Flip City Full 2p Playthrough

welcome to John gits games today I'll be doing a full two-player playthrough of Flip City this game combines deck building with push your luck along with the ability to upgrade the cards in your deck by flipping them over to a more powerful side I'll explain the rules to the game as we go along and at the very end I'll give you some of my initial Impressions here's the starting setup for a two-player game of Flip City we have five different purchasable card Stacks up here each card in each one of these Stacks is identical to the ones below it and then we have the two starting decks for each player this is a deck build game each player starts with one of each of these buildings except for the office the office is kind of an add-on expansion but I'll be playing with it because it comes in the base box of Flip City you may also notice that each player starts with four residential areas in one apartment and those don't show up along here these are kind of starting cards that you only get at the beginning of the game there's no way to get more of them and you don't want more of them and you'll see why in just a little bit now as the name of the game implies you're going to be flipping cards in this game and when you flip cards for instance a residential area you will see the back side has a different type of building and every single residential area flips into an apartment every single convenience store flips into a shopping mall Etc so let's jump right into the right-hand player's turn I'll explain how all this stuff works as we go along the first thing each player needs to do is Shuffle their deck now since this is an abnormal game where there are different details on each side it's very important to try and keep the orientation of these cards consistent if you ever do a shuffle that kind of flubs something you need to make sure that all those cards you're not sure about get flipped over to their basic side as you finish shuffling it's important to look away as you do your final one to make sure you're not cheating and seeing what card you might be setting yourself up for or you could just cut the deck so that it is a random card that you're going to start the game with so now we begin our turn and we see that the top card of Our Deck is a Central Park there's quite a bit of stuff going on here but the only things that matter to me right now are the stuff on the bottom and left-and side we see these two little check marks these are Victory Point markers and one way to win the game is to end your turn with eight of these little markers face up in front of you well it's going to be a little while till we get to that point so let's look at the other part it says you may buy an additional time during your building phase so we're going to get to do a building phase as long as we don't bust so I'll explain busting if we get close on this turn so I'm going to go ahead and play this Central Park down in front of me the next card in my deck is a factory and we see down in the bottom area we have a little golden two which is two buying power for the building phase if we get there and then we also see it says if your deck is not empty place the bottom card from your deck into your discard pile well our deck is certainly not empty so as I play this Factory down I will take the bottom card from my deck and I'll put it over here to start the discard pile I don't have one just yet now a player can always stop their playing card phase after they play each card and if I was to stop right now I would look down here and see that I have two buying power because the Central Park does not give me any bonus buying power I would then move on to the building phase with two purchasing power in that phase you get to do one build action the build action are to purchase a card from the top row and put it in your discard pile and the purchase cost is the big number in the top right or you could take any card in your discard pile and your discard pile is always public knowledge and you can flip one of those cards and you see this number in the bottom right hand side with the purple arrow that is the flip cost and when you do that you flip it over inside of your discard pile the last thing that you could do is you could do a development which is simply buying a card and flipping it immediately so if you were to buy this convenience store and then uh spend three to flip it immediately would cost five to develop it and you would immediately start with a shopping mall inside of your discard pile as it stands I have no unhappy faces yet and those are the way that you can potentially bust on your turn so there's really no reason to not keep going on my turn especially considering I have the Central Park and if you remember that gives me one extra Buy on this turn so I'd like to get a lot of money power to get some card actions going all right so the next card is a convenience store this one's pretty simple gives us one buying power and we see if we play 18 or more cards on this turn we win this is the other winning condition you either uh play eight victory points in one turn or you get a convenient store down along with 17 other cards so it'll be a little while until that happens but let's go ahead and play it all right so now we bumped into our first residential area uh the first thing we see is an unhappy face this is a sadness icon and we also have a buying power which is pretty nice then we see this little circular arrow symbol and this means it's kind of an ongoing conditional effect you just need to read the the effect and then it tells you when it happens this happens to say when the residential area is on the top of my deck I must play it so this is a bit scary we have an unhappy face here and you bust your turn if you put down your third unhappy face well I guess I'm not too scared yet I have no unhappy faces yet so let's go ahead and play a residential area and now we see we have an apartment okay so the apartment is the flip side of a residential area we have another unhappy symbol but this one is different this doesn't have a forced play this says you could flip this card and play place it on top of another player's discard pile well that little up Arrow icon is the recycle action which is this uh symbol over here I'll explain what that means in a little bit when it becomes a little more pertinent all I need to know is I don't think I'm going to keep playing because if I play this apartment and I reveal residential area then I would be forced to play it and that would be three unhappy faces and I would stop my turn and I would get nothing so I will now stop I'm not going to push my luck anymore and we're going to go to the build phase we see that I have two plus one plus one buying power or four and we also have that extra purchasing power from our Central Park here uh now we have a couple different good options uh one of which is to actually flip our hospital we discarded it because of the factory and we see that the flip cost is for money and a really great thing about the hospital is when you look at the backside it says that you get to add plus one to your unhappiness limit on a turn that you play this church down that's very powerful I think yeah I think I'm actually going to do that so I'm going to spend the four buying power that I have to flip this Hospital into a church I'm not actually going to make use of my extra buy from the Central Park but I'm pretty happy about that and then I end my turn by taking all the cards that I played and I put them all into my discard pile and now it's the next person's turn I think I'm going to use this high-rise City Block uh figurine that comes from Suburbia to indicate which player's turn it is so I'm going to put it over here to show that is currently the left-hand player's turn and then it'll cycle back and forth so you and I both know whose turn it is so the left-and player starts out with the resid itial area and as we knew from the last turn that means it is a forced play so they go ahead and put it down and uhoh that's scary they have another residential area shown they are forced to play that one as well and oh few there isn't another one so they're not going to have anywhere near as nice of a turn as the starting turn for the right-hand player but at least they're not forced into a bust they are obviously not going to play this apartment because that would be the third unhappy face and they would go out so they are just going to decide to stop now they have two buying power to go into their build phas and well they really only have one option here because they don't have a discard pile at all yet there's nothing to flip uh so we look up here and we see that only one thing costs two it's a convenient store well there's really no reason not to have convenient stores in your deck so they're going to go ahead and buy one of those put in the discard pile and then throw their residential areas in there all right the right-and players turn they are going to begin by playing an apartment down that's one unhappy face now they're forced to play a residential area oh crap and they are forced to play a third residential area which is going to be three unhappy faces which forces them to bust even though we have one more residential area face up in our hand here uh you don't need to play it because you bust and that immediately ends your turn so this stuff is going to go right into their discard pile and their turn is over the left player Begins by playing an apartment down and that's one unhappy face so they go ahead and play a factory that is going to ditch the bottom card from their deck which is a convenience store into their discard pile immediately and that reveals a residential area so a little scary all of a sudden we are forced to play it ah few so that's two unhappy faces this does not have an unhappy face and they can kind of look around and they know they start with four different residential areas and they see one two three of them already so we know there's one more in this deck so it's a bad idea probably to play the Central Park because it might reveal the last Central uh last residential area which would force on the bus so they're going to stop here and they have one two 3 four buying power they essentially have two options one of them is much more efficient with their buying power than the other the first is they could just buy a hospital for four uh money it's quite nice because it actually gives you money for unhappy faces but it also gives you unhappiness which isn't great the other thing they can do is they can flip a card in their discard pile and the one they would probably want to do would be the residential area here because that would flip it into an apartment which is not a forced play so they're less likely to be forced into busting uh they do have one last option which is they could flip this convenience store for three money and we see the back side of the convenience store shows that has two buying power and a victory point which is pretty great uh but it also says if your deck is not empty you must play an additional card which could force them into busting so that's probably not a good idea at this point I think this player really likes hospitals they're going to go ahead and purchase one of those and stick it in their discard pile so it's the right-and player's turn we see they have a residential area at the top of their hand so they're forced to play it and that is actually the last card in their deck when you play the last card in your deck you have an option you can either stop and move on to your build phase or you could choose to shuffle up your deck and then play on of course if you reveal a residential area as the top of that shuffle deck you're going to be forced to play it so there's a couple different ways to play this uh right player can either stop right now and get one buying power which they can then use to flip one of these residential areas into an apartment which does not have that forc play which makes their deck a little safer the flip side is they could uh take their discard pile Shuffle It Up and almost hope to maybe get a residential area or two maybe they'll bust not doing very much but then their next hand is probably going to be very strong because they would be able to play all these other cards here I think well they do have a church which gives them a larger buffer for uh getting these unhappy faces so I think they're going to push their luck and they're going to shuffle up and it looks like their starting card is indeed a residential area so they are going to be forced to play that down and okay an apartment well they're not going to play this because that would force them to bust so they have two buying power they're going to go ahead and use that to just purchase a convenient store put all the stuff into the discard pile and it turns over the left player begins with a Central Park which they play down and and now we have a hospital so what this does is it gives us an unhappiness but we also get one money buying power for each unhappiness that we gain this turn now it's important to note that this little card with the arrow symbol means it evaluates the moment it hits the table so this is only going to apply to unhappiness symbols that have already happened unfortunately we don't actually have any more unhappy symbols yet but when we play this hospital it will at least affect itself so we're going to put it down and unfortunately reveal the residential area so we're going to go ahead and play that and that is the last card in Our Deck so the left player is in a similar position to the right player on the last turn where they don't have any deck and they want to know should they Shuffle up or not now if they Shuffle and they reveal a residential area they're in big trouble and the big difference is that they have a Central Park which gives them an extra buy and this hospital is actually giving them two buying power because it has an unhappiness so that is three buying power total so I think what they're going to do is they're going to use their they're going to stop and they're going to use their build phase to flip one of their residential areas in their discard pile because that only costs a single money that turns into an apartment and now they have two buying power left they get to use the bonus buy from the Central Park to purchase a convenience store the right player starts with an apartment so they go ahead and play that down now they have a factory uh well they may as well play that down it's going to take the bottom card of the deck and oh that's a bummer it goes ahead and puts a church in the discard pile however this is probably a good time to explain recycling we see in the right hand bottom corner here there's a little green downward arrow and an unhappiness with a limit of plus one so the The Way Recycling works is any card that is in your discard pile that has a recycling effect can be used at any point uh during the playing cards phase in order to evaluate that bonus and when you do a recycle action you flip it over to its basic side so you're kind of consuming some money's worth of a bonus and you're losing the ability there but it might give you a nice bonus so in this instance you could recycle the church to give you one extra happiness which might stop you from busting on a particularly good turn so I wanted to use that church but I guess having in the discard pile is not the end of the world this reveals a residential area which we are forced to play and yeah that church would have been really nice that reveals another residence which we must play that is three unhappiness so the right-and player busts the left player Ender their turn with no decks they're going to go ahead and Shuffle up and they're going to begin with a convenience store all right so they're going to go ahead and play that down and then we have a residential area we're forced to play that uh now we've got a hospital hm this is this is interesting because we already have unhappiness out here and that would give us much more buying power right now we only have two buying power which is a pretty lame turn also we don't have any cards in our discard pile to flip like residential areas so I think the left player is going to push our luck and hope that there's not a residential area underneath this ha awesome so they get to play the hospital down that is to unhappiness and I think they're going to go ahead and stop now but because we have previous unhappy faces here which are worth of money we actually have 1 two 3 four five buying power and I think with that five buying power they're going to go ahead and purchase a factory and put that into their discard podt right player begins with a Central Park and then they go ahead and play a convenience store they could stop but they really aren't going to they only have one buying power and they have potentially an extra buy so they're going to push their luck and go ahead and Shuffle their deck up and their top card oh look at that it's a residential area so they are forced to play it one unhappiness another residential area they're forced to play it oh man uh so they are forced to play this last residential area now there is a little bit of a silver lining to this unfortunate turn and that is that they only have four residential areas total and they've got rid of three of them at the beginning of their Shuffle so their next couple turns hopefully will be pretty good it's unfortunate that they lost the use of that Central Park unfortunately the left player starts with a Central Park and then they'll go ahead and play the convenience store and they'll go ahead and play the factory which is going to burn oh man they hope it's a residence it's an apartment well that's not too bad that goes into their discard pile hm let's see here so we right now have three buying power and one extra buy that's not great let's go ahead and push our luck and they're going to play the hospital that is going to give them two extra buying power okay at this point it's getting a little scary we know that they flipped one of their residences so they have three of them we only see one of them so there's two more in this deck and this deck's getting pretty small so I think they're going to stop they currently have 1 2 3 4 five buying power also they have an extra buy with their Central Park what they're going to do is use their build action to flip this residential area into an apartment and they have let's see here four buying power left but instead of buying another hospital I think they're going to grab an office we haven't seen this card yet the way this card works is when you're shuffling you get to set this card aside and then put it on top afterwards so this actually adds a bit of protection from uh shuffling into potentially a residential area on top of your deck so it also gives you one buying power the flip side gives you two buying power and it's kind of interesting it lets you recycle which unfortunately gives you an unhappiness but it lets you shuffle your discard into your deck before you actually expended your entire deck so that's has potentially really good uh impact on having a big turn to potentially try and win the game but anyway this is just an office for now and uh that ends their turn all right the right player plays an apartment down which has an unhappiness but now they get to play the church which is going to erase the unhappiness that that apartment brought on and H they're starting to feel pretty good about this turn there's only one residence in this deck so let's go ahead and push forward we got a convenience store that gives us a little bit of money here's the last residential area so we put that down and then we can put this Factory down so that's pretty good we don't have any more cards in Our Deck so there's nothing to throw into the discard pile we currently have only one unhappiness but I really don't think they're going to reshuffle up their discard pile considering it is mostly residential areas they're going to stop here so they have one two three four five buying power and this is actually kind of interesting they could flip their Central Park in their discard pile when you flip a Central Park you'll see the backside is a station it has three victory points instead of the two for the central Park however instead of having an extra Buy on your turn you can flip one additional time during your building phase and your Flips cost one less this turn so that's really powerful especially for flipping over all these residences that they have inside their deck I think they're going to give that a shot they're going to use their five buying power to take their Central Park and flip it over into a station you may also notice that the recycle ability of a station is to just get you one extra fixure point on a specific turn Okay the left player Begins by playing a convenience store they are forced to play residential area which gives them one unhappiness and they're forced to play another residential area which gives them another unhappiness uh finally an apartment which they're not going to play because they don't want to bust they don't have that great of a turn here well let's see here they have three buying power that's not quite enough to flip any of their hospitals but it is enough to get them another office so I think they're going to go ahead and take it the right-hand player finished playing their deck on their last turn so they're going to go ahead and Shuffle up and they're going to begin the deck with a convenience store all right so let's go ahead and play that down and then we have an apartment for one unhappiness residential area for another unhappiness all right so H we can play this church which would erase one of these unhappiness is which is not a bad idea so I think they're going to go ahead and play that down so they're now only at one unhappiness but we know that there's a whole bunch of residential areas in this deck right now they're at one two three buying power which is not particularly great but it would let them buy an office H let's see here I think I think they need to start getting more cards into their deck they're going to go ahead and stop here and take an office throw that into their discard pile all right the left player has an apartment in their hands they're going to go ahead and play it and that's the last card in their deck so they're going to go ahead and Shuffle everything up and keep going with their turn however they have these Offices here which you're going to set aside and put on top of your deck after you Shuffle so you know you have these two buying power coming towards you on your turn if you decide to play it that way and the way we've been playing these offices is that you don't actually look at the top card of your deck when you put these on there so I don't know what's underneath there and we goad and continue with the turn so they have one buying power they're definitely going to play one office and I think they're going to keep pushing they get another office down okay this is a little bit riskier right if they play this apartment it's their second unhappy face revealing a residential area will bust them they currently have three buying power that's not terrible I think they're going to stop here and I think they're actually just going to buy another office these offices are working pretty well for them as they uh go through their deck all right the right player starts with a convenience store and then they'll play a factory which is going to burn the bottom card ooh that's great gets rid of a residential area in fact we revealed a station so they're definitely going to play that station down H which is going to make them play a residential area oh man oh they got lucky they are forced to play the other residential area but that's all the cards on their deck and they're definitely not going to be reshuffling because they have a pretty good turn going on here right now they have 1 two three four five different buying power also this station gives them an extra flip action and flip actions cost one less this turn they're going to go ahead and do one flip for free this residential area costs one less to flip so that is free and then they have five buying power think they're just going to go ahead and they're going to grab a factory and throw that into their discard pile the left player starts with an apartment that's going to give one unhappiness they'll go ahead and push with a convenience store and they'll play a factory as well this forces them to discard the bottom card of their deck it's a convenience store and now they have a residential area which they are forced to play and they are going to stop because this Hospital would give them an unhappiness and they already have two so they have 1 2 3 four five buying power now H let's see what do they want I think they're actually going to go ahead and do a develop action where they're going to take a convenience store which normally cost two but they're going to go ahead and flip it over developing it immediately into a shopping mall now what this does is it gives them two buying power and a victory point on the turn they use it you could also recycle it while it's in your discard pile for an extra buying power however when you play this card if your deck is not empty you must play another card so it's a little bit risky and you might be asking well why wouldn't they just go for a factory that also has two buying power on it well when you play a factory you're forced to discard cards from the bottom of your deck and the left player has a lot more cards in their deck than the right player it's kind of like they are gunning potentially for one of these convenient store victories where you're playing 18 cards down so this is a little bit more risky but it makes their deck a little bit speedier uh let's see also they have all these offices I think they feel like they have adequate protection and maybe they'll start trying to heavily invest in churches uh through flipping hospitals the right player needs to shuffle up their discard however they have an office so they pull that out and then they're going to go ahead and put that on top of their deck and begin their turn so they're going to open by playing an office down for one buying power and then we got a convenience store and they'll keep going with a factory which is going to burn a that's unfortunate it's going to put their station into their discard pile they're not going to be able to use it this round so they have no unhappiness yet so they can play this church down and it's going to increase their happiness threshold it seems like no not to do that well look at there we've got a residential area with one unhappiness so these cancel out we're at zero unhappiness we'll play the apartment we're at one and now we get a little risky we know that there are still a couple residential areas in here let's see we've got 1 two 3 four five six buying power which is really not bad it would allow us to we actually not do much efficiently I think they're going to push their luck they want one more buying power so they can potentially buy another Central Park they're going to play the convenience store oh all righty here's the residential area oh few okay so they are just barely safe with their two unhappiness because thankfully that church saved them they're going to stop their turn here and they've actually got one two three four five six seven eight buying power but I don't think they're going to do anything well now they have another interesting decision they could buy a Central Park or they could just develop a hospital flipping it over into another church oh man that is hard to pass up I think they're actually going to go ahead and do that they're going to take this flip it over into a church into their discard pile and that ends their turn Okay the left player starts with a hospital which is a little unfortunate they don't get to capitalize on previous unhappiness but they're going to go ahead oh that's funny well now they have a hospital that does capitalize on previous unhappiness so they'll drop that hospital down they're at two unhappiness now however this is 1 two 3 four five money that's not bad for just two cards and they know their next card is a Central Park which would be nice to get an extra buy they only see one residential area over here they know there's a couple more in here I think they're probably going to stop and they're going to do the risky buy again I think they're going to go ahead and develop another shopping mall into their deck all right the right player starts by playing a factory down which is going to discard an apartment and then they're forced to play residential area and let's see at this point they have only three buying power and they could stop and flip one of these residential areas however they have this station which is really good at flipping residential areas so I think they're going to go ahead and push their luck and Shuffle up their deck and keep going with their turn but of course their first going to pull this office out and that goes on top of the deck and they continue on so they're going to go ahead and place this office down oh gosh all right well it's a little risky right oh my gosh what are the odds okay well they're forced to play this and they're forced to play that well at least they have the residential areas all in their discard pile for pretty much the beginning of a shuffle and that station should do a good job of flipping these but as for this turn they're not getting anything the left player has a Central Park to start so they'll go ahead and put that down and then sure they'll play a convenience store they're forced to play this residential area and okay well at this point the left-hand player I.E me playing both these players is not terribly sure how many of these residential areas are in this deck over here they only have two buying power which is really not great I think that the left-hand player is actually going to stop here they're going to use their two buying power to just flip a residential area into an apartment inside of their discard deck they're going to waste one buying power and uh it's going to be the next person's turn all right so the right player who hypothetically has no more residential areas in their deck if I'm counting correctly is going to start their turn by playing a factory down which forces them to discard a convenience store that's not too bad they're going to go ahead and play an apartment which is one unhappiness they'll play another apartment and I think they're going to keep pushing that luck pretty sure there are no more of these Force plays they're going to drop a station down oh nice and so this church is going to counteract one of those unhappiness another church counteracts it and then a convenience store well that's our whole hand and we currently have zero unhappiness they currently have 1 2 3 four five buying power they get an extra flip on a turn you know I think they're going to use this station they're going to foro a super efficient turn they're going to flip one of these residential areas for free because the station makes flipping cost one less that is their bonus flip and they're going to do a basic flip to get this one over as well it wastes four buying power but it means they only have one more residential area in their deck which makes things a lot less scary it's been a little while since the left player has gone through the whole deck they definitely have a lot of cards going on here they're going to start with an apartment which is unhappiness and a Factory and there's nothing to discard so let's see they have three buying power here they could just do a big reshuffle in fact there's pretty much no reason not to because they can put these three offices at their front of their decks they could without any risk of anything play two of them in order to get two extra buying power so they're going to go ahead and do that of course the left player could have stopped and flipped a residential area but that doesn't seem to be how the left-and player is working so now that got an office so they can go ahead and play that without any worry they can play another one without any worry so that now they might have a little bit of a worry they have one unhappiness but they know they have some residential areas as well as some of those shopping malls which have forced plays they only have let's see here five buying power right now that is Ah that's just they don't want to keep doing shopping malls and factories I think they're going to push their luck so they're going to play this office down hm okay so now they're at six and six is kind of a terrible number right because seven would allow them to get to Central Park you can't efficiently develop anything with six and they don't ah let's see here this Hospital would give them one two three money which would really get them into a large amount I think they're going to push that luck still they're going to play the hospital man okay I think they're done pushing their luck they're going to stop their turn here but unfortunately they have 1 two 3 four five six seven eight nine buying power because of this unhappiness with the hospital and with nine buying power they can develop a church right away which I think is probably a great idea for the left player the right player shuffles up their deck and starts with the office on top they're going to go ahead and play that and then a convenience store and they're not too worried anymore they know they only have one residential area in their deck now so they're going to keep going and hope for a pretty big turn here so we're going to drop a factory which is going to burn an apartment o this could be interesting so now they're forced to play a residential area which brings them up to two unhappiness but they have no more Force plays in their deck they're going to play the Factory o this allows them to discard a convenience store they can play a church which is going to counteract one of these unhappy oh my goodness play another church so they're at zero unhappiness they can play their station down which really is going to um amp up their flipping abilities and then let's see they're at zero unhappiness they will go ahead and play this apartment they're at one unhappiness and they'll play this last apartment so that was a pretty big turn they were got 11 cards down plus they have one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 buying power and that gives them some interesting options and considering Flips cost one less with this station on this turn I think they're hardpressed to not do this so when you look at the apartments I showed this way long ago but now let's go into the actual details of it you can flip this card but it costs eight money but when you do that you flip it over and you put it into your opponent's discard pile so you get rid of a residential area apartment thing that's clogging up your deck and you make their deck worse uh they really can't pass that up especially considering it's a discount of one so this only costs seven to do this so they're going to flip it over throw it into the discard pile for the left-handed player and now they have three buying power left they could flip this over for a discount of two or they could just make a standard buy of three I think they'll go ahead and just grab an office and throw that into their discard pile okay the left-hand player is a little scared by that last turn by the right-hand player not only do they now unfortunately have another residential area in their deck but they saw the right player pretty much play their entire deck in one go and there's not much stopping them from continuing to do that so the left player even though they have a lot of cards is a little worried about their Prospect so they're going to go ahead and open they're going to play a hospital down they'll drop a factory which is going to discard a shopping mall H I don't know if they're happy or not about that and at this point they could keep going if they wanted to they have one unhappiness this would give them another one but they know they have a couple residential areas they know they have at least one more shopping mall all these things are kind of time bombs in their deck maybe they made some poor decisions here I think they're actually gonna stop here even though they have four buying power they're going to inefficiently use that to just flip over this oh man or or or or no I think they're going to use that for buying power they're going to flip this Hospital over into a church which will help streamline and get them through all this unhappiness that they seem to have going on okay the right-and player shuffles up their deck and puts a couple offices on top and they're going to hope to make a really cool big turn like they just did last time they go ahead and play one office down and then another and let's see they'll drop an apartment which is one un happiness another apartment oh okay well that ends this uh one particular turn they weren't able to get their churches out in time so looks like they just have four buying power well considering how efficient their deck is they might actually switch gears and try just to get 18 cards down in one turn they'll go ahead and grab one of these super cheap convenience stores just to be one more step on that ladder okay left player starts with an apartment for one unhappiness then a convenience store they're forced to play this residential area and they are at two in happiness already they have one two three buying power hm this is really not great well I'm think they're just going to use this turn to flip over this residential area that's unfortunately inside their deck to get rid of the little bombs that are going to explode and make them bust on their turn and uh they just hope they can get their deck a little more streamlined in time before the right-hand player wins okay the right player plays an apartment and then a station this church is going to erase the unhappiness from that apartment they'll play another convenience store and now they've got a church so they are essentially positive they can get three more on happiness forced to play this residence so those going to cancel out they'll play a factory which discards this convenience store and they're going to play another Factory and that's the end of their deck at this point they're at seven buying power but zero unhappiness now they could use the station to do the same trick where they flip over an apartment into their opponent's deck but I think it might make a little more sense for them to just try and have a really big turn where they just get a couple Central Parks and just get to that eight victory points uh before uh the left hand player is able to get up to any Shenanigans so they're going to go ahead and Shuffle up this deck they're going to pull the two offices out those are going to go on top so they're going to bring those onto their Shuffle deck and they're going to go ahead and play them so we got one office and then another office they're still at zero unhappiness they'll play a convenience store another one okay well now they're at one unhappiness and two so they've actually played their entire deck and this is 14 cards so they're getting really close to winning through a convenient store win and more importantly they have one two three four five six 7 8 99 10 11 12 13 buying power and 13 is a great number because that lets us just develop a station of course developing a station only costs 12 7 plus five but uh who's complaining that's two different cards in their deck that give three victory points right off the gate okay it's a left-and players turn they're hoping for something big here so they're going to start with a Central Park and then an apartment for one unhappiness the shopping mall is going to force them to play the convenience uh store but that's no problem they'll play another convenience store and then an apartment okay well they're at two and half happiness which is not great but they're also at let's see 1 2 3 4 5 six buying power which I think they just need to go a little bit bigger on this turn to try and get themselves back into this game but they're already at two unhappiness so I think what they're going to do is they're going to use a recycle ability so we see this on the bottom right hand side of the church it increases your limit by one so they're going to flip the church over it is now Hospital once again however uh they going to shuffle up their deck here and they now have an extra happy unhappy face that they can play Down uh before they bust on their turn and of course the three offices Will Go On Top of the deck after we shovel okay so they're going to go ahead and keep going with their turn they'll play an office and an office and an office and kind of squeeze those all together I think and now they've got a factory which is going to force them to get rid of a factory to their discard pile and okay well they can play this apartment because they went over that threshold so they will go ahead and do that and well that ends their turn so I don't think this was able to get quite as big as they were hoping well they were able to get to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 nine 10 buying power and that's enough to develop another church into their deck they just got rid of one and these really are the key I think to the left-hand player getting through their entire deck fast enough to get to 18 cards to win okay the right player shuffles up their deck because they played the entire thing last turn and you can bet they're probably going to do the same thing this turn so they'll play an office and then another office and an apartment which is one unhappiness that's fine this church is going to counteract that they'll play convenience store another apartment so they're at one unhappiness uh convenience store a church which negates that unhappiness back to zero they'll play a station and then a factory which is going to force the discard oh of this station that's unfortunate uh they're going to play another Factory which is going to discard this convenience store and now they're forced to play this residence area and if we add this all up we see we're at one unhappiness currently so they can drop down this apartment and they are at two unhappiness so they're still safe in fact looking at a discard pile we know there are no unhappiness in here so they may as well pick these up go ahead and give them a shuffle it doesn't really matter because they know they can play both of them and they will start by dropping this convenience store down and then playing the station they have just played 15 cards which is not quite enough to win yet they only have six victory points so that's also not enough to win so let's see how much money they have available they got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 and 12 of course is the magic number to develop a Central Park into a station so they are pretty much set to win next turn Okay the left-hand player is pretty dejected to see that but they'll give it a go they will drop an apartment down oh man and they get another apartment so they're already at two unhappiness they will play a convenience store they will play this shopping mall it will force the play of this hospital and that unfortunately is going to bust them but they had to give it a shot and the right player shuffles up the deck they put the offices on top for what I think is a foregone conclusion turn will play an office an office convenience store a factory is going to discard a church they will play the residential area because they must then a convenience store they at one unhappiness a factory is going to get rid of a station but they're totally okay with that because this church erases the unhappiness we've got an apartment so we're back up to one unhappiness we play the station so we have three victory points we play another station we're at six victory points this uh convenience store is fine we play this apartment now and if we look at all this we know that we were only at one unhappiness previous so now we're at two unhappiness we can oh actually this is not a foregone conclusion holy cow uh they cannot play this apartment down because they would go to three unhappiness and those two were both discarded by the factories oh those factories really came to bite red so left has a little bit more of a chance to win however the right player does still have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 buying power again so I think they will just go ahead and develop another station okay okay the left player starts with a hospital uh they're forced to play residential area uh but now they have a church so that erases this uh one unhappiness so they are only at one currently and what the heck they're just going to go for they're going to shuffle up their entire deck they're going to pull these three offices out and see where this turn takes them okay so they take the office cards and they throw them back on top and they just keep going for it so they're going to play an office uh we remember we're at let's see here only one in happiness so office office office which we knew about uh they'll play an apartment down which is going to bring them to two unhappiness but looks like we have a church so they can go ahead and play that down back down to one unhappiness uh let's see they'll go ahead and play this Factory which is going to force them to O that's going to force them to discard an apartment that could be interesting uh let's see they have a hospital uh but they can actually play this they're only at one unhappiness so they'll go ahead and play it and oh man they have to I think they have to keep going for it they let's see how much buying power do they currently have they have one two three four five six seven 8 n hm maybe they don't need to keep going for it actually they have more than that right because of this unhappiness right here so that's 10 11 12 13 buying power 13 buying power that would be enough to get this apartment flipped over into a residential area to kind of screw with the right-hand player ah man should they stop here I think the left player has been pushing their luck all game and I think they're just going to keep pushing their luck because oh man they know they have a Central Park so they'd really like to not waste all that extra buying power they already have they're going to go for it they're going to play okay so they're going to play the convenience store and H they have to do it so they're going to play the Central Park ah nice okay so they're definitely going to stop at this point how much buying power do they have I think I was actually wrong before let's see this hospital it gets us one two for the unhappiness here then we have three four five 6 7 8 9 10 11 buying power but then this Hospital gets us another 12 13 14 15 buying power and then is actually kind of perfect they have this Central Park which gives them an extra buy so what they're going to do they are going to take this apartment they're going to flip it over for eight and they're going to put it into the discard pile the right-hand player so it's not quite as much of a four gun conclusion that they're going to win on their next turn and now they've got seven buying power left so let's see here they could just take a Central Park for seven or a man seven that that is a little frustrating actually one more and they able to get another church but what the heck they'll go ahead and grab a Central Park and see where the game takes them okay so the right player is a little bummed about that they now have two residential areas in their deck they're going to go ahead and play this apartment pull these two offices out and Shuffle everything up with four stations in their deck I think they are sitting pretty pretty so they go ahead and start with an office and then another office oh here's one of those residential areas so man nope here's another turn where they're not going to be able to do it so that gets them to two unhappiness and this next card is an apartment they can't play that they would bust so they're just going to go ahead and stop and with four buying power they're just going to grab another office all right the left player is still in this game they're going to go ahead and play the shopping mall which forces the play of the factory the factory makes you discard the bottom card of your deck oh that's nice gets rid of an apartment and they will play an apartment so they're at one unhappiness they'll go ahead and play another apartment they're at two unhappiness and I think they feel pretty safe they're going to go ahead and keep playing they'll drop a convenience store and another convenience store oh and a shopping mall well I'm going to put that down the deck is empty so they're not forced to keep playing and they are currently at two unhappiness this leaves the left-hand player with 2 4 6 7 8 9 10 buying power and that is enough to once again take one of these apartments flip it over and put it in the discard pile of the right-hand player unfortunately it's probably not going to be quite enough considering they did not go through the whole deck last turn they will probably win on this turn I'm speaking like the left time player is dead already let's see how the right players turn works okay well they begin with an apartment and they drop that down one happiness H this church probably seals the deal that brings them back to zero unhappiness now they will play a factory which is going to get rid of oh that gets rid of one station that's not great uh they'll drop a convenience store and then another Factory which we'll get rid of oh well I swear I didn't stack the deck uh I'm G to put this station over here wow that was surprising and then we will play a convenience store let's see here right now they're still at zero on happiness so they're still feeling pretty good he'll go ahead and drop this apartment down there is one station so they're at one unhappiness they will ah okay so here we go they can drop this station down and at this point they can just win and the reason for that is they have three victory points here three victory points here and you'll notice the recycle ability on the station you can flip it over for a victory point so at this point they could keep playing through their deck and uh probably win anyway but they may as well take the for sure Victory they have three six seven eight points and this wins the game for the right-and player all right so here are the full decks of the both players uh as the game ended it became pretty obvious I think by the mid game that the right player was creating a stronger engine although interestingly enough they both ended the game with 20 cards in their deck uh the left player had quite a few more in the mid game but the right player was much better at making an efficient engine uh it's also interesting to note that we didn't actually use two of the types of buildings we never flipped over a factory and we never flipped over an office so I'm going to briefly explain those right now the factory I kept trying to make it happen because it's a very important card on the backside with the power plant you get an unhappiness which isn't great you get a money which is eh but you also get two victory points and most importantly when you play this card you get to take an apartment from your discard pile and put it directly into an opponent's discard pile just directly affecting their unhappiness this is uh way more efficient than having to flip an apartment over because that costs eight money uh to put it in their discard pile of course it goes into their pile as an apartment not as a residential area so it's slightly less bad for them but it's just way more efficient at getting these things out of your deck and making your deck faster uh just was never able to get any of the players to use this also the recycle ability on the power plant lets you just flip it over and put the card right on top of your deck so that you can then immediately play it in case you really desperately need two extra buying power and then the flip side of the office I think I mentioned briefly at one point in the video is simply that you get to money and you can recycle this card by flipping it over you get an unhappiness but it lets you take your discard Pile in its current state and Shuffle it in with your deck so actually the left-hand player really could have used this for those couple times where it seems like they had a really tough time getting through their big discard pile which had a lot of their good cards in it they just had to get through all this bad stuff getting a nice reshuffle in there would have been pretty good for that player But ultimately the right-hand player was the Victor now I'm going to talk briefly about Flip City in general as well as this specific play of the game this is far from a review this is more just like some thoughts that are bouncing around inside my head so the first thing of note really is that it's a neat game I really like that flipping mechanic I can't think of another game that I've seen that in and it works really well of course if you don't Shuffle well and you accidentally kind of flub your cards you might be in for a bit of an issue but you just flip all your cars back over again and you're really sad for making that mistake uh also the idea of mixing pushy luck with deck building that is just really fascinating I don't think I've seen anything like that before and I like both of those things I really like push your luck I like deck building okay it's it's a bit of an older thing for me I've done a lot of deck building games it doesn't excite me that much but when you mix the flipping with the pushy luck in with the deck building I'm in this seems really cool um I kind of wish maybe there were more buildings but I it's supposed to be a smallish game and I get that also I imagine it can be very expandable and now shifting into this specific play of the game you probably noticed that I was trying to play the rightand player is more of a conservative player not taking risks and the left-hand Player is taking lots of risks and I will definitely say that I think I played the left player much worse than the right player I don't think that means that taking risks is bad in this game I think you need to do that but that left player needed to get those residential areas out and I think they needed to focus on getting those power plants I kind of forgot they existed because they're on the opposite side of the card if they had gotten a power plant or two they'd have been able to throw those apartments very quickly and efficiently back into the right-hand players area and really stall that crazy engine that the right player had going uh the right player had a really good advantage of getting that station out early got a lot of very efficient flips to get those residential areas turned into apartment complexes to take a lot of the risk out of playing out of their deck and I think that was a very strong play obviously red player got a little lucky I think to make that happen but it all works out in general I've been really impressed with this game uh that was a interesting play of it I kind of wish it had been a little bit closer to kind of show offs a little bit attention it seemed like it was pretty much a done deal a few turns from the end but I think it's a pretty good example of the different ways that the game can play and I don't know you can see what happens when you don't make the best decisions and how you end up just kind of tripping on your own shoe places I'm falling down if you'd like to see more full game playthroughs like this one as well as in-depth game reviews and Vlogs please subscribe to my channel also if you'd like to become more involved with the channel you can directly support it at patreon.com jat games thanks for watching