Objective

In Flip Freighters, players play as a freight company, that is in charge of getting products to their customers. This will be done through the flipping of cards from a deck and deciding whether to load those “goods” on trucks to be shipped out, or to use the card’s numerical value to deliver the trucks to their destination.

The player at the end of the game who manages to ship their goods most effectively, to their customers, wins the game.

Components

• 1 Sheet per player
• 2 Decks of (standard) Playing Cards. Use only Ace,2,3,4,5,6 and all four Jokers, removing all 7,8,9,10,Jack,Queen,King

Note: In this game Aces are considered to be 1’s.

Note: Jokers may be used as any number and suit.

Setup

• Shuffle all 52 cards together then deal out 3 piles with 15 cards each.
• Choose one of these piles to be the draw deck for week one, and place the other two piles off to the side.
• The extra 7 cards may be removed from the table as they will not be used in this game.

Gameplay Overview

• The game will take place over 3 weeks (rounds).
• Each week will consist of 5 days (turns).
• During each day, players will play simultaneously : they use the values on the three faceup cards to load or move their trucks. Once all players have used all three cards, the next day will begin.
• A week ends when all the cards in the draw pile are exhausted. Players will use those last three cards as usual, score points, and then move to the next week.
• At the end of three weeks, players will total their score and the player with the highest score wins.

On Your Turn

All players may then use each of the three cards of the day, in any order of their choosing, to do one of two actions: Loading or Moving.

For Loading, suits represent types of goods, and the numbers represent the amount of that good.

• Loading
  1. Click on a card
  2. The game displays/highlights all truck squares where you can load with this card (suits represent types of goods, and the numbers represent the amount of that good)
     • Each square that has a number on it requires that number;
     • Each square that has a suit on it requires that suit; squares that have multi-suits may be filled with any suit.
     • The amount you can load is indicated by the symbol outside the truck.
       • "=" means this truck must be loaded with only one value
       • "≠" means this truck must be loaded with only different values
       • "#" means this truck must be loaded with any values
       • "6-1" means this truck must be loaded with 1,2,3,4,5,6 values from front to back, ie from RIGHT to LEFT. You may skip numbers but you may never fill in numbers that were skipped.
       • "1-6" means this truck must be loaded with 6,5,4,3,2,1 values from front to back, ie from RIGHT to LEFT. You may skip numbers but you may never fill in numbers that were skipped.
     • once a truck has started moving, you may not load anything else onto it
  3. Click on the square you target
• Moving
  1. Click on a card
  2. The game displays/highlights all truck route spots where you can move to with this card
     • Any truck may be moved at any point, as long as it has at least one square filled
     • You can move as far from the truck starting position as the card's value
     • You can move less than the maximum
     • Additionally, you may split the value on a card between two or more trucks
  3. Click on the circle you target for a truck
  4. Click on the circle you target for another truck, etc... repeat
  5. Click the top button "Stop moving" to confirm
  6. In case you did not spend all the possible moves for a card, you won't be able to use the remaining amount (unless you cancel your turn)
  7. Once you have filled in all the movement circles for a truck, it has reached its destination (near the box with scoring condition), the game displays the score of the truck according to the truck scoring rules and the loaded goods. This truck is now delivered, and can no longer be accessed for the rest of the game
  8. It is worth noting that some trucks have more than one stop location along their path (x1 and x2), giving you more points for delivering the truck further. When you reach the first location you may choose whether to deliver that truck, or you may keep going. Once you have delivered and score the truck, you may not continue moving that truck.
• Overtime Hours
  • Near the week-end scoring, you will find a section labeled “Overtime Hours.” This area will let you either increase or decrease a card’s value by 1. Players may choose to use multiple circles on the same card, and may even increase a number over 6 if they would like. Every hour that you do not use will give you 2 points at the end of the game.
  • In order to use it, click on the buttons "+1" or "-1" on step 2 (either loading or moving)
  • if Overtime Variant Rule is enabled, click on the buttons "spade", "heart", "club" or "diamond" on step 2 (either loading or moving) to change the card to that suit. The game highlights the original suit of the card in case you forget it
• Buttons
  • End turn: stop your turn so that you cannot act until next turn + inform others that you are ready for next turn (BGA stop your thinking time hourglass)
  • Restart turn: cancel all your actions in this turn (can be done before or after clicking on "end turn")
    

End of Week Scoring

When a week ends, the game computes the "week score" of every player = total all the values for all the trucks that have been delivered.

Because points are totaled every week, this means that trucks delivered in early weeks will score more than once.

End of game

At the end of week 3 day 5 the game ends, players will total their score

• Score (is automatically computed on BGA each day) as the sum of:
  • score from Week 1
  • score from Week 2
  • score from Week 3
  • scored from unused Overtime Hours (2/hour)
• the player with the highest score wins.
• In case of a tie, the player who delivered the most total trucks is the winner

Solo scoring

Since there is no competitive play for solo, the game designer adds this solo comparative rating :

• 0-200 points = 0 stars
• 200-249 = 1 stars
• 250-299 = 2 stars
• 300-349 = 3 stars
• 350-399 = 4 stars
• 400+ = 5 stars

Variants

• Overtime Hours
  1. Basic: Overtime Hours let you either increase or decrease a card value by 1
  2. Overtime Variant Rule: In addition to changing the value of a card players may also choose to use overtime hours to change the suit of a card
• Show discard pile
  1. Enabled : Players can look at already played cards in the discard pile and see which cards may still be in the deck (Note that the 7 cards staying in the game box are considered to be in the deck to keep it unknown)
  2. Disabled

User Preferences

• Interface theme
  1. Standard (default): the same background as any classic BGA game.
  2. Darker: a black background with 75% opacity
• Display all players board
  1. Enabled: display every player's board (alias score sheet) in the central zone. This is interesting with few players (2-3) but difficult to read with many (6+).
  2. Disabled (default): display current player (or first player when spectator) board alias score sheet in the central zone. You may want to click the 'eye' on player panels to see other player's boards anyway
• Font style
  1. Designer choice (default): the "Fugaz One", chosen to write text on the board, and uniformized to other texts on the game
  2. Simple: an easier font to read, but less pretty ?
• Board text language
  1. Designer choice (default): NOT translatable, but as pretty as it should because it is the exact text written by the game artists
  2. Translated + adjusted to space (default): translatable, using a horizontal adjustment of the text to fit the exact spaces where the text is expected, can be less pretty with some "1 ideogram translation" language
  3. Translated: translatable, using NO adjustment, so the text will overflow very quickly in some "many characters" languages
• Display route taken by trucks
  1. Disabled: display only black points you move to
  2. Accurate (default): draw the route following the actual path between points you move to, as when you draw a line with a black pen on the sheet
  3. Straight lines: display black lines between black points you move to, as when you draw a line with a black pen on the sheet
• Route color NB: in each case, it is dotted with a blinking selected destination when the move has not yet been sent to server by the "Stop moving" button; in order to let you know you can click wherever you want to change your moves.

  Depends on position (default)	red when cancelable in current turn black when not cancelable (ie. done in previous turns) green when delivered (at previous turns)
  Black	always black
  Blue	always blue
  Gray	always gray
  Turquoise	always turquoise
  Violet	always violet

• Truck color

  Disabled
  Depends on position (default)	transparent when not moved black when not cancelable (ie. moved in previous turns) green when delivered (at previous turns)
  Depends on position + Blink	see previous + blinking when confirmed in current turn

• Display mini truck icons
  1. Enabled : display some truck icon near the last point you move to on each truck route, with a different color for each status
  • red when cancelable in current turn
  • black when not cancelable (ie. done in previous turns)
  • green when delivered (at previous turns)
  2. Disabled (default)