Which brings us on to Flip Pick Towers, a game that decides to not be too clever with its name and therefore leaves very little to the imagination. You’re flipping cards, you’re picking which card to act on and then more than likely, you’re adding a tower onto your scoring pad. There’s very little to garner surprise. I’m actually more surprised that Osprey Games seems to be moving in this lighter direction with their current catalogue of games. We’ve had Ofrenda, Katmai and most recently Threaded, which have subtly moved the catalogue slightly more into mainstream, I would dare to say almost family orientated. Flip Pick Towers backs up this opinion. Osprey are still well known for their forays into heavier Euros and combat, but it is interesting to see this alignment.
Building Those Towers
Gameplay is about choice and maximising of that choice. On each round, three cards are drawn and players then decide which card they are selecting to draw from. Selecting a card doesn’t freeze other players out from choosing the same card to use, but they will have their choice as to how they’ll use that card on their own pad. Cards are split with the main immediate action on the top, and the rewarding resource on the bottom part of the card. The immediate action might be an instruction to build a floor with a certain stability level, and builds must decrease in stability as the grow, with strong foundations at the bottom and lower numbers as you climb, unless you use a particular power. You might decide to add a member of the royal family instead, which will then potentially be used in one of the objective cards. Otherwise you’ll be able to gain yourself a special power from one of the fair folk, who can change stability, allow you to gain resources or even build an extra tower immediately. When you’re done, you can top off your tower with a fetching roof and wave the flags at your accomplishment. Or build a bridge and continue your construction between two towers instead. The key again here is choice and with so much available from a mixture of the cards and resources, its actually quite tricky for player to all end up with the same configuration. It encourage a little bit of competition over looks which is no bad thing but who wants the same when you can have imagination?
Time For Resources
Now the resources on the bottom of the card are gathered in boxes and when you complete a vertical line of boxes you can then gather the appropriate larger reward. So cloth will create banners, glass will give you windows and gold coins will give you bags of gold to help you fend off dragons. Each of these will add to end scoring as you place them in your castle, where gold acts as a deterrent to the two dragons who will visit your kingdom twice in the game. If you end up with a dragon on your pad, you can’t add any more floors to that particular tower where it hovers above. Gold is worth victory points, so the sacrifice should sometimes be considered. The number of vertical boxes isn’t uniform so normally you’ll be able to gain some of the decorations and gold pretty quickly but will need to plan as the game goes on to make sure you don’t end up creating additional items you simply won’t have room for in you kingdom.
I Remember This
Playing through the deck twice is an extremely interesting design choice, because you’ll know that both dragons are going to appear twice, but just don’t know when they will appear. Secondly you can get a real life measurement of how far you are through the game, and can try to plan accordingly. As you’re playing through the second round maybe this time your take the smaller tower, or the gold and keep the dragon away.
Like a lot of these kind of games, there are objectives to aim for, and personally I’m never sure they should be added until you’ve got several games under your belt. They generally sit away from your own little kingdom, something you need to reference as you play, and because of that you wouldn’t be blamed if you entirely forgot of their existence until you get halfway through the second round and realise you’re literally leaving points hanging around the castle.
Drawing Your Conclusions
The danger with any flip and write game can often come not from the mechanics themselves, but from the act of being able to draw something that accurately represents what you’ve picked from your choice of card. Cartographers seemed adept at handling this issue rather well by giving player a base line symbol that they could produce if they weren’t artistically inclined. In the case of FPT, this has been taken into consideration. So if you are neither artistically inclined or gifted, you can replace the art required with something a lot more simpler. Hats off to Beatrix Papp for creating such a beautiful looking game. I really like the art in this game and I love the minimalistic colour decisions that have been made that really make the game pop for me. I’m reminded of one of the fairy tale books one would read as a small child, and I think all the various characters on display here would suit some kind of magical story. Turns out, it is one that you create yourself.
Royal Approval
Regardless of whether you are drawing masterpieces or little Ds with wings, one of the impressive parts of Flip Pick Towers is that every player will end up with their own range of towers that they can be proud of and the end result is always different for each individual regardless of the cards that they have chosen during the game. A small work of art with the authors twist on the deck or cards that have been played through. Where something like Welcome to offers you a fenced off street, Flip Pick Towers does give your imagination that chance to stretch a little further. You’re likely to hold on to the score pad as you play through the games of FPT. Which in itself is something rather magical.
Flip Pick Towers is a solid fun and wonderful looking addition to this particular genre. Seeing as the genre itself has quietened down over the last couple of years, it seems to be sitting out there much more alone that it would have been. It is going to come down to your good self though. If flip and writes are still something that you have shelf space for, then I think this might deserve a home. If its not your thing, then congratulations on getting to the end of this review. You obviously seem interested. You can draw towers and dragons. The box comes with pencils. I mean look at the art. You look almost majestic holding the box. Shall we take it to the till, your majesty?
Designers – Rob Fisher, Adam Porter
Art – Beatrix Papp
Find out more and buy your copy by visiting https://www.ospreypublishing.com/uk/flip-pick-towers-9781472869883/
