Captain Flip is a game of drawing crew tiles and placing them on your ship…
…or flipping them and playing whatever you get.
Ahoy, Captain! Hoist your flag, recruit a crew, and fill your coffers with shiny, gold coins.
Captain Flip Game Overview
Quick Rules Summary
Players have a ship with 5 columns each of a different number of spaces.
On a player’s turn, they draw a tile from the bag and place it on the table. They then decide if they want to put it in the bottommost space on any column on their ship. If not, they flip the tile over and MUST place it on their ship.
Some of the tiles played have immediate effects:
The Cartographer takes the Treasure Map token and the Navigator takes 2 coins per Cartographer on your ship.
The Cook takes 1 coin per Character in the same row, including the Cook. If a Monkey is played, first take 1 coin, then flip one adjacent tile and activate their effect. The Gunner simply takes 5 coins.
For the Parrot, draw and place a new tile. When filling some of the columns they award a bonus shown on that column
How do you win?
When someone fills 4 columns, players take one more turn then some of the crew have end-game effects:
As well as a bonus when played, the Parrot causes you to lose a coin at the end of the game. Worse than that, if you have 3 or more Gunners on your ship, you can’t win at all!
The Swabby gains 1-25 coins if you have a Swabby in 1-5 columns on your ship. The Carpenter takes 3 coins if there is no Gunner in their row or column. Finally, the Lookout gains 4 coins if this is the top tile in their column.
Whoever ends with the map tiles gets a 1 coin bonus, most coins wins.
Main Mechanisms
Tile placement is the main one obviously. There is a bit of memory as you may need to remember what is on the flip side of the tiles you placed after flipping.
There is also a bit of push your luck as the Gunner can lose you the game automatically if you’re not careful.
USP
It’s called Captain Flip and the choosing to place a tile before flipping is unique I believe.
Theme
The theme is fine. Lookouts getting a bonus for being at the top makes sense. Monkeys causing havoc makes sense. 3 Gunners costing you the game when the picture of the ship has 3 cannons on it is a bit odd.
Setup
Put the tiles in the bag and give everyone a ship. I believe that is all.
Components & Artwork
The coins and tiles etc are all quite nice. The graphic design for the crew icons is pretty good. I would like a dual-layered board to put the tiles on but I guess thin cardboard does the job.
The art is good fun.
Ease of Teaching
This is very easy to teach. You can advise a player on what the tile does and any pros/cons to be aware of before placing/flipping it.
Similar Games
Dead Man’s Draw is a push-your-luck-themed pirate game.
The Curse of the Black Dice is a pirate-themed, light-dice-rolling game which is good fun.
Captain Flip Review
Positives
Fun and simple gameplay.
It’s tense in a fun way, especially when you have 2 Gunners on your ship already and you want to flip the tile you just drew.
The other side of the ship boards has different layouts. I’m not sure if this can be played asynchronously or if everyone has to use the same side. There are also extra boards available for even more variety.
Negatives
I’m not sure about long-term replayability, which is why I didn’t buy it.
Summary
A very fun game and interesting tile-laying game with a unique mechanism.
Jesta ThaRogue