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Tabletop Game / Flash Point: Fire Rescue

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No, it's not about post-apocalyptic axemen.

Flash Point: Fire Rescue is a cooperative Board Game where the players assume the role of firefighters trying to save people trapped in a burning house before the whole structure collapses. Showing strong influences from Pandemic, the game was funded on Kickstarter and published by Indie Boards & Cards in 2011. Multiple expansions have been released since then.

In March 2024, a Kickstarter campaign for Flash Point: Legacy of Flame launched. This will be a legacy-style game, but with provisions for players to use their customized Legacy firefighters in "standard" Flash Point games. It's scheduled for release in early 2025.


Tropes found in the game include:

  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each player picks a firefighter miniature and a player card of corresponding color at the start of the game.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: A victim is perfectly OK being surrounded by fire markers as long as none are placed directly on top of them.
  • Coop Multiplayer: You lose pretty fast if you don't coordinate your actions with others.
  • Difficulty Levels: Depending on the player experience, you can play with fewer or additional initial explosions, hotspots, and hazmats. Also, the basic game includes two house layouts, one of which is significantly easier than the other by the virtue of having two more preexisting entrance points.
  • Everyone Has a Special Move: Each set of gear the players can equip on their characters comes with a special ability:
    • The CAFS Firefighter gets extra points to extinguish fires.
    • The Driver/Operator can fire the deck gun faster and gets a free re-roll if it lands off-target.
    • The Fire Captain can move other player's miniatures on his turn using his action points.
    • The Generalist has no special skills but gets an extra action point each turn.
    • The Hazmat Technician can dispose of hazmat markers on-site rather than having to carry them out of the house.
    • The Imaging Technician can flip over any person-of-interest marker to find false alarms from a distance.
    • The Paramedic can treat any victim to make them walk after a fireman to safety rather than having to be carried.
    • The Rescue Specialist can move and break down walls much faster than the others.
  • Expansion Pack: Urban Structures, 2nd Story (introduced multistory buildings), Extreme Danger, Dangerous Waters, Veteran & Rescue Dog, Honor & Duty, and Tragic Events.
  • Extra Turn: Kinda. Players can save up some of their action points to carry over to their next turn.
  • Extrinsic Go-First Rule: The rules let the players determine who goes first arbitrarily but suggest that the youngest player opens the game in absence of better options.
  • Fractional Winning Condition: You win by rescuing 7 out of 10 victims, but the game does not technically end until all 15 victim markers (including 5 false alarms) are removed from the board.
  • Golden Ending: Successfully rescuing all victims.
  • Heroic Fire Rescue: That's what you're here for.
  • Job System: Players can return to the fire engine at any time and replace their current gear/specialization with any other that has not yet been taken by another player.
  • Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Playing the Driver/Operator lets you repeat a botched dice roll to aim the deck gun.
  • Non-Lethal K.O.: The explosions that kill the victims merely knock down the firefighters, who then instantly return to the ambulance car and can act again on their next turn with no lasting consequences.
  • Powerful, but Inaccurate: The fire engine's deck gun can potentially take five fire markers off the board at once. Where the water lands is determined by dice roll, meaning a player could spend all his action points and hose down an area with no fire markers at all.
  • Red Shirt: One event card in Tragic Events adds a severely injured victim to the game, who can't be moved at all unless the Paramedic treats him first. The token representing this victim is wearing a red shirt with a not-really-a-Star-Trek-badge on it.
  • Resources Management Gameplay: You can break through the walls with your fireaxe to make a quick escape path... but if the walls suffer too much damage (whether from the fire or from the firefighters), it's Game Over.
  • Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: There is no GM, but this is basically what happens if the house collapses, burying everyone still inside.
  • Sliding Scale of Cooperation vs. Competition: The basic game is definitely an example of "Enforced Cooperation", as it has zero competitive elements and the players are required to coordinate their moves closely, especially on higher difficulties.
  • Turn-Based Combat: Despite not having any combat (unless you count firefighting), the game contains a lot of gameplay mechanics associated with TBC, such as action points and a square movement grid.

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