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There’s some games that are so simple, fun, accessible and cheap they seem to fall into my collection without me realising they’ve appeared there. My decision to add them almost doesn’t happen, they are the official no brainer, why wouldn’t I purchase it? It’s harder to find a reason not to than just pick a copy up, with classic examples being Love Letter, Skull, Anomia and No Thanks. Flip 7 from The OP Games is another example of this, a handful of rules and a setup time only matched in its simplicity by the aforementioned Anomia, you take the stack of cards from the box, shuffle them and put them in front of your designated dealer.

The game of Flip 7 is so simple it almost makes you cross you didn’t think of it yourself, there’s just enough of something though to give it flavour and a spot all of its own out from the crowd. What you have here is rather close to Blackjack where the dealer will come to each player in turn and just ask them if they want another card or to stick where they are, Hit or Stay as the manual, sorry, leaflet states.

So what are you trying to achieve here? Well this is where the Blackjack comparison moves away somewhat. You’re not trying to get close to or hit a particular total in each round, you’re trying to amass as many points as you can, with an overall target of reaching and exceeding 200 points which will be achieved from several rounds of play. As the round progresses each player will collect cards in front of them that equate to points in their pot, however, if they bust they lose the points, whereas if they decide to stick they’ll bank those points and as you imagine banked points are then safe for the game. 

What makes the decision of whether to hit or stay interesting and mildly thinky is the structure of the deck. Comprised of cards numbered from 1 to 12 which represent points, the quantity of each card in the deck is matched by its value, so there are three 3s, there are eight 8s, twelve 12s etc and so herein lies the quandary, high value cards are great points wise but if you ever receive a card that is already on display in your pot, whallop you’ve just busted so those high value cards carry an extra layer of risk.  It’s a neat system and as mentioned mildly thinky, you won’t agonise, it’ll be a snap decision but a fun one. 

This might sound fun albeit slightly thin, however fear not as the deck does actually contain a few other surprises which come in the shape of action and score modifier cards. Action cards appear in three different types, two of which provide additional consideration. The Freeze card is played on another player who is then automatically our of the round banking their points, so feel free to target that player who is running away points wise to slow them down. 

Another called the Flip Three can be played on yourself or an opponent who then immediately has to draw three cards to add to their pot. This can obviously go well or badly from how you look at it, gifting an opponent three cards could send them off into the distance with a huge score or could well bust them, alternatively playing this on yourself can be great or disaster! The final action card is the Second Chance offering you an extra life to avoid busting.

The score modifier cards simply offer bonus points to your pot and there’s even a x2 score multiplier card lurking in the deck which can send you sailing off towards that 200 point target. One question which might be lingering is regarding the name of the game and why Flip7? Well this refers to a bonus for anyone who manages to flip seven different cards in a round, excluding action cards and modifiers. The bonus here is the round ends immediately and that player receives an additional fifteen points. Again a lovely little twist to add a little more drama.

So there you have it, a neat easy to teach and fun to play card game that seems to sit well with all sorts of crowds. It won’t provide entertainment for hour after hour but very easy to whip out after a take away with friends or to fill a gap in a games session. Nicely produced, bright coloured artwork and good quality cards all in a shiny box, which is possibly a little oversized for what is just a deck of cards and may result in some people getting rid of the box and storing the cards in an alternate way which is a shame as the box does look rather nice!

There’s no shortage of good small box card games circulating around this hobby and for people like myself it can be hard not to add just one more of them to the shelf. They seem to be a really easy purchase, not just for the fact they are generally on the cheaper side but because the commitment with them is easy to fulfil. They often have a fairly short set up, teach and play time meaning you can complete the satisfying full journey of a game including post game discussion in a relatively short timespan. 

This is very much the case here with Faraway, not only in that you’ll complete the game cycle journey in quick time but that in the game itself you’ll be going on a journey, thematically that is, not literally! You’d think that going on a journey far away you’d need to pack lots, however, looking at the contents of this box it’s just two decks of cards and a scoring pad. It’s svelte, this thing travels light. 

Set up is so simple, you shuffle the two decks of cards and from the main deck you deal each player three cards, then put out a number of cards face up in the middle of the table, dependant on player count. The secondary deck which contains what is known as sanctuary cards is just put face down in convenient reach of all players. That’s it, you are good to go, bon voyage!

Having taught the game to several people it’s interesting that every time the teach is pretty swift but trying to add too many examples of the cards and combinations can bog it down. Generally speaking the best way to learn is know the basic structure of gameplay and then play the first game badly. The mistakes and realisations that dawn on you teach the game far better than being waffled at. Learn how a turn works and just dive in, it comes together so quickly.

For the purposes of this review though we will outline proceedings. The game consists of eight rounds, with turns taken simultaneously which certainly drives game time down. In each round players secretly select one card from their hand, then all cards are revealed simultaneously and placed forming a row in front of each player. Part of each cards’ anatomy contains a numerical value which defines the order in which players then draw a new card from a selection available in the centre of the table which they add to their hand. This process is repeated until players have eight cards in a row in front of them, at which point you move to scoring. 

Before we look at scoring we’ll just explain a bit more about the cards from the main deck and also the aforementioned sanctuary deck. Each of the cards from the main deck fall into one of four different colour categories, blue, red, yellow and green. The vast majority of the cards will offer a particular way of scoring points, usually based around colours of card or symbols on display in your tableau. Lots of the cards will also display one or two symbols from a selection of three and often these symbols are required to activate the scoring criteria on other cards. 

We mentioned briefly before that each card has a numeric value dictating the order in which players draft new cards for their hand. Well should a player present a card with a higher initiative than the one previously played they get to take cards from the sanctuary deck. These sanctuary cards will offer players additions to their scoring flexibility with extra symbols on display, colours available and also extra scoring criteria. This adds a pleasant extra layer of consideration to proceedings as you have to weigh up playing low numbers to get first pick of new cards against playing higher values to pick up sanctuary cards.

You’d be right in thinking that the whole tableau building and needing certain symbols or resources to unlock and score a card doesn’t feel new as such, nor does balancing the low or high initiative to determine the order of the draft against other bonuses but combining this with the reverse scoring really makes for a very neat very thinky game. So let’s look at this reverse scoring.

When the game ends and scoring begins this rather special aspect arrives and you realise you had your brain in the wrong way round. The first seven cards each player has played are all turned face down and then players score the cards they’ve played in the reverse order with which they were placed. Why is this an issue? I hear you ask. Well most of the cards will contain points players might score by playing them, note the use of might. Cards will often have a series of symbols on them required to be visible in that players tableau in order to effectively unlock the score. However, if those symbols are on cards which are currently face down then they’re obviously not available. This is where you realise the order in which you played your cards becomes so very important, you need to plan and think in reverse.

Some cards will offer a big return in points but often require three or four symbols in order to be active, so these cards need to be placed first and the cards offering those symbols after so that as you travel back down the line of cards all the ones you need to score the big points are already turned over. Something else that can come into play is the beloved hate drafting, as committing to a certain card that offers big points also signals to other players what you’re after. 

So then comes the consideration of do you play low cards to get first pick from the middle but then potentially miss out on sanctuary cards, which can be so useful as they do not get turned face down and their bonus is ever present. However, sanctuary cards are drawn face down so it’s luck of the draw. Aggghhhh it’s a painful delight, it’s got terrific layers of consideration but it’s never stodgy, you don’t feel bogged down as the game is so short you can make decisions and know they’re not going to haunt you for forty minutes.

The short playtime for this game has meant every time I’ve played a game there’s been a request to play a second and third time. It seems to promote a desire to achieve an almost perfect tableau where players can score from every card, which, spoiler alert doesn’t really ever happen. You have to accept that often you are simply putting a card down purely for the benefit of scoring another, the perfect combination will not happen. This isn’t a bad thing at all as it creates an addiction to trying.

The concept of going on a journey meeting different characters at each step to establish what they need you to essentially bring back is a very nice idea and does fit the mechanics, however after a few plays you forget that’s what is meant to be happening and you’re just focusing on the symbols on the cards. That said it’s far more pleasant to play with cards containing artwork, which we must say is of a very good standard than plain cards and symbols devoid of any theme. It gives the game charm and warmth, a personality really.

There is news of an upcoming expansion which is certainly interesting and pleasingly it looks to be in the form of what is essentially a booster pack of cards. Those of which can simply be shuffled straight into the main and sanctuary decks and be utilised without any extra disruption to the base game. Bloating this product with too many extra rules would be a bad move in our opinion.

So there we have it, in conclusion Faraway is a solid well considered thinky card game offering interesting decisions and a real arc in what is a pretty short timespan. Presentation is lovely and the components great quality. This game deserves a place in any collection, very easy recommendation.

Mind Up sits in the themeless small box card game category, which sounds like a bit of an insult doesn’t it? Well it most certainly isn’t meant to be, as clever themeless card games can often be most enjoyable and a very useful weapon in the arsenal of a gamer. Certain themes can put people off who are perhaps not as thematically relaxed as others from sitting down to play a game that they might potentially otherwise enjoy. However there are no fantasy characters or secret agents here to threaten your reputation among others, just safe old numbers on cards. So fear not worried ones you’ll still be recognised as a cool grown up if you play this game.  

Right so what do we have in the box? Well according to the very nicely written and designed instructions we get cards, 104 of them to be precise. These are broken into three groups, sixty main cards numbered from 1 to 60 divided into five different colours with twelve cards in each group. You then have thirty scoring cards, five for each player numbered 1 to 5, that’s right this game plays up to a hefty six people. Then finally fourteen bonus objectives which we’ll come to later.

So now we’ve covered the games streamlined contents how do we play. Mind Up is a blind bidding almost set collection type situation. To start the game each player is given a set of scoring cards and seven random cards dealt from the main deck. One player shuffles their scoring cards and lays them out in front of them with everyone else copying whatever that order is with their own set of scoring cards. A number of cards matching the player count is drawn from the main deck and laid out in ascending numerical value in the middle of the table and you’re ready to begin.

In each turn of the game every player is going to simultaneously choose a card from their hand and place it face down in front of them, once everyone has chosen you all reveal.  Then going through the selected cards from low to high each player takes the card from the centre of the table that matches their order replacing it with their bidding card. The taken card is then added on to one of the scoring cards and then the bidding process continues with players then bidding with another card from their hand for the cards now on the table. This continues until players have one card left in hand which is then added to the appropriate scoring card and then players calculate their score.

This pattern of bidding for cards continues for three rounds and as you would expect the player with the highest score at the end wins. There are however a few extra aspects which make this game very interesting to us, firstly the scoring card system. As mentioned the cards are numbered 1 to 5 but dealt shuffled so as an example everyone may end up with 3,5,1,2 and 4 in front of them. What this means is every card allocated to the first scoring card will be worth 3 points, cards added to the second scoring card 5 points each and so on. The interesting aspect here is the scoring cards have a set colour allocated to them based on the first card placed there, so the first card you take in any round is always put on the first scoring card and any cards taken that match colour also placed there. However, as soon as you take a second colour that is added to the second scoring place. So what you’ll be trying to do is maximise the placement of particular colours in particular places, which becomes a really lovely puzzle of trying to guess what bid card you need to play to take the correct colour from the middle of the table, with the kicker obviously being everyone is trying to do the same. 

To add extra spice here the order of scoring cards is actually changed at the beginning of each round, so everyone may end up with their high scoring cards in the end places which mean you need to pick up a series of different colour cards to move over and be able to place cards in the better spots. It’s really very clever.

Another really interesting aspect is that at the end of each round after calculating your score you’re not dealt a fresh set of cards for the next round, oh no, the cards you get for the next round are ones you’ve placed on your scoring cards in the current round. In the second and third round you also get an extra card from the deck but essentially what we have here is an almost closed economy. By the half way stage you start to know which are the really high or low cards in circulation and also which colours are well represented. A lot of people might not even notice but for very observant players it can offer an advantage. 

These elements make for a really very interesting nugget of a game. In several respects this really feels similar to the rather great 6Nimmt, which interestingly also comes with exactly 104 cards? Both games utilise the system whereby each turn is taken simultaneously with all players each selecting a card from their hands keeping it face down and then all revealing together, which obviously has a big element of luck but also a large degree of considered judgement. You can see where the others players will probably be placing their blind bid, you can’t be absolutely sure but judging it right is tense and a lovely feeling. 

There’s something great about having a system whereby everyone is simultaneously selecting cards. Nobody feels any downtime as such, there’s the constant request for your attention and demand on your decisions, often requiring you to make snap decisions which can often be wrong but this just improves proceedings and makes things more chaotic.

We should look at replayability, which is decent as you’ll always get different card  combinations but we’d say that most games will feel somewhat similar. By which I mean you won’t really play Mind Up wondering how different games will play out, you’ll know how the game will feel. This isn’t a bad thing as such as you’ll never get a poor game of Mind Up but I suppose there won’t be real standout games either. It’s dependable fun for most people although I’m sure the aspect of making judgement calls which in most cases will fall down to luck to some extent will mean some strategy purists bemoan the cards weren’t in their favour. However I would counter this and say there are elements of strategy to when you use certain cards, keeping very low numbers in hand to almost guarantee you take the first card on the table and keeping back the last card of the round to be placed in a particular column. It has just enough of both elements in my opinion.  

In terms of game time the box is spot on, Mind Up can easily be done in fifteen to twenty minutes with a very short teach. Our group has played this at three, four and five players and it was great at all counts. Coming back to the bonus objectives we mentioned earlier, we have to put our hands up and say we haven’t tried any of them yet as we’ve been perfectly happy with the standard game, however I’m sure we’ll get round to it. Reading about them in the rules it seems like they’d add just enough spice to bring some extra consideration without disrupting the main game. 

This game goes right in the collection alongside other quick card game favourites like the already mentioned 6Nimmt but also other great games like No Thanks, Love Letter, Scout and Startups. So there we have it, hard to go wrong here, reliable fun, nicely produced and cheap to buy, it really didn’t take us long to make our Mind Up about this one!