Santa was kind to us this year. And among the games we got was a quick one called Uno Flip.
A nice twist on the classic Uno card game, here the players use both sides of the cards as the game progresses. There’s a new action card called Flip, which makes the draw pile, the discard pile as well as all players’ hands all flip over. Everyone is then playing from, drawing from, and discarding to a whole different set of cards. The Dark Side (as it’s called–a Cease and Desist from Disney must surely be on the horizon) has new colours, along with new action cards that are more harsh than the original Light Side (original) version of the game. It features cards that, for instance, force the following player to pick up five cards (the former max was two) plus skip their turn, or to pick up cards from the draw pile until a designated colour is found. Oh, plus miss your turn as well. The Dark Side doesn’t mess around.
I went in assuming that the flip side of the cards would basically double the play options, but it offers a little more in the way of strategy, as well. As just one example, if an opponent is down to one card and so is close to winning–and particularly if they’ve just chosen the active colour, so you know what colour they’re almost certainly holding for their last card–and you have a Flip card you can play, doing so will totally hose them.
We played three games over probably 25 minutes, and yours truly won all three. I take no particular pride in that fact, as I’m often horrible at strategy and certainly don’t apply it when playing Uno beyond just trying to think a few moves ahead (and often don’t even manage that) so luck had more to do with it than anything, but wins are wins, so I’ll take them.
Uno Flip would be a great addition to the collection of anyone who likes playing the original but wants to kick things up a notch.