Skip to main content

It's a blitz

At Christmas, my niece bought us a card game. Now I love my niece dearly, and she usually has exquisite taste, but this time I thought she had blown it. We aren't great game players, and I thought this was going to be something that was quietly put away and ignored. And such would be the case if we hadn't thankfully been forced to play the game with my brother and sister in law (who also received one). And it was brilliant. I can honestly say I haven't enjoyed a game as much for years. It's quick, fun and simple.

The game is called Dutch Blitz. Apparently it's not easy to get in the UK, but well worth tracking down. In essence it is a bit like each player is undertaking a shared game of patience/solitaire. That sounds deadly dull - but the competitive aspect makes it fast, furious and wonderful.

Unfortunately the printed rules are quite hard to take in - the actual game play is a lot simpler than the sheet seems to suggest. We were lucky as we got the simplified explanation and didn't have to work it out ourselves. But I can assure you that it is well worth fighting past those instructions to play.

You can play with two to four players (more if you get extension packs) - I think it's best with four, where  you get more pressure than two, as you are trying to follow what everyone is doing simultaneously.

It is really hard to describe how enjoyable it is. An indication is what happened on New Year's Eve. We tend to see in the New Year, then go to bed pretty soon after. But we had been playing Dutch Blitz up to 11.30 and decided we just had to go back to it... and were still playing at 3am.

So even if you don't really like games I would encourage you to track down Dutch Blitz. It's brilliant. If you fancy it, it is available in the UK on Amazon, but you can get it at half the price (don't ask why) from this motor parts shop. You can also find out more on the official site - including seeing the rules... but remember actually playing it is much simpler than the way they describe it!
Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous24 January 2013 at 10:46

    Sounds a lot like Racing Demons - the card game I grew up with.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brian Clegg24 January 2013 at 14:14

    Charlotte - it has considerable similarities to Racing Demon, but the purpose made card pack (with, for example four different coloured backs) and a number of variations of the cards themselves make it easier to play.

    ReplyDelete
  3. kcm30 December 2021 at 21:01

    Yep, it's the exact same thing as racing demon but played with card decks that have the Jack, Queen & King removed from them.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp
117 comments
Read more

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor
25 comments
Read more

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense
6 comments
Read more