Tragic Events is a cool little expansion for #FlashPointFireRescue which unfortunately might never be coming to retail. At this point I own everything for Flash Point and I make no secret that I love this simple little game.
#TragicEvents takes away a little bit from that simplicity by adding the Fire Deck and the Event Deck. These two decks replace the Hot Spot markers from the base game and act as a way of ramping up the difficulty of the game as time goes by.
Before I say anything else, I want it on record that I really like the event deck, it adds a lot of theme to the game, plus some great story moments that can make the difference between winning and losing.
That said, the Fire Deck is a bit more laborious than I had hoped. I think this is because we’re not used to it yet. In Flash Point at the end of every players turn you roll dice to advance the fire. When using Tragic Events you draw a card and then you probably just roll the dice as normal. However if you draw a Flare Up card things get exponential worse for you.
So they added a deck that you draw from that tells you to carry on as normal, for 10 out of the first 11 turns of the game. That’s a bit fiddly and because the deck is quite small you end up having to shuffle it quite a bit.
However, I do like the mechanics of the deck and I think that the fire deck and event deck are probably some of the best additions to the game, I just wish it felt it a bit more seamless, which hopefully it will after a few more plays.
As well as these two decks the box also contains 3 new firefighters (plus a reprint of the Structural Engineer whose abilities needed updating because they removed Hotspots) and a bunch of special POI markers the rules for which are in the Event Deck.
All in all I recommend the expansion but just be aware that it ups the difficulty and it probably increases the length of the game by about 50%. Hopefully Indie Boards & Cards will change their minds and bring this to retail, or perhaps add these decks to future printings of the base game as an optional module.