Still the best

Jake drifted by to see how the Welcome Back Bash was going, and as he was there, Rachel expressed her yearning for more gaming. When that happens, and there is four of us around, we turn to Blokus. It's amazing how replayable that game is. I can't foresee ever getting sick of it. And I (Chris) find no end of enjoyment making up names trying to describe strategies of play.

"The Wing" is the best of them all. You can't stop The Wing. Go out a little ways towards the middle, and use the "W" shaped piece to branch out in 2 directions. It's the best. If you're really good, you can branch one of those for a Double Wing. That is for professionals only.

In a previous game, Danielle invented the Circulatory System, where you send a solid line towards the middle ("the artery"), have a large clump when you get there ("the heart"), and then as many spindly tentacles off that as you can ("the capillaries"). It's rather effective.

There's "The Swamp", where you hoard your corner, and flood it with your own pieces, not heading towards the middle, and hope the others beat each other up. It's a tough strategy to maintain - you can get trapped in - but it can allow you to get your larger pieces on the board, which is always nice. Your camping out often goes unnoticed by the other players...

"The Snake", "The Dash", "The Switchback", "The Sneak".... these are all great strategies.

I'm absolutely positive my sports-style voiceovers are tremendously annoying. Don't care. It's like making sentences out of the words you play in Quiddler - has to happen.

But I digress... how did the game go?! Well, the four-player game was played by Rachel, Jake, Selena, and Chris. The scores went like this:

Chris	Jake	Rachel	Selena
-8	-13	-18	-32

Chris wins!

Jake had to go, but we managed to rope Heather into playing. She was hanging out at the table next door, and this was her first game play. Blokus is a great one to start with, we got her up to speed in seconds, and gaming got underway...

It ended like this:

Chris	Selena	Rachel	Heather
+10	-18	-21	-42

Obviously, Heather got blasted pretty early on. But, remember, it was her first game. Apparently, we don't go easy on the newbies. I actually don't think there was vicious intent, the rest of us have just played a bit more, and are more aware of the rest of the board and its possibilities.

And yes, that is no typo, Chris managed to place all of his pieces for a big win.

Blokus is wonderful.