Indie Boards and Cards IBCFPF2 Flash Point Fire Rescue Second Edition Board Game

Product Information

Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a co-operative game for 1-6 players from Indie Boards and Cards. The players take on the role of a team of firefighters trying to put out the fire in a house and rescue the people and animals trapped inside. You will be putting out fires, trying to control the risks of hazardous material, investigating points of interest and carrying casualties to the ambulance, all whilst trying to ensure that the house does not collapse due to too much damage caused by the fire. If you expand Flash Point by adding expansions it's less of a problem again, because some boards/scenarios will require the niche skills of the less popular characters. Eventually you'll see the benefits of all the different roles.

The objective of the game is to find and save seven of the family members. If the fire causes too much destruction to the house or reaches four of the family members, then all of the players have lost. There are lots of similarities between Flash Point and other popular cooperative games but one thing that Flash Point does remarkably well is that each play crescendos dramatically. This is because of the "Hot spots". When you roll for a fire on a hot spot you have to roll the dice again, and adding another hot spot token on that place as well as smoke. This means more fire is going to spread and potentially explode as the game goes on. Flash Point gets harder and not easier as you progress through a game. A lot of other coops tend to peter-out and the last quarter of the game you're essentially just "cleaning up" the board. No doubt it also mimics a real fire when the building is losing it's structural integrity and time is of the essence. Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a cooperative game similar to Pandemic in that everyone has a special skill with which to contain a crisis. The crisis in Flash Point is of course that a fire has broken out and people are trapped inside the building. Remember that after every player turn, the fire will spread by an unknown amount. It could be just another Smoke space, or it could be an inferno that kills one or more of your helpless victims. So you must strike a balance between containing the fire and getting victims moved to safety. Each player can take on the roll of a specific type of firefighter: The CAFS Firefighter who can extinguish fires without using action points, the Fire Captain who can use their action points to move other players around, the Rescue Specialist who can move farther and can chop through walls easier. Perhaps the players would prefer to play the Imaging Technician who can identify where the victims are, or the diver/operator who can use the fire engine much easier than others. What firefighting team would be complete without the Hazmat Technician who can dispose of hazardous materials easier than others, the Paramedic who can heal the victims and get them out of the fire faster or the extremely useful and versatile Generalist who has an extra action point.I also like that one person really can’t take over when playing this game. So much of the information on the board is hidden, so while you will want to talk to your teammates about what you want to do, it’s ultimately your decision where you go into the house. It encourages the right kind of cooperation. Do you walk all the way from the game room, through the kitchen, dining room and play room to get to the victim in the small bathroom? Or do you just chop down the shared wall between the game room and the small bathroom? The thing I like the most about Flash Point is that the game design fits the theme quite nicely, it does feel like I can do pretty much what I would expect to be able to do as a firefighter. Put out fires, fire a water cannon, rescue victims it’s all there. I can even use my trusty axe to break down walls and barge through to another room, how cool is that? For 2-4 players though, Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a wonderful game that really makes you feel like a hero! Fiona’s Final Thoughts

Added new tutorial section, the tutorial is always on and tutorial topics will only show once. The tutorial can be reset and disabled in Options menu. The part which may be a bit odd for some people is that when a point of interest is removed from the board it is then replaced by way of a random dice roll so there are always 3 on the board at each time. This means there is potential for a point of interest to appear in a room you just rescued someone from. I can’t explain how this fits thematically but it’s just the way it is. Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a turned-based strategy game that places you in command of a squad of specially trained firefighters with the sole aim to rescue survivors form a raging structural fire. All players have an individual talent that comes with their specialist cards. Some actions may be free depending on your assigned ability. On occasion, you’ll find your abilities useless; in others, they’ll save your life. If you’re looking for a simple co-op game to play with your family, Flash Point is not for you. But if you want to suffer with another strategy games enthusiast, or wish to play with a distant friend who loves the board game (online multiplayer is coming soon), then Flash Point will probably give you many hours of painful joy.There are only ever three POI (Point of Interest) tokens on the board at once. You need to rescue them before the fire engulfs them. I think the core gameplay is pretty easy to grasp after a few turns which would make the game accessible even for people who don’t play board games much. Everything you need to know is on the player aids so there are nice prompts to assist players. The game plays like a collaborative strategy game: firemen move on a grid, and each unit has a pool of Action Points to spend every turn. Some actions (smashing a wall, dragging a survivor, putting out a fire) cost more than others (moving, closing doors, walking). The Experienced Game takes just a bit longer to set up because there’s a lot more going on. It has three levels of play: Recruit, Veteran, and Heroic, with Recruit being similar in difficulty to the Family Game, and “Heroic” being (as you might imagine) very difficult. I played at the Veteran level just to get a good sense of how much more difficult the game becomes.

Once you get the hang of it, though, Flash Point becomes a joy to play. I like the way the controls work, fiddliness aside: every time you move, the game automatically selects your most probable action from a ring menu. Step near a fire, for example, and the game understands you probably want to extinguish it. Step near a door and you are ready to open it. I can only imagine how cumbersome to play the cardboard version is, considering the number of rules, but the turns on PC are snappy and a match never takes more than 30-40 minutes.As the official digital adaptation of the acclaimed board game from Indie Boards and Cards you will experience the same excitement and challenge of the original in a light-hearted digital form.

Balance your team.Linked to the point above it is useful to balance your team between roles that are good at fighting the fire and those that are good at rescuing. Fire Academy Challenge Update Understanding the strengths and limitations of your specialists is key to a successful rescue. The Fire Academy Challenges are designed to test your understanding of each member of your squad and how they work together. [In Development] I hope this brief graphical example has given you an idea of how the game is played, as well as some sense of the decisions that you’ll be faced with when playing Flash Point: Fire Rescue. The second time I played was with the full six players and it was INTENSE! As the walls crumbled around us, we happened to pull the final seventh victim from the midst in the last possible instant. The win was infectious, and we immediately played again on the experienced version. Fire Captain– Can “delegate” 2 AP each turn to another firefighter, essentially commanding that firefighter to move or Open/Close Doors during the Captain’s turn.

Every turn, players will make decisions using 4 action points. Will you move to an adjacent space, chop down a wall, put out a fire, close/open doors, or carry a victim to safety? Do you focus initially on putting out the fires, letting the victims wait until the fire is more contained? The deeper you dive into Flash Point, the harder it is to manage all the moving pieces and fire spread. For this, I recommend an experienced gamer to help control the fire advancement stages. When smoke becomes flame, and flames turn to explosions, knowing the mechanics well is important. Online Multiplayer While the game already has local multiplayer available it's not always possible to enlist a squad mate or two. Online multiplayer will enable you to find players when you're not sharing a couch. [In Development]