I am known to enjoy a good verb ‘n’ write game, whether it be flip ‘n’ write, roll ‘n’ write or some other form of this genre, I do enjoy filling out my little sheet with goodies. Osprey Games recently sent me Flip Pick Towers, which, as its name suggests, has you flipping, picking towers and arranging an all manner of bits and bobs into your castle of joy.
This one has a little more drawing in than most, really allowing your medieval creative side to shine. You can draw dragons, towers, windows and banners, adding little touches of your personality to all facets of your castle.
A Simple Setup
There’s not much to do to get a game of Flip Pick Towers going, shuffle a deck, deal out some shared goals and hand out some sheets and pencils. The last thing you want for a game of this weight and length is an elongated, complicated setup. It's fair to say, you’re up and running in this one very quickly indeed.
I am known to enjoy a good verb ‘n’ write game, whether it be flip ‘n’ write, roll ‘n’ write or some other form of this genre, I do enjoy filling out my little sheet with goodies. Osprey Games recently sent me Flip Pick Towers, which, as its name suggests, has you flipping, picking towers and arranging an all manner of bits and bobs into your castle of joy.
This one has a little more drawing in than most, really allowing your medieval creative side to shine. You can draw dragons, towers, windows and banners, adding little touches of your personality to all facets of your castle.
A Simple Setup
There’s not much to do to get a game of Flip Pick Towers going, shuffle a deck, deal out some shared goals and hand out some sheets and pencils. The last thing you want for a game of this weight and length is an elongated, complicated setup. It's fair to say, you’re up and running in this one very quickly indeed.
The Royals
Each game has 3 randomly drawn goals for everyone to compete in, which are related to 3 royals. The King, Queen and Princess all have a goal associated with them. You will be placing these three Royals into your castle, trying to squeeze as many precious points out of these goals as possible.
You know the drill, they have to be in the highest or lowest tower, they will multiply some of your other scoring criteria, that sort of jazz. Placing them in the right place and at the right time to maximise their conditions can be very worthwhile and perhaps even push you towards victory.
Flip ‘n’ Draw
Your main action in Flip Pick Towers is to pick one of 3 flipped cards and draw both its feature and resource onto your sheet. Your sheet has alternating columns, alternating between garden areas and foundations for your castle. Your goal is to build your castle as high as you can, adorning it with differing scoring features and gathering resources to further decorate your looming creation.
The top of the card has the thing you need to draw on your castle design, new floors, roofs, bridges and even the odd dragon to take care of. The bottom contains resources like glass for your windows, cloth for your banners and even coins for your bags of gold. It's all quite interesting and does give you juicy decisions to make on every card flip.
Sturdy Floors
Whenever you pick a floor card, it also contains a number which signifies it's sturdiness. The closer to the foundation the floor is, the larger the number needs to be. Simply put, your floors need to be ordered from largest to smallest from bottom to top. It just adds a little additional wrinkle in which card to pick and when.
You can also start in a new tower in your garden columns, which are normally reserved for beanstalks and the like. In order to start a new tower in your garden columns, you need to pick a bridge card, then build it between two towers on either side of a garden section. You can then start a tower by building floors as normal, from the largest numbers up to your smallest.
Magical Creatures
As well as the Royals and standard castle-based construction cards, you have a few magical creatures. Firstly, there are 2 dragons in the deck, your choice with these negative cards is to either give it a bag of gold to fly off or draw it above one of your towers and therefore stopping it from getting any higher for the rest of the game.
The other creatures are helpful; whenever you pick them, you get a single use, wherever you wish, of one of the many powers on the bottom of your sheet. Each creature is related to a power and you can use as many as you wish or even save them up for future use. Things like using all resources from the three cards instead of one, modifying the floor stability number or even drawing the feature on a card twice. You know, normal flip ‘n’ write mitigation stuff. Lovely!
Resources and More Decoration
On the bottom of your cards are various resources to cross off on your sheet. These add various decorations to your castle designs, all of which have various scoring criteria attached to them and score differently at the end of each of the game's 2 rounds.
The person with the most windows gets you points; each banner or bag of gold gets you points and each beanstalk will score depending on its height. Each resource is crossed off a grid of sorts, and especially with the beanstalks, how large the column it is activated from dictates its height and therefore its score. It's all rather juicy.
End Game and Scoring
After 2 rounds, after running through the deck twice, you tot up your scores and crown someone the best castle designer in the land. You score your highest floors in each tower, your beanstalks and all the various decorations you have created. There is a small chance of ending early if someone is really bad, but I would imagine that's a very rare occurrence.
While there is a fair bit on your sheets to score, I found the scoring quite simple and the added score tracker at the bottom of your sheet certainly helps.
What’s in the Box?
The components in this box, while being minimal, are very functional and well-made. There’s a chunky pad, all with double-sided pages for twice the amount of gameplay. There are pencils, a few cardboard markers and a deck of cards.
The artwork on the cards, keeping in touch with the cover and general style of the game, sports a sort of simplistic line-art style that I found, especially for this type of game, very apt and striking. Everything in this small game box is well-made, well-thought-out and functions perfectly. What more could you ask for?
Final Thoughts
Roll, flip or whatever verb you wish ‘n’ writes are very much in my wheelhouse. I love Welcome To, Fliptown and various other games in this wild and meandering genre. I have played so many of them, varying wildly in quality and what I thought of them.
I would definitely put Flip Pick Towers towards the upper end of the spectrum. It has a lot of choice, room for mitigation and various scoring avenues to pursue. It is easy to play, which is essential and moves along at a decent clip. I can see myself playing many more games of this one, I adore the design you are left with and if you feel the need, you can draw some lovely little bits of art on your sheet too.
Right, time to draw some dragons, create some windows and woo some witches. See you next time.
