The Gamma Pattern in Blockers!

by Mike Fogus

I've been playing a lot of Blockers! (aka Uptown) lately. In fact, I'm making a concerted effort to play at least 100 games of Blockers over the next year.

Why Blockers!?

First, I really like the idea of exploring my games to a deeper level. I could have easily chose any of Go, Homeworlds, Othello, Tokaido, or GIPF-series game here>, but I went with Blockers to explore first. It's very easy to buy games, play them a few times, and then move on to the next. Stating outright that I'll play 100 games gives me a desire to complete a goal that, so far, is stronger than the desire to explore new games. I figure that after 100 games I will reasonably explore the depths of Blockers. However, it'll be a nice surprise that if once I get to that point I learn that the game goes much deeper.

Another reason for choosing Blockers is that I consider it the ultimate "chill out" game. It's a wonderful game to play with my loved ones -- to sit back, relax, and take in the vibrant patterns that emerge. It's a game that fits into my personal category called "tempo games" -- a topic that I hope to discuss one day. Finally, even after a few games it was apparent that certain strategies seem to emerge from the natural course of play. The edition that I have contains a one-page strategy guide that I've intentionally avoided. My goal is to see if the strategies that emerge are similar to those listed in the guide.

One strategy that I've had success with is what I call the "Gamma Pattern." The Gamma Pattern is, simply put, to try and build a seriffed capital Gamma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma) as close to the center of the board as possible. It basically looks like this:

The layout above is the endgame of a very close match where green managed to build a backwards (approximate) gamma in the middle. The benefit of this pattern seems clear; it allows you to reach from the middle out to all four corners. One disadvantage that I see is that it can fill up an entire column and I've been hurt by that condition in the past. It'll be interesting to see if this truly is a powerful technique moving forward.

Klunker

Klunker is a relatively old card game by Uwe Rosenberg with a unique play mechanism. Without going into too much detail, one thing that attracts me to the game is that you're required to manage three separate hands of cards throughout the course of the game. However, the thing that I find most fascinating about Klunker is it seems that often the best (caveats about not playing many games apply) strategy is to best help yourself is to help your opponents. I really wanted to focus on Klunker in my 100-game challenge, but as it turns out I have a hard time finding 2+ additional players interested in playing it. I might have missed my window of opportunity by about 10 years on this one. I'll push to get as many games in as possible however.