Flip 7
- Board's Eye View
- May 16
- 2 min read
Flip 7 is a push-your-luck card game for 3-8 players with intuitively easy-to-understand rules. It's designed by Eric Olsen and published by The Op and Asmodee.
The game is played with a deck comprising cards numbered 1-12 and where the number of cards in the deck corresponds to the number on the card (ie: there's one 1, two 2s through to twelve 12s, tho' there's also one zero). Players all start off with a face up card and the gameplay mirrors that in Blackjack: you can stay/stick (exit the round and bank the value of your cards as your score) or you can hit/twist (flip the next card from the top of the deck). You remain in the round so long as you have no duplicated numbers; flip a card that duplicates any of the numbers you already hold and you're out of the round and add nothing to your score. The game is played over several rounds and won by the first player to hit a total of 200 points.
The game is called Flip 7 because if you have seven unique number cards you automatically end the round and you get a 15 point bonus in addition to the scoring value of your number cards.
Even non-gamers quickly grasp that tho' high-value cards have the potential to score well they are more likely to cause you to bust. And there are special cards that can modify your score (add points or even double your total), freeze a player out (in effect, forcing them to stay/stick), require a player of your choice to flip the next three cards or give a 'second chance' (allowing you to discard a duplicated number so that you don't bust).
With its simple mechanics, Flip 7 makes for an instantly playable fun card game with a party game vibe. As the game progresses, players increasingly use the special action cards as 'take that' interactions with players who are in the lead; tho' those too can turn out to be push-your-luck plays: you may play a 'flip 3' card on an opponent in the expectation that it's likely to cause them to bust but only to find you've inadvertently helped them to a higher score!
