GeekNights 070116 - Blokus

Rym

Tonight on GeekNights, we review the puzzle/board game Blokus. In the news, Ubercon founds Ubercon Great Lakes in Livonia, Michigan, and George Cloony wants to make Diamond Age with the SciFi Channel.

Scott's Thing - Disposal of Sodium
Rym's Thing - Texas Rabbits

Hank

Blokus was my birthday present to myself last month, and I really like it. My six year old can play, and is starting to show some level of thought beyond making the first legal move he sees. I recommend it.

A side note: I have used the pentomino pieces (the five-square bits; there are twelve) to play with some puzzles I read about in Arthur C. Clarke's book Imperial Earth. Given a set of the 12 unique pentominos, you will have 60 squares total. Since 60 = 2*2*3*5, there are several rectangles of area 60: 6x10, 5x12, 4x15, and 3x20 (there is also 2x30, but a few of the pentominos have width 3 no matter their orientation). For each rectangle, there are some number of ways to lay the 12 different pentominos to fit exactly into the rectangle. The number of solutions goes down the skinnier the rectangle: there are many 6x10 solutions, but only (if I recall) two 3x20 solutions.

It has been fun to have the board out on my lap while we watch TV, fiddling around with the pentomino pieces in search of the 3x20 solutions. Clarke's book suggests there are two, and that they are very close to each other. A character stays up all night working on it, and discovers that lone solution can be converted to the other by swapping some bits on the ends with each other.

HMTKSteve

Gem-blo is better than Blokus.

trogdor9

Ok, now that I've seen Firefly I have to say "WTF, mate?" to Scott. How the fuck can you dislike a show with that level of awesome‽

Kilarney

You know... I've heard good things about Blokus, but it looks so... well... abstract. I have a hard time getting over that. A little theme is nice. I don't need much, since I'm a Knizia fan, but I do like some.

HungryJoe

Complaints about the SciFi Channel are well made. It could be very good, but instead is very bad. The History Channel and Comedy Central weren't that good starting out, but they turned out to be pretty adequate. The SciFi channel has been around for almost as long and sucks more often than not.

I'm generally more entertained by the schedule than the actual shows. They'll often have a lineup like: "Snakes" followed by "Snakes II" followed by "Snakes III" followed by "Python".

Rolandami

I have Blokus and Blokus Trigon (never played) I want to play 2 player travel version on my regular Blokus, the 14X14 board is easy but I hear you started in the middle. Can someone tell where there starting points are in travel brokus?

Apreche

I have Blokus and Blokus Trigon (never played) I want to play 2 player travel version on my regular Blokus, the 14X14 board is easy but I hear you started in the middle. Can someone tell where there starting points are in travel brokus?

Oh, look. I asked Google and I found the answer.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/96716

Rolandami

Thanks for the help.

HMTKSteve

I listened to the podcast this morning...

Why would you ever try the "walled garden" strategy in the first place? It should be obvious, just by looking at the rules of the game, that such a strategy will not work. Because of the placement rules "spider webbing" is the best strategy. Because you can not place pieces orthagonally adjacent to your own you don't want a walled-in space!

I do have some bias against the game. It comes from the fact that I was developing a game that was 90% similar to Blokus. A few days before I was going ship out a prototype to a publisher I stopped in a game store and saw Blokus on the wall... Six months of development time right down the tube...

Kiey

I listened to the podcast this morning...

Why would you ever try the "walled garden" strategy in the first place? It should be obvious, just by looking at the rules of the game, that such a strategy will not work. Because of the placement rules "spider webbing" is the best strategy. Because you can not place pieces orthagonally adjacent to your own you don't want a walled-in space!

I agree I mean it should be obvious. That kind of strategy works in a game like Go where the point is to have open spaces that are walled off, but here its about getting all the pieces down on the board, in which case you want to create as many possibilities as you can to put pieces down.

HMTKSteve

The "walled garden" strategy implies that you are playing Blokus as an "area control" game, which it is not. It is an "area invasion" game!

tranceotaku

My roommate and I purchased the travel edition and it is really enjoyable. There were quite a few times that I thought I had no more moves left, but keen observation proved otherwise. I can't wait to get other people into it.

Starfox

Blast from the past: I was listening to this just now. In the openy bit, Rym talks about how he was ordering some stuff from amazon. On a whim, he searched for a DS game. OMG amazon has video games!