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Gods are powerful and… bored! Make a bet with the others, use your unique powers and gather the most believers in the Archipelago of the Navel of the World. Flick of Faith is a flicking area control game in which players are sending their prophets into the islands by flicks. Make sure people heard about you on every island. Even better if you can get the domination – the winning is close. But be careful! To make the bet more interesting other gods would use every sneaky trick.
Net-Flicks And Chill
Dexterity games have been around for a long time, with the most popular of which, JENGA, having been around for almost 40 years. But why? What is it about Dexterity games that is so appealing? It must be their simplicity, right? Access to most dexterity games comes from what to you hit and/or move and where to. It feeds off the idea that anyone can ‘have a go’ and so usually falls into the family game category. Yet, in modern day board gaming, this initial mechanic has been layered with an array of others to add complexity and variability to the genre. Enter 2019’s Flick of Faith. Produced by Awaken Realms under their ‘Awaken Realms Lite’ label, the production of the game is as you would imagine. The basic notion is to simply flick little wooden tiles across a (beautifully vibrant) neoprene mat to score points. But what makes this different?
You Got To Have Faith-Faith-Faith
To quote the late great George Michael, the hook here is faith. The mat shows four unique islands sitting in a clear blue ocean surrounded by fluffy clouds. You take the roll of Gods sending your many prophets around the islands to spread ‘the good word’. From your corner of sky, you must flick prophets, scoring points for presence on each island. With bonus points awarded for the dominant religion on each island, flicking other people's prophets to their death is highly encouraged!
On each island, there is also a small city in which you can build a temple if you manage to get a prophet there. The beauty of these temples is they will stay in the game for each subsequent round making it harder for others to get those juicy dominance points. There is also a nifty mechanic that if your prophet lands in the central ‘navel’ you get to activate bonus scoring, which will need more than a prayer to achieve let me tell you!
Now we start to add the complexity. Much like 2016’s Santorini, you can choose from a selection of Gods, each offering a unique power. You might play as Zeus, who can build temples on any of the islands or as Anubis who can resurrect one prophet per round to take another turn. There are only eight to chose from in the base game, but they offer enough replayability to keep you occupied for a while. I can only imagine an inevitable expansion of other options can't be far away. The silliest, offers a cardboard hand you can lower down from the clouds to guide your prophets. This is daft fun, but next to another god who can gain VP when other prophets fall off the map, it's clear that some God powers are severely overpowered. That said, in such a short and fun game this gives a nice opportunity to offer younger players an advantage.
On top of this, each round begins by introducing new laws. These laws will either be for the turn ahead or can stick around for the whole game. There is a decent sized deck of options, ranging from flick with your eyes closed, to adding a tornado tile to the map that if you hit, will remove your token from the board. It will only take a few games to see every card on offer but the way the designers mitigate this is that every round you draw two and collectively vote for which one to play. This offers a nice tension in the group as some may vote towards the sillier options whilst others want more order, with ties being drawn randomly.
Is This The Right Religion For You
This is certainly on the shorter side of gameplay for a dexterity outing, lasting only four rounds which whizz by with a Hermes like speed. It is also on the simpler side with a much smaller playing area than, for example, something like Flick Em Up. But it does offer a quick to set up, silly 10/15 minutes which can go from calm to carnage in no time. It is worth mentioning the unusual box size, being long and thin, causing masterfully arranged Kallax shelves a headache. It is also worth pointing out that the scoring can get complicated when introducing laws into the mix and so although a great game for younger players, if scoring is wanted at all, it may need some guidance.
So where in the pantheon of flicking games does it sit? The answer is…who cares. Flick of Faith is an inexpensive game, with great production, beautiful artwork and a short playtime and would add to pretty much anyone’s collection, whether for the kids or over a few vodka shots with the mates!
