FlickFleet

FlickFleet is a two-player, dice-flicking game of galactic battle and conquest.

There are number of different scenarios to play, from the games’ introductory battle of last-one-standing to variants where planets get in your way, or a stars’ gravitational pull sucks you into celestial destruction. You can create your own scenarios too. But outside of these wrinkles, the mechanics of FlickFleet are always the same: the rebel Uprising face off against the dominant Imperium, and both are manifest in the form of acrylic spaceships, flying around an area 3ft square…

Rounds are simple – each player gets to activate each ship at their disposal once, taking turns to do so. Turns are simple too – you get two actions and can spend them in a variety of ways, depending on the ship in question.

Wings are basic interference-running ships who can only move or fire. They are made up of three interlocking sections, and for every still-intact section, they can shoot that many times at the enemy – but when hit, they lose a section and hence become less effective. There are two types of Wings – one is more mobile, but the other is more destructive.

Dreadnoughts, Destroyers and Carriers are a different proposition. Each come with a kind of dashboard of the ship that show its available actions – assuming that it hasn’t taken specific, debilitating damage. Ships begin with a disc (or discs) on each space of the dashboard and as long as there is at least one disc in a zone, you can take the action. Engines and weapons are akin to the Wing actions – movement and fire. Other actions are repairing shields, replacing lost discs, and – if there are ships available to launch – launching further ships into the battle from the bays.

All of this galactic jiggery-pokery swings around the central hub of combat, though, which is FlickFleet’s dark and hilarious heart. Ships do damage to each other by flicking dice, either of the ten-sided (d10) or six-sided (d6) variety. Both can damage ship’s shields, but the d6 is more effective for two reasons – first of all, any number on a flicked die that hits its target will not only damage shields on a large ship, but remove discs as well. And on top of that, a d6 is considered to hit twice, meaning double damage. If the last section of a Wing is hit, it is destroyed. If a zone on a larger ship is hit when it does not contain a disc, it’s destroyed.

Bear in mind too that flicking with overt enthusiasm can backfire, as any dice leaving the field of play is considered a miss, whether it made contact with the enemy or not. What it amounts to is a tactical, reactive battle that can see absurd comebacks when a ship on its last legs fires at a super-powerful dreadnought and hits the achilles heel… a fun, silly, but tense game of galactic combat.