Flip 7 (the self-proclaimed “greatest card game of all time”) has a spiritual dice-based successor from designer Eric Olsen. How does the new kid on the block compare to its older and more established sibling?
Introduction
Hopefully you’ve heard about Flip 7 by now – the push-your-luck card game where you can play the odds in order to score big points and race to the finish. Well Eric Olsen has been working on something equally compelling but this time with everyone’s* favourite thing – chucking a bunch of custom dice! Let’s see how it all goes shall we?
*my
How does it all work?
As you might expect from something that comes in its own travel-sized tin, the premise of Tally Up is fairly simple to get to grips with.
There are 6 dice that have a range of point values and stars on their faces and one Up die which has a mixture of positive and negative effects on it.
Points are good – no surprises there. Stars are generally bad but can be beneficial in the right circumstances.
Players pick three of the 6 main dice to roll as the ‘main’ roll of the round. If two stars are ever rolled then anyone still in will bust, losing all the accumulated points. Otherwise, points are added to a running total and players can choose to stay in the round or stick with the points that have been tallied so far…
…except there’s one small thing that might first change the balance of play. At least one point value on each die has a circle around it and rolling one or more circled numbers on a main roll will mean the Up die is rolled.
What’s…Up… with that then?
The Up die can be really beneficial – adding 100 points to the running total, or even doubling it! Great news! It can also subtract 100 points from the running total which is less favourable. And the three remaining faces will force the main roller to choose either 1, 2 or 3 of the previously unselected dice to roll.
And this is where the rules can get comparatively a little fiddly compared to how free-flowing the rest of the game is.
You’ll take the required number of dice – let’s say two for this example – and roll them completely separately. If the resultant roll means that two or more stars are showing, everyone who is still in
the round busts. Unlucky. If that condition isn’t met, any points are added to the running total and everyone chooses to stay in or bank the points before the round resets for the next roll. Importantly, rolling any circled points during this phase does NOT trigger the Up die again so everyone can let out the breath they’ve been holding.
Tally…ho!? Tally…Up!
There’s one more small situation we’ve not covered and this can potentially have an influence on the dice you choose at the start of the round.
If your main roll ever comes up with three stars, then the first player to shout TALLY UP! will get a 200-point bonus, though everyone else gets 100 regardless. While this definitely adds to the frantic energy of the game, it rarely has a material impact on the overall score.
You can only get this bonus from the original main roll and not from any subsequent effects from the Up die or anything else.
And this is the full circle to which dice you select at the beginning of your turn as the main roller. You can split the six dice into three categories
- Low risk – low point values and only one star, with two circled numbers (meaning a little more risk that the Up die comes into play)
- Medium risk – decent points available but two stars (making busting a higher likelihood) but only one circled number
- High risk – points galore here, but three stars each and one circled number
So you could play it relatively safe and take the two low risk and one medium risk die to limit the likelihood of busting (less than 1% chance of busting from the main roll) but increasing the chance of brining the Up die into play and therefore potentially rolling the higher risk dice.
Or you could got for a no guts, no glory approach and roll all the high-risk dice hoping to either score big (16.66% chance of getting 3 point scoring faces) or land a Tally Up bonus before cashing out early.
The game ends when someone reaches 2500 points so a smash and grab approach could work, but we’re all probably familiar enough with the hare and the tortoise to understand the benefits of the opposite approach too…
Final thoughts
As with Flip 7, I’ve introduced a fair few people to this already and it’s been a resounding and raucous success. Thankfully there’s a QR code in the rules that takes you to a scoring app that makes the whole running total, multipliers and Tally Up bonuses a breeze to manage.
If you’re looking for push-your-luck that feels a little less like a casino/Blackjack vibe (as Flip 7 might to some people) I think this has you covered, though the parallels with Craps probably won’t be lost on many people.
Where this possibly feels a little more limited is playing it out in the wild. The portable nature of the tin makes it super easy to take places, and to be honest, once you’re familiar enough with the make up of the dice you could ditch the reference cards and substitute the in/out tokens for something else making it as travel-sized as 7 dice – truly pocket-sized. But I know we’ve held back from taking it to a café or similar coffee-based venue for two reasons. Firstly rolling dice consistently means you run the risk of one accidenTALLY going astray, and the yelling of Tally Up! in the middle of a coffee shop probably doesn’t endear you to the other patrons.
That said this is definitely a firm favourite for us already and it’s a great addition to a collection and the perfect end-of-night game too!
