Flip City: Reuse Overview
You might remember my glowing review of Flip City from last month. What I didn’t mention was that Tasty Minstrel had been planning on releasing an official expansion to the game. It adds 2 additional cards, for a total of 4 sides. I first discovered this expansion last year, but it wasn’t in English at the time. Imagine my delight when TMG ported it to over. Let’s take a look at Flip City: Reuse!
How to Setup Flip City: Reuse
Flip City: Reuse comes with 28 total new cards: 14 Renewal Agency / Plumber Shop cards, and 14 Flea Market / Recycling Bin cards.
Setup for Flip City: Reuse is identical to the base game, but with each player’s starting deck getting a Plumber and a Flea Market card. 2 piles of 10 cards each are then added to the general supply, and the game can begin.
How to play Flip City: Reuse
Plumber Shop
The Plumber Shop gives players another “attack” avenue, by forcing each opponent to discard either the top, or the bottom, card from their deck.
Renewal Agency
The Renewal Agency gives you a whopping 3 coins, but restricts you to using them on Flip or Develop actions. Still totally worth it.
Flea Market
The Flea Market card allows you to leave the card in your discard pile should you want, and optionally you can receive an additional coin by flipping it to the Recycling Bin side.
Recycling Bin
The Recycling Bin gives players the ability to pay a single coin to receive a single additional Flip action on their turn.
Final Thoughts on Flip City: Reuse
The original game had very little player interaction, with the exception being the Power Plant’s ability to place Apartments from your discard pile into your opponents discard pile, and the ability to Flip an Apartment to a Residential Area and place it into your opponents discard pile. Flip City: Reuse adds another option for “attack” by using the Plumber card to force each opponent to discard either top card from their deck (public knowledge), or the bottom card (unknown). This can be a huge advantage as my daughter found out to her great dismay each time we’ve played. The Renewal Agency is also a huge advantage as 3 coins from a single card, with no unhappiness is a nice thing to have. The drawback of course is that you have to give up the Plumber Shop
The Flea Market is a nice option but given that you have to flip it to get the single coin it offers it feels a bit limiting. I’m not a fan of the Recycling Bin ability, but in part that’s just my playing style. I don’t tend to Flip very often, with the exception of the Hospitals and Factories.
With only 2 cards, 4 total sides, there’s very little to dislike, and the expansion is a decent offering. It would have been nice if TMG would have either offered a few more cards, or lowered the price slightly. $10 isn’t unreasonable at all given their fanatical devotion to quality components, but even one more card could have expanded play options and let you mix in different cards based on your playing style.
