Blokus is an abstract strategy game for two to four players, that has won several awards, including the Mensa Select award.
The goal is to get rid of all of the 21 pieces you initially start off with. The pieces are all of the free polyminoes using one to five squares. On each player’s turn, they can put one of their remaining pieces on the 20 square by 20 square board. Each piece must connect to another piece of the same colour by at least one touching corner, but no two pieces of the same colour can share an edge .
The novice typically tries to seal off an area for themselves to reduce the area the opponents can access. But since pieces only are connected via their corners, another player can easily pass through. It is therefore difficult to cut off other people from accessing ‘your’ area. Instead, the successful tactic is to try to expand into as many areas on the board as possible. In other words, game strategy is dominated by offence rather than defence. Blocking is possible to an extent by cutting off an opponents access to the corners of their pieces using yours in strategic ways.
The smaller tiles are very useful during the later stages of the game: the smaller a piece is, the better it is at occupying the holes in the tiles of other colours, and thus opening up new areas of the board for expansion. It often happens that no player can finish off all their tiles. The score is calculated by deducting a point for each square left on a player’s remaining pieces (leaving you with a negative score). Should you ever manage to play all your pieces, you get a bonus score of +15. Achieving this, and having played your single-square piece last gets you another five points for a final score of +20.cumulatively.
Blokus can be played against a computer or another player at http://www.blokus.com
The image above was me playing against a computer and managing quite well.
