Flotsam Fight

Flotsam Fight, is a game which on first play filled me with loathing for it, but on repeated plays led me to a place of love for it, like some kinda classic rom-com. I mean, it was inevitable, being an Oink game – who doesn’t love an Oink game? 

And it too, starts in a somewhat rock fashion. It starts with a shipwreck… 

Sit Down, You’re Rocking The Boats…

Flotsam Fight is a card-based game for 2 to 6 players returning from a strictly legitimate artefact-finding mission in what turns out to be a pretty leaky boat. When the inevitable shipwreck occurs, all of you are forced to peep the lifeboats and endeavour to rescue as many artefacts as possible. But with only so many peeps, you can commandeer only so many boats, and there’s only so much space… 

Each player is dealt ten cards from a deck of 64 treasure cards. Each one has a nifty illustration of the treasure, a number in the top left and beneath it the highlighted numbers of the boats where it can be placed. On their turn, the player choses a card from their hand and plays it onto one of the boats, according to the card’s numerical limitations.

The next player then has to play a higher card with similar limitations on that card or play another card on another boat. This is where it gets a bit tricky, because the number of boats used corresponds to the number of players playing. This means that if three of you are playing, for example, only three boats can be used. This also means that you’re going to end up with a load of cards that you can’t play thanks to someone else’s treasure rescue. Thanks. 

When a player can’t play anymore cards from their hand, they pass, leaving the other players to continue until they too pass. The last person to play a card then gets to clear the decks and start again – but beware; if you passed with just one card left in your hand, you have to draw two more from the deck. Serves you right for getting cocky. 

Play continues in this way until one player clears their hand; they get the 2-point token. Next, the remaining players reveal the highest card left in their hand. The player with the highest card gets a 1-point token; the player with the lowest gets a -1-point token.  

This completes the first of three rounds. Once the three rounds are completed in Flotsam Fight, players tot up their plus and minus tokens and the player with the highest score wins. The player with the lowest score gets to kick their chair and storm out of the room accusing the game and everyone around the table of cheating. Or something like that. 

The Life Of 3.14159265358979…

I’ll admit it, I’m a bad loser, but I’m an even worse winner so it’s probably for the best that I’m terrible at games. I still keep playing though, because I love the mechanics involved in games and I love looking for the maths in games. 

Comes from being a maths teacher trying to make maths less scary, I guess. 

With Flotsam Fight, it was the maths that really did it for me, but don’t let that dissuade you – it’s good. This is because each number’s limitations are based on that number’s factors – once you’re tuned into this, you’ll look at your hand in a completely different way, working out which factors will work for the most cards and also working out which numbered boat will bring the most grief to your opponents. Then there’s the added bliss of the scoring system which could see you finishing the game with a negative score, despite having been so close to decking out so many times. 

Added bliss. 

Now I will always be looking for excuses to bring a game into the classroom, but any teacher will tell you that a professional educational resources maker’s idea of bringing game into the maths classroom is usually snakes and ladders with equations on. Dreadful. But for all the educators out there, this is the sort of game that you should be bringing into the classroom. 

Sink Or Swim?

If you are familiar with Oink Games, you will probably already be a fan, but surely you can have too many Oink Games, can’t you? Well, that’s the great thing – they’re so dinky and cute looking that you’ll probably never know and never care to know. Flotsam Fight is just as cute and dinky, but the artwork is as quirky and fun as the graphic design is cool and enticing. It fits nicely into its tiny box, which can sometimes be an issue with Oink Games, and it can be set up and struck in moments (look, I love Deep Sea Adventure, but it is such a chore to set out/put away).  

The game is a solid filler, which isn’t meant to be a criticism as not every game needs to be an Ark Nova – sometimes, ya just wanna play – and, like 6 Nimmt, has a pretty high player count (not as high though). Rounds are quick, rules are easy to grasp and it won’t hog the table either. It really is an almost flawless warm-up, betwixt or even educational game. Again, not a criticism.  

Do you want this game, then? Yes you do, but be prepared to dislike all your gaming mates intensely but briefly each time you play it. And this might be a lot.