One thing I’ve learned from my years of doing this reviewer thing is that there are games for every occasion. Sometimes you want something heavy and thinky. Sometimes you want something extra social. Sometimes you want to gamble. Sometimes you just want to throw dice at something. Sometimes you just want to throw dice, full stop. That was the mood I was in when I attended GameCon Canada this year. I wanted to try something simple.
Enter Blockade.
On my first lap around the convention, I missed Blockade. I was just on the wrong end of the R.E.D. Games booth and learned mostly about their other games. It was on a subsequent lap that I found Blockade and was offered a demo. It didn’t take long into the explanation before I knew what I was getting into. It’s basically Battle Yahtzee.
The board is a 10×10 grid with nine dice combinations along the bottom row, and another five in a column along the side. The goal is to use poker chips to move up five spaces in each column using dice rolls, and once for the harder rolls along the side. The base row goals are rolling pairs (1-6), triples, quadruples, or a full house (a pair and a triple). Along the side of the board, the goals include all evens, all odds, totalling 9 or less, totalling 26 or higher, or a straight. You have up to three rolls of any or all of your five dice to get the best roll possible. If you roll one or more of the combinations on the bottom row, you move that poker chip up one space OR move your opponent’s chip back one space on their track. You may have noticed there is no five-of-a-kind space. If you can roll five-of-a-kind, it’s called a press, and you can move any five chips up one spot (not counting the side column). Once you reach the fifth space, your chip is locked and can’t be moved back. The spaces along the side are harder to roll, so you only need to collect them once, and they are automatically locked when you do.
Honestly, it probably took longer to explain that than to understand it once you have your dice in hand.
But wait, there’s more. I called this Battle Yahtzee. Where’s the battle?
After a player has made their rolls, but before they score them, their opponent has the opportunity to defend and steal the roll. Their opponent has to roll exactly the same combination in the same number of rolls (or less). That means if Player A rolled a pair of 2s and a pair of 4s using only two of their three possible rolls, then Player B needs to roll a pair of 2s and a pair of 4s with two rolls or less. If they can do that, Player B not only prevents Player A from scoring, but they get to score that roll themselves. The exception is that five-of-a-kind, which on defence is called a blockade. If the defender rolls a blockade, they will block any offensive roll, but since they didn’t match the roll, they score nothing.
Again, it probably took longer to explain that than to understand it once you have your dice in hand.
While the bones of Blockade land squarely in the Yahtzee realm, it’s still a great game in its own right. There’s more strategy in the offensive choices available, and the addition of the defensive rolls increases the challenge. Like all dice rollers, it is intrinsically luck-based. But the strategy of your choices is real and can be the determining factor more often than not.
If I had to give a criticism, it would be the size of the game. It’s scaled to full-sized poker chips, which are easy to source. If this game were signed with a larger publisher, they could easily reduce the size to at least half, if not more, simply by reducing the component size. The game is straightforward enough that it could be playable anywhere, were it not for the size. The flip side to that is that other than its size, it really is playable anywhere. The thick neoprene mat and standard weight poker chips make it ideal to toss onto an outdoor picnic table without worrying about it blowing away. This is a perfect game to take camping, to a coffee shop, or even to a picnic table outside your local brewery.
You can find R.E.D. Games online at shopredgames.com.
