Blokus Classics Game
Blokus Classics Game
Blokus Classics Game Reviews
I originally bought this game for my classroom to help my students develop thinking skills. When it first arrived, I took the game home to figure out how to play it before introducing it to my students–and I was hooked! My own children are ages 10 and 11 and they love the game (we are buying a game for home), but I teach students up to age 18 and they enjoy the game just as much. Educationally, it helps younger students develop a better understanding of spatial relations and planning ahead. For older students (and adults) it helps to develop various strategy skills.
Unlike most educational games, the rules are simple and once you’ve played it through one time (or watched it through one time) all your effort can go into plotting your moves. The game doesn’t run out of possibilities, either; every game is different, even if you play with the same people over and over.
A friend, who knows we love games in our family, bought us this. Well, within a day we all were hooked. my 5 year old and 12 year old can play with my husband and me and we all are challenged and have a blast! i bought a set to bring to our family vacation home, and my sister in law and i were up until midnight every nite for a week playing this game with whomever we could snag to play it with us!! even really little kids have fun just playing with the pieces, not actually playing the game. the only caveat I have is DON’T LOSE ANY PIECES!!!!! all of the pieces are critical to the game.. that is a real challenge in our household!!
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 20×20 board becomes an 18×18 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 16×16 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 2×2 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.
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