Fusing together Battleships and Hangman, Battle Flips feels both novel and almost instantly understandable.
A lot of different board games pass through our doors here at Big Boss Battle, everything from complex, multi-hour monstrosities (and their expansions!) to tiny, pocket-sized toys made competitive. Battle Flips is a really interesting one as it feels like a clever play on extant, classic games that are already ingrained into a lot of people’s psyche.
To play, each each player takes a marker and assembles their simple, two-piece stand. After that the category board is placed between them and a category is picked. There are 40 recommended categories on the board, ranging from ‘Animals’ through to ‘Lost in a sofa’. They then write their answer, in up to seven letters, onto their stand with the marker, flip up the panels and turn it to face the other player. After this the category board is flipped over to a grid of the alphabet.
If you haven’t guessed already, players will then take turns guessing at (and crossing out) the letters on the central board. There are, however, some caveats which are important to note. Firstly, regardless of who strikes out the letter they get revealed on both stands – the example given in the box is CatFood and Noodles, so a guess of O would reveal two tiles from each.
Now, if you do guess a letter that ANYBODY has used then you get a second go, which does give you the chance to burn through two letters in one go if you’re willing to forfeit one of your own. For instance, if you want to wipe out all the vowels and know you have an A, but no E then you might still take A first just so that you can play two letters on your turn.
Scoring, or winning, is important as you can only guess the other player’s word while on your turn, and you do so instead of taking a shot at a letter. Critically, if you are wrong then you instantly lose that round, and it is a case of first to three wins. It should be noted that you can also win by revealing all of their words – which might be quite easy if they go for a word like Success, or something short.
Battle Flips is a really easy to pick up and learn board game, and a clear upgrade to Hangman. It even comes with a bag to make it portable. I’m always a little cynical of games with whiteboard markers (or single use stickers), as they feel doomed to run out and a bit wasteful – however, Big Potato Games’ track record for being ecofriendly is a big plus here.
Battle Flips is available now from Amazon.
