Flash Point Fire Rescue Urban Structures

The Structural Engineer is our new favorite support role! Having the ability to remove Hot Spots from the board makes it sooo much easier to control the spread of the fire! And his ability to repair damaged walls has saved the game a time or two itself. The variants that are described on the last page of the rules are very exciting: Can you find the evidence to convict the arsonist while still fighting the fires and saving the victims? Can you save the abandoned building full of dangerous hot spots without any firefighters getting hurt? The two new boards are very much fun, as well. One note, however - on the High-Rise board, the cubicles that have the blue walls in one corner of the building have to be broken into to save anyone inside or put out any fires in there. Yikes!

First, let me emphasize that I think Flash Point is an excellent standalone game. You don’t need this expansion to enjoy the original. If you like the original game and are still excited to play it, I would just stick with that. On the other hand, if you don’t like the original, I don’t think this expansion will make it better for you. The purpose of the expansion, as I see it, is to add a bit more variety and difficulty to the base game once you start to feel like you’ve played it out.In our case, that came after 30-something plays. We could consistently win both sides of the board at the Heroic level, and had started trying to increase the difficulty by adding an extra initial explosion, which tended to end badly. We wanted a bit more variety and a bit more challenge, which is where Urban Structures comes in.At that point, I think Urban Structures is a decent investment. It comes with a new character and a two-sided board, so you’re getting a good amount of content for a reasonable price. Since these three additions (the character and the two boards) can be used independently, I’ll basically write three separate reviews of these three parts.New Character: The Structural EngineerIn some ways, this new character makes the most dramatic difference to the game. He has the ability to remove hotspots and repair damage, which means that you can approach the fire in a completely different way: there’s a possibility of actually overcoming it, rather than just delaying the inevitable long enough to snatch the people out. We played one game in the Brownstone where we actually put out all the fire and removed all the hotspots. It seems unlikely for this to occur at the Heroic level on the more challenging High Rise board, but just the possibility of eliminating hot spots and damage means that you can look at the game differently, and you have more options to consider at any given point. For me at least, more options means more fun. The Structural Engineer is a powerful character, but he also has a serious weakness: he can’t put out smoke or fire at all. This means that there’s always a lot of tension surrounding the decision to bring him out: as long as things keep going well, he can make a lot of progress, but a few bad rolls can render him almost useless. I’m definitely happy to have him around.On the other hand, I’m really glad that he came as part of an expansion that includes boards as well, because I would have had trouble justifying the expense of an individual card if he were priced anything like the Rescue Dog/Veteran package. Fortunately, the boards add welcome variety too.New Board: The BrownstoneThis board isn’t dramatically different from the original boards, but it adds enough of a twist to make it worth owning. The basic idea is that it’s part of an apartment block, so you can enter only from the front or the back, and it takes longer to drive from one side to the other. This definitely makes it a bit more challenging than the basic boards, but not dramatically so. We played our first game on Veteran, and won pretty easily, rescuing all 10 victims. After that we moved on to Heroic, and it took three attempts to win. Our eighth play at the Heroic level (our ninth overall on this board) was when we managed to save all ten victims and also put out the fire completely. After one more play, we moved on to the other new board.Of course, there’s a huge element of luck here, so that the number of attempts it takes to win at different difficulty levels doesn’t correspond to some measure of absolute difficulty. My main point here was just to give some indication of replayability. For us personally, it took 10 plays before we were ready to move on. That’s a decent amount, considering that this is only one of two boards included in the expansion, and we’d probably be happy to play more if we didn’t have other tempting expansion options waiting. The Brownstone certainly still feels fresher than the two original boards. But given that we played 37 times on the original boards—so, about 20 on each—before buying any expansions, I’d say that it doesn’t add quite as much novelty as I might have hoped for.New Board: the High RiseThis is the one part of the expansion that disappointed me a bit, for several reasons. Basically, I feel like it sacrificed a lot of the intuitiveness of the base game without very good reason. There are a bunch of new rules, and they aren’t always explained clearly: after reading through the rulebook, I immediately read all the relevant BGG threads that I could find, and still wasn’t 100% sure about how to chop into this building from the outside.Since this is a High Rise, you can only get into the building via the elevators in the centre or by using the ladder on the fire truck, and to get in using the ladder there has to be a hole in the wall. Moving into the building from the fire truck costs two movement points, representing the need to climb the ladder as well. But how do you combine climbing and chopping? The verdict seems to be that you chop external walls just by walking along the street outside, and then return to the fire truck when you actually want to go up and in. This is thematically awkward, to say the least. I try to pretend that it actually represents climbing along the arm of the fire truck to chop, but it still doesn’t quite make sense. At least we don’t have to do this too often.Even worse is the introduction of “light walls” surrounding cubicles in the workplace. There are a lot of these light walls, which were apparently introduced just to make the game harder. Thematically, they make no sense. The cubicles have no doors, so you have to chop through to get at any fire or POI inside, and an explosion surrounded on all sides by walls will do a lot of damage. Basically, the cubicles increase the difficulty level by running through the damage counters more quickly. The problem is that buildings don’t actually work this way. Flimsy cubicle walls do not provide structural support, and you could tear them all down without making the building collapse. I appreciate the need to make the game more challenging, but I don’t think it should have come at the cost of the natural and intuitive feeling that made the original Flash Point so immersive and fun to play. I like games where the theme makes sense and the rules are guided by logic, but some of that has been sacrificed here.That said, I still enjoy playing the High Rise map despite the grumpiness caused by the artificial-feeling rules. As long as the major action isn’t taking place in the cubicles, I’m perfectly happy. And the fact that this map is a lot harder than the others is definitely a major advantage. There’s no longer a sense that we can just choose an ideal firefighting team before we’ve even looked at the fire, because there’s really no margin for error on this board. It took us eight plays before we could win on the Heroic level, and I still wouldn’t say we’ve come close to mastering it; we just got pretty lucky with the hotspot rolls. This means that this board should continue to provide a welcome challenge for many plays to come.Final ThoughtsThis isn’t a perfect expansion by any means, but it serves its purpose. I wish we could have had more challenge and variety without sacrificing the logical and intuitive ruleset, but I’m still satisfied with the purchase. I’ve played it 18 times so far, and I don’t think I’m done with it yet, since the High Rise board continues to present a challenge. At the same time, I’m looking forward to trying some of the other expansions, and I hope that they can manage to provide a challenging experience without distancing themselves so much from reality. If they turn out to meet our needs better, then Urban Structures may not get so many more plays after all—but I’ll still be happy to have the Structural Engineer.

I am just starting my firefighter/paramedic career and I have shared this game with family and friends in EMS, Fire and Law enforcement as well as plain civilians. It is truly a great game that teaches about communication, working together and the difficulty of fireground operations. A fun Game and A Great Teaching and Learning Tool.

I love Flash Point to begin with--it is a challenging and fun cooperative board game. The Urban Structures add on add different challenges with two different kinds of buildings: a brownstone that only has access through the front ant back, and a high-rise that only has access via elevator or ladder. Love that there are now new and different challenges to the game. I wish more of these types of games were available!

Great scenario with added challenges and a new crew member who, despite some initial reservations, actually proved very useful. Highly recommended expansion to Flash Point.One small reservation: rules for the interior walls and doors to the offices in the High Rise are unclear. Had to create house rules for them.