Cowboys & Writing
It's been a while since we have played a flip&write game, so it was time to try a new one! And why not the magnificent looking 🏚️ Fliptown with some wild west flavor? 🤠 It comes with foldable dry-erase player boards and a custom western themed poker deck. Most of these games follow some usual tropes, but they usually all have a twist that makes them unique - in this case it's all about the action selection with poker cards! 🧐
Each turn 3 cards are drawn from the deck and everyone can decide how to use them:
♦️ One card will be chosen for its suit only: this determines which of the 4 main actions you can do.
🔢 One card will be chosen for its value only: this determines what you can do in your chosen action area.
🃏 The third card is the poker card you collect.
You play 3 rounds of 5 turns like this. Each round you will do 5 actions and collect 5 poker cards, scoring your poker cards at the end depending on how good of a hand you have.
Each action area has its own special rules and nuances in how values work and how you can advance. I find these really clever. 👍 You might spend or gather gold and money, and most importantly you are gathering stars which are the victory points. Many actions will lead to bonus actions in other areas, so there is a lot of combo potential. (That's always sweet with roll&writes. 😁) The Town 🏚️ is probably the most interesting action area, where you can visit different buildings to do all sorts of things and claim ongoing bonuses.
As you do dastardly deeds 😈 your wanted level also goes up. This is possibly bad because each round a random card is set aside as the sheriff's ⭐ card - you can get penalized if it's lower than your wanted level, unless you bribe him!
🎲 You should be aware of one thing: randomness is quite rampant. Many effects are influenced by card draw to decide the outcome, like the sheriff, robbing in the badlands, some gambling type town actions or even collecting your hand of poker cards. It might be much for some, but it's thematically fun. I definitely enjoy the wild west theme, which we don't see that often. ☺️
