Over the past year or so, I have seen the game Flip 7 all over social media. In tabletop gaming groups, people have mentioned how fun it was, how their family was going nuts for it, and how they were having a hard time finding it in stock.
So when The OP Games sent out an email looking for reviewers for the follow-up version, Flip 7: With a Vengeance, I threw my name in the hat. Well, the game arrived in the mail, and I brought it to play with my TTRPG group after we finished up a session zero for our new Pathfinder campaign.
And you know what? It's a lot of fun. We laughed really hard, and it was easy to learn. In the end, I don't think it's a game I'll pull out very often with that particular group, but I definitely will when playing with people whose main hobby isn't slinging cards, moving meeples, and rolling click-clack math rocks.
Blackjack, But Make It 7
The basic gameplay of Flip 7 is very similar to Blackjack: the dealer moves between players, asking if they want to hit (take a new card) or hold (bow out of the current round, keeping whatever points they've accumulated so far). It's a “press your luck” game at its core.
Instead of aiming for a total of 21, you're aiming for as high a sum as possible, but without any repeating cards. If a player is dealt two 8s or two 3s, etc. then they bust and lose all their points. Rounds go until everyone has stayed or busted, or a player has flipped 7 different numerals without repeating.
The game keeps going in rounds like that until a player reaches 200 points.
There are a few cards where you can force someone to hold or flip cards, too, which make it a bit more dynamic than a simple Blackjack-like. You can freeze people's turns where they are, that sort of thing, to keep things interesting.
Blackjack, With a Vengeance
In Flip 7 (With a Vengeance), there are additional action cards, and they've all been upgraded from their “friendly” versions to new “take that” versions. Instead of stopping someone's turn, you force them to take a card (which can often force a bust), and then stop it.
You can get actions that make people swap cards between each other, give them harsh modifiers to their points, make them draw a ton of cards and hope for a bust, that sort of thing. There are special cards like Zero and Unlucky 7/Lucky 13 that alter the game some, too, making players have to discard already-gained cards, continually draw whether they want to or not, get 0 points, and so on. They were always a delight when they came up.
The new, more “take that”-style action cards are incredibly fun, and were the cause of lots of laughs for us. Being able to swap cards between other players or take on gambits of getting 8 cards for myself really made the game dynamic in a way that the Blackjack-like core didn't allow for.
From what I gather as someone who hasn't played the original Flip 7, these new cards change the game enough to warrant the new purchase because of new mechanics and extra social interaction.
Because in all honesty, they were the draw of the game (pun intended), not the core gameplay. While it was fun to hit, hold, and press our luck, playing Munchkin-level “take that” cards is what made us play multiple games in a row, even when two players were jetlagged from a 15-day trip to Ireland.
Since we started with this version, not the base game, I highly doubt we'll ever go back to the original. The additions work so well and fit with our gameplay style (we love the “take that” cards so much, so maybe we just like being mean to each other) that the original game seems too simple for what we enjoyed the most about this one.
Who Is This Game For?
As I said, it's not a game for my gaming group to play regularly. They tend to like more complex card and board games, and Flip 7: With a Vengeance is simpler than what we'd play on a game night. However, it is perfect as a starter game—either for an appetizer game before digging into weightier games at a gathering or as a way to introduce someone to card games with more mechanics than the old standards.
Flip 7: With a Vengeance is a really solid game that fills exactly the role it is made for. It's a cheap, fast, easy game that makes people laugh a lot. If you're a tabletop player who mainly gets your thrills from games like Twilight Imperium or Terraforming Mars, you're likely going to be disappointed. If you have fun with games like Five Crowns, Love Letters, or Uno, then Flip 7: With a Vengeance is certainly worth having on your shelf.