Flash Point Fire Rescue

Details: Category: Game Reviews; Published: Saturday, 16 December 2017 21:58; Written by Brent Rosencrans; Hits: 976

Flash Point Fire Rescue is a cooperative board game for 1-6 players. The game comes with two “modes”, a basic game and an advanced mode. The advanced mode almost reminds me more of an included expansion. This review will focus primarily on the beginner mode, but we will discuss the advanced mode later.

In both games the goal is basically the same, save 7-10 victims of the fire. Along the way, you will have to deal with smoke, fire, explosions, wall collapses, and in the more advanced game, hazmat and hotspot areas.

My play experience with this game is limited to two players. This makes the more advanced game a little too cumbersome if you want to take advantage of all the various characters. In the basic mode, each character has the exact same abilities.

In the basic game, each player receives a generic firefighter with basic abilities. You get four points (called Action Points or APs) to use each turn. Various actions, such as walking, putting out a fire, changing a fire to smoke, putting out smoke, chopping down walls (be careful with this), and carrying victims costs so many points. If you have points at the end of your turn, you can bank them by taking tokens. You can also share your extra points with another player.

How to Win: Rescue the correct number of victims depending on the mode of play (basic mode is 7).

How to lose: There are two ways you can lose in Flash Point Fire Rescue.

1. If you allow four victims to die (get caught in an explosion or fire) you lose. It should be noted that your firefighter does not die when caught in a fire/explosion, but is blown all the way to the nearest parking spot. He must then re-enter the building either through a main door or collapsed wall.

2. You can also lose if the building collapses from too much damage to walls (using black cubes to track).

My Review

This is one of the go to games for my wife and I. As mentioned before, we primarily play the basic game. It provides enough challenge to prevent us from winning each time, but still makes winning both achievable and challenging at the same time.

The instruction book was clear and easy to read, though early on, we seemed to refer to it frequently, especially with regards to explosions and how damaged walls and open doors can affect the game.

The components are pretty solid and the two sided board does allow for even more variety. I suppose my biggest complaint is that the firefighters are different colors, but other than that are identical. It would have been nice to have had more unique characters, especially for the advanced mode.

Update: (Dec 2017) - My wife and I played this game as a four player beginner game and found this a bit cumbersome. It seems it is probably best with 3 as it always seemed like one player didn't really know what to do. Overall ratings not affected, but I would hesitate to put four in the game unless you are playing the expert variant.

Overall Ratings:

Instructions: 8/10

Ease of Play: Basic Mode: 8/10

Components: 7/10

Replay Value: 10/10 (If you roll for where to place the fire/victims at the start instead of using the standard setup.)

Overall Rating: 8.25