Blueprints Game Review

When I was younger, I wanted to be an architect, there's something about construction that has my interest, but it was particularly buildings that fired that interest, the different materials, the way they could be combined, the aspects of the building, how different things could be with the same materials.  Everything about it was interesting.

Sadly that hope never came to pass and the industry I came to find myself in was games, with which I was introduced to dice, and a whole new set of interests sprung forth.  Strange then that I should find a game that has elements of both about them.

This is Blueprints

It's a simple enough idea, each turn, everyone takes a blueprint of a building that needs to be built, and that gives you where you need to build and how high each stack has to be.  Then you roll nine dice to form the construction materials pool and start building from there.  Every turn you play one die from the pool and then take another from the bag and roll it to replenish the pool.

There are bonuses to be had for having dice the same colour, having a series of ascending number, all the same number, or building them in tall towers.

Then the different types of dice themselves have points assigned to them if you manage to get them in certain combinations.

Sound like a lot of maths?

We thought so too, until we started playing, and we learned that it's one of those games that sounds remarkably complex and ends up being quite intuitive in it's nature.  The first few times you build something, you find out some combinations really work and some really don't, but then you get a new blueprint and you find that the combinations that didn't work on the last building really work on this one and so on.

Something with this much glass in the construction could only have been the sixties

And you start to recognise ideas and patterns in the blueprints that you've seen in modern architecture.

Giant stone tower next to a glass lower floor topped with wood...can only be the seventies...

And the combinations continue, I really like this game, it's got the right combination of thinking ahead and planning combined with cursing when one of the other builders nicks that perfect bit of material that you had your eye on, games take no more than half an hour (even on first play), and there's infinite combinations to be had.

Really enjoyed this, recommended.