Blokus Classics Game
by Mattel
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List Price: Our Price: $21.48 You Save: $4.51 (17%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $13.95 (click here) Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of Blokus Classics Game
Customer Review: A great game for adults, children, or both
Summary: 5 Stars
My husband and I are avid gamers, especially the recent trend toward family games, or German games, like Settlers, Carcasonne, Lost Cities, Elfquest (and a good cut-throat game of Wiz War). We got together with our nephews over the holidays and completely fell in love with this game - we're going to buy it for ourselves as soon as we can, and will probably also get the travel version to play together on airplanes.
The game is a nice change from cards and dice. I really enjoyed the spatial nature of the game. Over time you'll learn that some of the shapes are better for offense and some for defense, and there are tricks to moving around the board and keeping yourself from getting trapped in a corner.
The rules are extremely simple and can be learned in under 5 minutes. My 8-year-old nephew and I were pretty well balanced and took turns winning (maybe I'll have better luck next year when I've had more practice *grin*). My 6-year-old nephew did just fine in the game, and my 4-year-old nephew was happy to just take his turn putting pieces in his corner without keeping score. I also think this is a game that a child might pull out occasionally by themselves just to make shapes and patterns with the pieces (the board is very pretty when filled in).
It is true that the game is sensitive to lost pieces, since the challenge of the game is based on having a few too many pieces to fit on the board. However, I think you can easily recover from lost pieces by balancing the sets, and then making certain areas of the board off-limits. You could color certain squares with a marker or cover them with tape or cardboard to make the available space smaller. I've often thought that would be a great variation on the two-player game. Instead of playing two colors at once, you could each play one color but make the board smaller. You could make different shape overlays to turn the board into a rectangle, or a cross, or an hourglass, and then part of the challenge of the game would be working inside the new shape. (Do you hear me, Sekkoia? This would be a great expansion for the game.)
The board has ridges for holding the pieces in place. While I found these ridges sufficient for adults and older children, younger children will still accidentally knock the pieces out of place. For us, this happened in small enough doses that we were always able to reconstruct the original position of the pieces.
Customer Review: A great strategy game where children can beat grown-ups
Summary: 5 Stars
We were pleased when we discovered this game. It works well for every member of our family. We have children aged 10-18, and they all like this game. Why? Well, I'll tell you :-)
First of all, the game is easy to learn. This is a four-player game, and though there are rules for single, two-player, and three-player versions, the four-player game is the best!
Each player has an identical set of pieces. The pieces are all made up of small squares arranged in different configurations that look kind of like tetris pieces. There are pieces are comprised of one, two, three, four, and five squares. The goal of the game is to play as many of your pieces on the board as you can while striving to block your opponents from playing all of theirs. The only two rules are: 1) when you play your first piece one of the squares of that piece must cover your starting corner space; and 2) every other piece you play for the rest of the game must touch only a corner of one of your other pieces that has already been played. Sound easy? It is, well, only sort of. It's pretty easy until you get blocked or another player moves into the space you had your eye on.
You'll be happy and perhaps surprised to find that even youg children (kindergarteners or first-graders) can do as well as they do at this game. They can even beat their parents - much to the children's delight and the parents' chagrin.
After you play this game you'll understand why it has won so many awards, including being named a "Mensa Select" game.
The only down side of this game, at least as far as I can see, is that you have to be obsessive about keeping track of all the pieces. We make sure that each color's set of pieces is complete whenever we are done playing, and we store each set of pieces in their own plastic bag. You'll have a tough time playing until you are able to obtain a replacement piece.
This is a great game for the family. You can play a game in less than 30 mins, and children often want to play more than once when this game comes off of the shelf.
5 stars!
Customer Review: Here's how to play 2-player and 3-player
Summary: 4 Stars
If you skip over 5-star praising reviews, you'll find from the 4-star ones that you really need all 4 people to enjoy this game. With 2 or 3 players, the end of the game is always like this: player 1 wins, players 2 and 3 end up with one piece each that they can lay down if you let them finish the last round. You can call it a tie or you can call it "1st player wins", either way this is not a lot of fun.
Don't get upset though. There is a way to make it fun for 2 and 3 players. The creators didn't think hard enough; but you can easily mod the board, and all you need is a thin permanent marker (like Sharpie).
The general idea is to reduce the number of squares on the board so that players would run out of board space before they run out of pieces on hand.
So you take a marker, and you draw a line one square away from each of the four edges so that the 20x20 board becomes an 18x18 board. This is your 3-player board. When in 3-player, players are not allowed to place their pieces in the 1-square frame you just drew.
For 2 players, make another frame, this time 1 square away from the already reduced 3-player board. So you end up with a 16x16 board that is perfect for 2-player. Believe it or not, you can still get a tie on this board, but very rarely, and both players need to be quite creative and need some luck to get to a tie.
Another 2-player variation is that each player plays for 2 of the 4 colors (for example, player 1 for green and red, and player 2 for yellow and blue). Players still take turns and lay down one piece at a time, but you choose which of the 2 colors to play with when it's your turn. This 2x2 game is quite hard. Every time I play this variation it makes me feel my brain is about to explode (because there are too many choices and you only have one turn at a time!). I recommend trying this variation when both players already have enough experience with the regular game.
Customer Review: Simple yet intriguing!
Summary: 5 Stars
I purchased this for my family for Christmas after reading all the positive reviews and awards it has won. I wondered how anything this seemingly simple could be fun and hold the interest of kids who are conditioned to instant excitment from video games and adults whose choice of toys are electronic devices of some sort. Let me first say that this is not one of those games where everyone will be chomping at the bit to open up and play after unwrapping it at Christmas time. The game is basically a gray plastic box with a grid and various plastic shapes grouped into 4 different colors, similiar to Tetris pieces that you place on the grid. Nothing fancy to look at and kids will probably push this present aside until all the other "flashy" toys are opened and played with. But once they do, everyone will enjoy this very engaging, thought provoking, challenging, and addicting game and will want to play it time and time again. It's rare to find such an intellectual game where all ages can compete. The box says 5 to adult but to really appreciate the strategic content of the game, I would say that 8 to adult is more accurate. It can be played as one game which takes about 15-20 min where the idea is to get rid of all or most of your pieces. The ones left over are tallied with the player with the fewest points being the winner. Or you can play a set of games where points are tallied from each game and a winner is decided. You place your shapes on the grid one at a time where they must touch another one of your pieces diagonally. Play is then based on alternate pieces placed by each player..max 4 players. Super fun, as challenging as the opponents are capable of, and a great framily game.Customer Review: Game of the Decade!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this game with the great hope of entertaining and be entertained at the Thanksgiving night. At first no one wanted to play the game, except my 3-year old daughter. I changed the rules of the game so that she and I both could enjoy it. We literally played it as if we were playing Tetris on the computer. She had great fun and so did I. Then my sister-in-law's husband decided to play and we played the two-player version and it was a blast! I can't wait to play with 4 people. I'm sure the dynamics will improve on an already great game.
Blokus is a board game onto which tiles of different shapes made up of squares, or units, not unlike the shapes seen in the famous computer game called Tetris. The shapes come in four groups and identified by a different color: red, green, yellow, and blue. Each player starts at a corner and places a shape. A shape can only touch the corner edge of another shape of the same color. Each player places a shape in this fashion until all the shapes are finished, or it is impossible to place another shape. Players do their best to prevent their opponent(s) to place any more of their shapes, while attempting to place all of their pieces.
The game between two people takes approximately 20 minutes and decisions made early on bear fruition later in the game to many surprises and challenges.
Player with the least amount of units not used is the winner.
The colored shapes on the board create interesting mosaics and even have artistic appeal as well as mental gymnastics.
This is a very clever game and I hope you enjoy it as much as I am.