Think Risk, except replace dice and chance with Tetris pieces and actual strategy.

Blokus falls in the ‘simple to learn yet challenging to master’ category of board games. You can easily figure out everything by watching one play through, but here’s the run down: Each player chooses a color and takes a set of 21 pieces made of all variations of 1-5 squares. Players take turns placing pieces on the 20×20 square grid, each starting from the corner of their color.

Each new piece you place must touch one of your other pieces, but only at the corners. Pieces of the same color cannot be in contact along the sides. However, there are no restrictions to how your pieces touch other colors.

Your goal is to cover as much of the board with your pieces as possible, while blocking your opponents from expanding their own territory. The game ends when all players are blocked from laying down any more of their pieces. The player with the most squares placed on the grid (or easier to tally, the player with the least number of squares left unplaced) wins.

These are all the shapes you have to work with. Rule of Thumb: Start with the 5-square pieces early.

The game plays with 2 to 4 players. With 2, both players take two colors each and alternate between them. Unfortunately games played one-on-one can very easily be turned into stalemates. With 3, each player takes one color and alternates every turn playing for the remaining color. This is sort of interesting, but, to be honest with ourselves, the only real way to play is when you have 4 solid players. Half the challenge and fun of this game is having to micromanage between offensive and defensive approaches to 3 opponents at the same time.

What’s also nice about Blokus is that no matter how good you may get at it, the game never seems unfair or crippling to newcomers. In fact, get too good and all three players will easily single you out as a threat and start gunning toward you first. While it is fun to make alliances and pick out threats, toward the end of the game, all deals will be off as everyone will be scrambling for whatever little space is left.

In college, the name of this game was eventually changed to “Blok-Gus.”

In my opinion, Blokus is the ideal party game, and I’m probably not alone in this, seeing the several awards it has won since it’s creation, including the National Competition Winner by Mensa, the High HQ Society. It is the perfect combination of being very easy to pick up and learn how to play, while also making the players think. It doesn’t suck time or become monotonous like Monopoly or Sorry, and has incredible replay value. It’s also the perfect gift for that special strategist in your life, or anyone for that matter. Find it at your local retail toy section, or check it out online at their official sight. www.blokus.com.

Want more good family games? Check these articles out for tips:

-“Ain’t” Is Not a Word: A Scrabble Guide For The Lazy

-Mario: A Retrospective Part 7 (On Mario Party)

-How To Beat Your Friends In Board Games

-I Am Scattegories And You Can Too: A Scattegories Retrospective

Popular board games are ones that balance risk, skill, and chance.  This “magic bullet” for board games seems to be in order for The Lamont Brothers’ upcoming release: Snow Tails.

The game is for ages 12 and up, and playing time averages 45 minutes.  That’s also perfect for keeping the kids occupied while someone is in the kitchen making dinner.

The premise of the game is a competition amongst players to survive the arctic racetrack without getting too many “dents” in the dog sled along the way.  Play is moderated with player cards, and it’s up to the player to apply it to the racing team or let it go back to the pile.  Or should we say the dog pile?

I’m looking forward to Snow Tails particularly because the game course can be configured afresh every time you play. Players design the level of difficulty for the boardgame’s lay-out by deciding where to place straight-aways, chasms, trees, and other obstacles. There are literally hundreds of combinations so the game play is guaranteed to stay interesting for a long time. At least until the dogs come home.

Snow Tails is set for release before the year’s end.

The premise of the game is to travel through Verne’s famous volcano, across a vast underworld ocean and make it back to the surface of the planet before your two competitors.  Along the way you pick up artifacts and gems which add value to your final score.

I’m anticipating that this game will be a hot commodity in Britain and the US, just on the heels of a summer movie by the same name.  Brandon Frasier’s performance in Journey to the Center of the Earth may not win him an Oscar, but it has been much loved by the under 11 set.

The first edition 1874

Just for fun, here’s an image of an 1874 English edition of Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne.  Many of Verne’s stories have aged well into the 21st century as he often explored scientific ideas with his fiction.  Verne is the original sci-fi author, after all.

But Voyage au centre de la Terre was not one of them, mostly because the center of the Earth turned out not to be filled with dinosaurs, or have a express tunnel to Southern Italy.  Alas.

Some of Verne’s correct predictions include television, air conditioning, submarines, helicopters, and even the Internet.  His work was an inspiration to countless children who grew up to build the visions that Verne saw so clearly.