Base price: $30.
2 – 5 players.
Play time: ~20 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 94
Full disclosure: A review copy of Captain Flip was provided by PlayPunk / Flat River Games.
I mean, I played it basically a hundred times. I don’t even know if I need a lead-in. Honestly, I should just make a badge that’s just “I’m going to play this game a hundred+ times” and see where that gets me, but I don’t have the energy to make a graphic right now. Oh well. Let’s do the review, then.
It’s Captain Flip! You’re trying to stack your ship with the best pirate crew to ever exist on the seven seas. And there are a lot of pirates! Just because there are a lot of pirates doesn’t mean you get picky; every time you meet one, you can either say yes or no, but if you say no, you get stuck with the next one! But any good pirate can make the best of a tricky situation. Will you be able to set sail with who you get?
Contents
Setup
Not much to do here! Each player gets the same Adventure Board:
Place all the tiles in the bag:
Set the coins in the center, along with the Treasure Map:
You should be good to start!
Gameplay
Captain Flip is a pretty quick game. Your goal? Assemble the greatest pirate crew, acquire treasure, and be … the best!
Each turn, you’ll draw a tile from the bag. You can place it at the lowest unoccupied space on any column! Several characters have immediate effects, so you can activate those when relevant.
- Monkey: Gain 1 coin and flip any orthogonally adjacent tile, and then activate the effect on the other side.
- Gunner: Gain 5 coins.
- Parrot: Immediately draw another tile and play it or flip and play it and activate its effect.
- Cook: Gain 1 coin for each tile along the same row as the Cook, including the Cook
- Navigator: Gain 2 coins per Cartographer tile on your board.
- Cartographer: Take the Treasure Map.
If you’d rather not play that tile you drew, you can flip it over! But once you do, you have to place that tile. If you have the Treasure Map at the end of your turn, gain 1 coin.
Once any player has completed four columns, that ends the game! Complete the round and activate any endgame effects for the relevant pirates:
- Gunner: If you have three Gunners on your board, you lose. Don’t do that.
- Parrot: Lose 1 coin.
- Swabby: Gain 1 / 4 / 9 / 16 / 25 coins for having 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 columns with a Swabby.
- Carpenter: Gain 3 coins if there is no Gunner in the Carpenter’s row or column.
- Lookout: Gain 4 coins if there is no character above the Lookout in its column.
The player with the most points wins!
Player Count Differences
Since players are only engaging with their own boards, there’s really no difference in play between player counts. The only thing that could come to mind would be figuring out how the probability of certain tiles coming up changes as more players pull from the same bag, but even then, that requires you to know not just how many of each character there are, but also how many of each character appear on each side of a tile and what the odds of said character appearing on the other side of the tile is. That feels like too much math, and it likely is. An aggressive amount of math, to say the least. Can’t recommend going that route. As a result, though, you’re not going to see a lot of player interaction or take-that or anything like that; you’re just drawing tiles and pressing your luck and seeing what happens. The one distinction is that there are more turns between your turns at higher player counts, so the odds of a different player than you ending the game do increase, a bit, which may affect some of your strategy. No preference on player count beyond that, though.
Strategy
- A few of the tiles have pretty clear-cut effects, so lean into those. If you’re going to play a lot of Chefs, for instance, you want to place them so that you can get the most points possible! Don’t set Carpenters near Gunners, either.
- You should almost never have three Gunners face-up at any time. You can, provided you manage to flip one over before the end of the game, but an opponent might force the end of the game before you get a chance to fix the error. And no board (at least, of A – D) can let you predict when you’ll get a flip action, so, be careful!
- Keep in mind that tiles don’t ever have the same character on the other side, so you can use that to eliminate at least one option. It’s very difficult to predict the other options beyond that, but you can rest assured that you’re not going to get the same person twice. That said, it would be fun to get tiles with Gunners on both sides just to clown the greedy.
- If you can, try to remember which tiles you’ve seen the other side of; that can be lucrative if you get the Monkey. You can try to do a thing where you flip a Gunner and then flip it again with a Monkey to get another 5 coins. Impressive if you can pull it off, but again, quite difficult to do well.
- The Parrot is a cool way to rush the game, but keep in mind that those lost points will add up. You can make up for it by completing columns that give you coins, so sometimes rushing the game is your best bet. Try to keep track of how many points your opponent has so that you don’t end up ending the game and losing.
- Also, what’s the board doing for you? Try to use those effects, too. They’ll give you coins, usually, but it’s worth noting that some boards are end-of-game bonuses and some are immediate. The latter will let you mix it up if you get the bonus and then flip tiles. For end-of-game bonuses, well, if you mess up your own plans, you’re going to pay the price.
- Plan ahead! You’ll need to to place Lookouts and Carpenters effectively. They effectively logjam certain spaces so you can’t place above them or place Gunners if you want the bonus points. They’re usually worth the placement! Or, at least, placing a tile that earns you nothing is generally a bad move.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- Honestly, I just think pirate games are fun. They’re a pretty universally silly theme, and I enjoy that kind of thing. You can just have a lot of goofy pirates doing goofy pirate things, and the game leans into that, thematically.
- This is super easy to just pick up and play. You just need the board and you can go. Learn the tiles on the go! The teach takes no time.
- The almost complete lack of setup is also really nice. I have been playing a fair share of complex games lately, so, it’s nice to have a break every now and then.
- The art style is goofy and fun, as is befitting a kinda-silly pirate game. I like the cast of characters! I would love to know what their deal is.
- This seems like there’s some expandability options, too. There’s at least options for extra boards, but I imagine extra tiles could provide a nice bit of fun depending on what’s available and what could be pulled off successfully.
- I like that the game comes with a nice variety of boards. The four boards are great! There’s a fifth promo board that I also like, but I’ve mostly been playing that via BGA.
- The barrier to entry for this game is also super low; you really could play this almost-randomly without learning the tiles yourself and still have a decent time. It’s just a low-complexity game with a lot of fun. It might seem almost too simple, but there’s some interesting strategy you can do around dealing with the random tiles you get. I think it’s fun!
Mehs
- As is the case with many press-your-luck-type games, you’re going to likely encounter a “feels bad” moment at some point when you flip a tile and realize that you’ve goofed yourself. Them’s the breaks, I suppose, but it’s never a great feeling if you flip a tile and then you’ve effectively lost. Press your luck and sometimes it doesn’t work out.
Cons
- The game fundamentally has to be somewhat luck-driven, which is appropriate for its weight, but that may ice out players looking for a more strategic experience. Oh, yeah, if you’re looking for pure strategy, this isn’t going to land for you. That said, as I noted earlier, there’s some strategy to which tiles you place where and when. I think to dismiss the game as purely luck-driven is a bit presumptuous, as a result. It just might be more luck than your group feels up for! Always try to suss that stuff out before you play.
Overall: 9 / 10
Overall, Captain Flip has shot up the ranks for me this year in terms of recent, family-weight releases that I’ve been really enjoying. I suppose it helps pretty significantly when you’ve played a game 80+ times, but it’s just super fun and simple. I love a good pick-up-and-play-without-thinking game, and this is definitely making it on the list along with Sea Salt & Paper. So here’s to the next two hundred plays, or so. I will say that I find the family-weight space to be often crowded, since it’s hard to make the distinction between “games for kids” and “games kids can play”, but this is firmly in the latter camp and still extremely fun. I could imagine playing this just about anywhere: on the beach, at a bar, or even just at home hanging out with friends or family. It’s not exactly a high-portability game, but I’ve lugged Millennium Blades places in the past; if you love something, you’ll figure it out. I think Captain Flip also got nominated for the Spiel, so, good to see some other folks also have good taste in games. It’s the quick-scoring, the ease of play, and the potential for absolute disaster via three Gunners that does it for me. There’s thrills and spills and other pirate things and it all comes together seamlessly. I’ll be interested to see if more Captain Flip is on the way, especially with that Spiel nomination, but in the meantime, if you’re looking for a fun pirate game, a solid game for the whole family, or just a game you can completely goof yourself in, I’d highly recommend Captain Flip! It’s definitely been a recent favorite.
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