Captain Flip
Designed by: Paolo Mori,Remo Conzadori
Captain Flip is a fast-moving pirate-themed game of adding pirate crew tiles to your boat. If you don’t like the crew you draw from a bag, you can flip it over – but it’s a risk!
Everyone is trying to get coins. Each player has a board showing their ship and the rows and columns where you’ll place crew tiles. And each crew member – there are nine – has a certain way of scoring depending on what the other crew members are around it. For example the Cook instantly gets you a coin for every character in his row. The Navigator gets you a 2 coins for every Cartographer you have on the board, and the Cartographer gets you the treasure map, which gives you a coin at the end of every turn you’re in possession of it (before another Cartographer steals it away!).
As soon as any one player fills four columns the current round will be the final one: continue until everyone has had an equal number of turns, then tot up your treasure (remembering some crew give you end-game coins!) – the player with the most coins is the winner.
Sam says
It’s simple, accessible, fast-moving and the flipping gives it some turn-by-turn tension. I think it’s a great one to play with families, and can see why Captain Flip won Germany’s prestigious Spiel des Jahres board game award. If I’m channeling my inner critic, I’d say the flipping doesn’t quite save it from a slightly repetitive feel over after the first couple of plays. One for the happy-to-sit-out, happy-to-play bracket for me: it doesn’t thrill me, but I’m never going to resent the 20 minutes it takes to play.
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Take That!
Outside of the treasure map changing hands, there’s no interaction between players.
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Fidget Factor!
Very low
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Brain Burn!
The challenge is combo-ing the crew in a way that maximises coins: the flipping gives you the fun of risk/reward that twisting does in card games – but without ‘busting’ you.
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Again Again!
It’s simple, breezy, and doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.
