Flick ’em Up! First Impressions

In Flick ’em Up!, This town ain’t big enough for the 10 of us.

Neither is this table.

The cities in the West are not the safest place to be. In the disc-flicking game Flick ’em Up!, you can become an outlaw and rob banks, free prisoners, attack innocent bystanders… or you could become the Sheriff and try to protect the people of your city from these bandits!

Relive the great adventures of the West, face your enemies in street duels, use different guns and tactics to get what you want. You can follow the scenarios or create your own—the choice is yours, cowboy!

With dexterity games racing games like Pitch Car and others like Rampage and Catacombs, you knew there would be others on the way.

When I heard there would be a Cowboy one I immediately thought it would be a bit clunky like Rampage and didn’t pay attention. But when I found out that the terrain is all 3D and you shoot people by flicking bullets, I started to pay FULL attention.

This is scenario based really. You have 10 in a book each adding a new rule as you go deeper but you can just make your own, or just fight to the death.

We played scenario number 2 with 5 Outlaws vs 5 Law-men both trying to take out each other’s leader.

Setup

The set-up shows where all the terrain goes and where all the people start.

You have 3 actions on a turn and there are 3 options. One of those is to pick up/drop/exchange an item but seeing as we didn’t play a scenario with items we skipped that, so I will here.

You can move by switching your model with a movement disk and flicking it. You have to be careful, not just to avoid bad placement but if your movement disk touches anything, ANYTHING, you go back to where you flicked it and lose that action.

If you’re good, like I fluked, you can do stuff like hiding your Sheriff behind a bale of hay.

You can go into a building by flicking through the doorway. This may be required for some scenarios, but it can also start a duel if an enemy is inside.

Shooting

So shooting, it’s the other thing you can do and also important, obviously.

Everybody knows Cowboys shoot from the hip so you put a bullet counter next to your guy and flick it at your target. If you hit but the target stays up, or you knock them over via a deflection, they’re just grazed and nothing happens.

Knock them over via a direct hit and they lose a wound.

Equipment, items and health are tracked via coffins… yep, coffins, to the side of the board. Wound someone and you put the life token into the coffin. Kill someone and you put their player token in too.

It works pretty well as it puts all the info you need in one place.

Flick ’em Up! Summary

My biggest concern was flicking the disks and requiring a decent surface. I’ve tried the disk on 5-6 different surfaces and it’s not a problem. It needs to be flat obviously and relatively smooth, Debris will need removing. Patches left by spilt cordial in days gone by will probably need wiping off but it’s not awful.

The main concern now is tablespace but not so much on the table, you can work around that. Around the table itself, there can be up to 10 people crowded around. You need room to move and get into position. Like a game of Pool.

But, apart from that, Flick ’em Up! is great. I’m really looking forward to playing more scenarios with more complex rules and end-game goals.

Jesta ThaRogue