“Fuse” is a fun, hectic, and light cooperative game that I prefer to play with modified rules (to accommodate certain medical conditions). Enter “Flatline”, another chaotic cooperative game by the same developer (Renegade) that picks up where “Fuse” leaves off. Here, players serve as medics treating the injured from the catastrophic events of “Fuse”. Primarily, this game involves rolling dice and assigning them to various board spots all the while on a round timer. Like I said, chaotic.
1-5 Players, Ages 13+, Average Play Time = 45 Minutes
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Components & Setup Overview
I don’t know why it took me 15 years of blogging to just screenshot the component list rather than type everything out. To be fair, I didn’t know about “WINDOWS + SHIFT + S” until two years ago. See above for the component list.
To sum up setup, players assemble the board, shuffle the emergency cards, shuffle the larger patient cards into a stack based on player count/difficulty & place 4 face-up on the board, line up the center life support dial with the larger patient cards, fill the appropriate power cube bar based on player count with power cubes, and lastly place a power cube on each recharge station. Players get dice of their chosen color based on player count. There’s a bit more (2 pages worth), so check out the rulebook below for specifics.
Rulebook: https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/146644/flatline-official-rulebook
Blue cards being seeded into the emergency section.
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Gameplay Overview
The game is played over a series of rounds and each round consists of the following phases:
1. Pre-Countdown – In this phase, the power meter loses a power cube which serves as the timer for the game’s lose condition. Below the power cube is a number which indicates how many emergency cards players deal face-up. Orange tabbed cards are dire emergencies that must be resolved this round and blue tabbed cards have a chance to cause problems from round to round unless dealt with. Two emergency dice are rolled and assigned to the blue card slot areas under their appropriate number, activating any blue cards slotted there. Players then are free to plan for the next phase.
2. Countdown – Players start a one-minute timer and roll their dice. These dice can be placed on patients, emergency cards, and recharge stations (which add a power cube to the power bar extending the endgame timer). Some spaces are limited in that only one person can add dice to a space or others might need two players minimum to treat a patient line together. Rerolling dice are possible, but they must sacrifice a die to the reroll track every time they do. These dice do come back to players at the end of the round.
3. Resolution – Players resolve cards, patients, and recharge stations in the correct order starting with the orange cards. Any that weren’t treated are placed face-down into the red track. If the red track is full of cards, game over. Cleared orange cards go face-up in the green area and have a one-time use ability to help players during the game. Completed blue cards are just discarded. Patient cards have multiple lines and completed lines are covered by cleared tiles. Fully completed patients have a possible trigger effect (based on where the yellow light is pointing) and are replaced with a new patient.
There’s more to the round but essentially, players will be attempting to keep up with cards and patients before the game’s time limit expires by coordinating and placing their rolled dice. I’ll again refer you to the rulebook for specifics.
Ultimately, players win if they treat all the patient cards before the time limit expires. They lose if time runs out OR too many orange cards have not been treated and thus fill too many slots on the red track.
Patient Cards & Their Rows
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Review
Aidalee loves this game. Aside from “Raxxon”, she asks me to play it all the time. She loves chaotic games and the adrenaline rush that’s associated with being stressed via a time-limit. I, on the other hand, hate time limits. I’d remove them from games like this if I could get away with it. My excuse, and it’s a valid one, is that my tendonitis and fibromyalgia prevent me from reacting quickly to things. We’ve come to a mutual agreement to extend the timer to two minutes rather than one when rolling / assigning dice. Of course, if you want, you can remove the timer altogether or set your own timer count. You can also adjust the patient card count outside the limits of the game’s difficulty options. Cooperative games like “Spirit Island” and by extension, “Flatline”, tend to be flexible that way.
For a game that stresses doing things at warp speed, there is some strategy in waiting to treat patients. The center dial (and their yellow pointers) rotate round to round and these yellow pointers land on possible positive or negative spaces. If it’s a negative space, we typically wait a round to treat that patient fully so as not to incur the penalty. Another strategy we typically employ is prioritize recharge stations on “2” spaces…that is, keep the power bar stuck on the “2” space so we consistently draw “2” bad cards round to round.
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4 Player Power Meter
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I love the theme, though the iconography takes some getting used to. Luckily the rulebook devotes an entire page to these little bonuses / penalties. There’s a bit of RNG in this and the game can be a bit swingy depending on what cards get drawn and how the emergency dice roll. You could have 1 blue card in the emergency row and unluckily roll that number activating it anyway. Player dice can be unkind and just not roll the symbols you want. It’s crazy to me that players only get a minute (by default) to figure out how to make the best out of any bad RNG they get.
I continue to play “Flatline” so as long as I can incorporate house rules to accommodate my disabilities. Thankfully, these house rules are easy to implement. The associated optional app is just an nonadjustable one-minute timer, so just use your phone’s inherent timer and set the time to your liking. Aidalee would probably score this game higher, but I find it to be a great cooperative game worthy of repeated plays.
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Score: 7/10 (Great)
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