Gamez! Hacked! Yeah, let’s see what we can do with another great game that could do with a bit of ‘tweaking’, house rules ahoy!
Instead of a recent game, we’re going to talk about a bit of a classic with Legendary status (well, in our eyes anyway). The awesome Blokus.
Oh my, I’ve just gone over our extensive number of blogs (38 and counting!) and realised we’ve never even mentioned Blokus! Shocking, well, that’s about to change. Blokus, Blokus, Blokus!
Seriously though… have a picture of a game in progress…
…and now let’s tell you a bit about this great game!
The basic game of Blokus is best played 4-player. Each player has a coloured set of polyominoes.
Can we just stop here a moment… say it… ‘polyomino’.
Doesn’t it just beautifully roll off the tongue? It’s not many people who get the joy of saying that lovely word regularly, us who work in the world of board game cafes are lucky enough to say it a lot (thanks Patchwork, amongst others!) and potentially if you work in a Polyomino factory you probably say the word a lot too…
The set of polyominoes (mmm…) used in Blokus are basically made from all the ways that between one and five squares can be stuck together to form unique shapes. In total there are 21, this includes the classic Tetris shapes (that’s the set of tetrominoes!), if a shape can be mirrored then it’s not included in Blokus…
[HACK-1] :- You’re in the middle of a game and need to refer to a tile… What do you call it? Well, if you want official math nerd terms…
A) Monomino
B) Domino
C) Tromino I and L
D) Tetromino I, O, S, T, L.
E) Pentomino FILNPTUVWXYZ]
…and that’s boring… let’s spice it up a bit and give them groovier names…
A :- Han (solo, get it?)
B :- me (little i)
C :- ME!!! (big I)
D :- Jamiroquai (…you make me love you, with a little L)
The Tetris squad… E :- square-piece, F :- L-piece, G :- T-piece, H :- squiggly and I :- LINE PIECE! (iykyk)
J :- The WTF
K :- The Stretch
L :- BANG!
M :- Quantum (is it a wave or a piece?)
N :- The Thumbs Up (or down, depending how you want to place it?)
O :- B. A. Baracus (Mr. T!)
P :- The Commodore (Amiga)
Q :- The Boomerang
R :- Heaven (stairway to…)
S :- Angry (it’s cross!)
T :- The Sapling
U :- The Slug
I know, not really a hack, just a bit of fun. Fancy that, us having fun? Heh.
Back to business… so, what are you using these polyominoes for exactly? Tell you what, we’ll go through our classic teach from Birmingham and show you how to play in just three turns!
So, each player has their pieces, or do they?
[HACK-2] :- We know there are 21 of them… so double check before you start and make sure you have them all! We don’t want an unfair advantage, do we? *ahem* We like to say the first to count them goes first! 21 is an odd number (literally), we normally line them up in three rows of seven pieces, much easier to do, especially if someone is counting their set out loud!
Back to the teach… on the first turn you will place a 5-square piece of your choice so that it covers the corner closest to you…
(if anyone picks up ‘Angry’ you have permission to laugh at them, it’s the only 5-piece that won’t cover a corner square!)
Lovely, one turn in, here we go! Time for…
[HACK-3] :- Want a more aggressive starting game? Start a few squares further in!
Why is this more aggressive? Try it, you’ll see!
Time for turn two and it’s time for the main rule of Blokus. Every turn after the first you must place another piece down so that it touches one or more of your previous pieces but only corner to corner… you may never place one of your pieces down so that edges touch each other.
Now, clearly we are saying something here by omission, ie. you CAN go edge to edge with other player’s pieces… this means you can cross between where another player touches corner to corner! Very efficient.
Now it’s turn three so I guess we better tell you how you win! Well, the idea is the person who gets the most squares covered in their colour wins. Classically (ie, in the rules) you get minus one point for every square you have left over but that’s a needless complication (although it’s an advance scoring mode in modern rulebooks) so…
[HACK-4] :- just count up the number of squares on the pieces you haven’t put out and the player with the least wins (as they have the most out!). If you’re good then you get 0, well done… The only way to be better is to use ‘Han’ as your last piece. Kudos if you do!
Now, we’ve not really added any life changing Hackz yet but we’re about to… the main ones come from the 2 and 3 player variants that we teach in house.
[HACK-5] :- The official two player variant for the game involves using two colours each and playing by the same rules, this makes the game looooong…. Much better to shrink the board! There happens to be a version on Blokus that does this, it’s called Blokus to go and the board they use happens to be only 14×14 instead of 20×20. So all you need to do is block out the outside three rows and you’re good to go, it just so happens that you can do this using one of the unused set of polyominoes! The other way Blokus to go changes the rules is the players start close to each other for my early interactions!
[HACK-6] :- The official three player variant is to share the fourth players pieces between yourselves, taking it in turns to have their go, this adds a bit of complication to it so after some trial and error we’ve come to the realisation that not using just the outside row of squares makes the board a great size for three players to go head to head to head. The issue here is that starting in corners means one person is ‘between’ the other two. The jury is out if this is good or bad but to make it as fair as it can be (although it’s not perfect) there are starting positions that you can use that are as close as symmetrical as you can get…
So, there you have it, you owe it to yourself to try Blokus it’s a classic strategy game, we love and so will you!