Flashpoint

 Tom put on a remote session of the boardgame 'Flashpoint'. This is a co-operative game which features a team of fire fighters trying to rescue people from a blazing building before it collapses. Each player runs a character with a particular specialism (fire engine driver, hazmat specialist etc) but essentially each character has a certain number of Action Points to spend doing stuff - moving, rescuing peole, putting out fires!

The fire itself can spread each turn, causing explosions and structural damage to the building, so the players need to cooperate to keep the blaze under control while rescuing seven victims.

John, Tim C, Pete, Jerry and myself played plucky the firefighters, albeit more inspired by the Trumpton firemen than 'Backdraft'. Pugh, Pugh, Barney, McGew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb!

Here is the blazing inferno we were faced with. The grid is used to regulate movement etc, and outside the building are parking spaces for the Fire Engine and Ambulance. Critical features are the blue ? marks, who are the potential victims. The doors are important as they allow movement but also block the fire (if they are closed). The initial location of the fires and victims is randomised and there will always be three ? markers on the board. As one is rescued or eliminated, it is replaced by another.

Tom set up a webcam to look at the board, and ran the action for us. I won't do a blow-by-blow account as the screen is hard to see, but for the first few rounds things went OK. Fires were put out and four victims were rescued. Sadly, the fires continued to spread and gradually things got a bit more sticky.

Pete (yellow) was knocked out by a fire in the central room, so I went in to rescue him (I am white). It didn't look too bad, the dining room at the bottom was on fire, but it seemed safe to go in.

Oh dear! A number of explosions turned the central room into an inferno. Pete and I were both unconscious and half the building was on fire now. More worrying, there were an awful lot of structural damage markers scattered round the walls.

Help was at hand though! John (red) put down the victim he was carrying and started extinguishing fires to come and rescue us. Meanwhile Jerry (blue) on the other side of the building hacked a wall down to rescue a victim lying by the wall.

Tim C and Tim G cooperated magnificently to use the water jet on the fire engine to extinguish fires in the central room. Perhaps it was all going to be OK after all.

Sadly, it was not to be. Another explosion destroyed the last of the buildings structural integrity, and the whole thing collapsed. This eliminated all the firefighters still in the building (me, John, Pete and Jerry) along with the remaining victims. That was a fairly resounding loss, and left Tim and Tim to write up a report explaining why they were to sole survivors of the entire team.

Despite our relative failure (well, we did rescue four people), that was really good fun. It was nice to play a cooperative game, and the rules were simple enough that it rattled along well.

The following week we tried again, this time using the 'two floors' variant - unsurprisingly this features, ladders, stairs etc and the zones are split over to floors of a building, which makes access a bit more entertaining.

We did better this time around, much better. We managed to keep the fires contained and worked as a team to use the characters various special abilities to the utmost. As you can see from the image above, not too many fires, and by this stage we'd rescued four people and no firemen down. 

Things can go pear shaped very quickly in flashpoint however. Fortunately we came across some people on the ground floor and were busy evacuating them when the entire top floor went up in a series of explosions, and the fires spread alarmingly in the ground floor. The last two firefighters out (John and Tim C) made it just as the building collapsed around our ears. Final tally, seven people rescued and no firefighters lost. Result!

So, that was a load of fun. Highly recommended.

If you want to watch a video of how to do it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2ONsWhGngWE