnak, which was my last BGA spotlight game. Captain Flip is extremely easy to play, and a full game wraps up in under ten minutes. Frequently in under five minutes! As such, it’s super easy to get…erm…a lot…of plays in a very short period of time. Like, more than 50 plays in a 24 hour period. Whoops.

The core gameplay of Captain Flip is that you have a player board, with designated spaces for characters to be placed. On your turn, you draw a character, and you either place it in a column on your board, or you opt to flip it – hence Captain Flip – and then place in a column on your board. Characters must be placed from bottom to top in a column. Every character played affects your gold tally, either immediately, or at the end of the game, as well as having other abilities. That’s it. That’s the whole game.

There is a treasure map that players compete over for ownership, which gives the owner one gold at the end of their turn. Once four columns are filled by any player, game end is triggered, and the round concludes so all players have had an equal number of turns. End game scoring is conducted, and the player with the most gold wins.

General Impressions

Captain Flip seems very likely to appeal to a wide range of board gamers, and should be easy to use even to bring folks to the table who typically don’t enjoy board games. The commitment is so light, and the rules so simple, that you can pull it out, explain it, try it, and put it away in probably 20 minutes tops. The game is very reasonable to play with younger kids also.

There are only 9 different characters in the game, so once you’ve played a couple of games, you have a really solid handle for what you’re looking for and how to prepare your board state for what you might draw. There’s not a ton of depth of strategy with this game, which some players no doubt will not appreciate. There’s a heavy dose of luck involved, and that definitely leads to some whacky unexpected moments that can completely turn a on its head.

While there’s not a ton of strategy, having a sound approach does make or break most games. Effectively managing your board rewards, and ensuring you maximize your character rewards does not happen automatically. There are many situations of weighing losing gold due to character interactions to close out a column, or playing the odds on a flip to improve your board state. Every now and then there’s a cluster of Monkeys that get triggered and retriggered, and that gets really wild. Flipping a Gunner repeatedly can be really strong too!

The nature of reward elements present on the different boards does materially affect the strategy of some play sessions. The Kraken board especially has a race dynamic, where the first player to fill a column gets different rewards than later players. Several of the other boards do not have any direct player interaction, so the game can feel a bit like a multi-player solo game sometimes, other than competing for the treasure map.

BGA Particulars

The only noteworthy aspect for playing this game on BGA is that it handles all the gold gaining / losing, including the treasure map, and end game scoring. The game itself is draw a tile from a bag and place it, so there’s not a lot of opportunity for player aid. Setup and teardown should also very quick and easy, so not aided much playing online.

Fun Factor

Captain Flip? More like Captain Crack. I can’t express enough how much fun I find this game to be. It took hold of me after the first couple of playthroughs, and I became addicted. Almost worryingly so. The quick games, which often come with dramatic lucky events that make you literally groan or clinch your fist in victory, makes it way too easy to “just one more game” until you’ve played a dozen or more. If it weren’t for that risk factor, this would make a great mental break from work kind of game.

Next Up

Wait, I have to play something other than Captain Flip? Ok, fine, fine! I’ll try to ease my way out of the blazing habit with a game with similar mechanics of playing and organizing tiles to maximize rewards, Cacao.