Dutch Blitz

"It's like SPEED Uno!"

Designer: Werner Ernst George Muller

Players: 2-4 (or 8 with an expansion pack)

Age:8+

Game Time: 5-10 minutes/round

Objective of the game: "Score points by playing as many cards as possible on Dutch Piles, and by emptying the Blitz Pile as quickly as possible."

Board Game Contains:

- 160 Cards total

-4 decks; Pump, Carriage, Plow and Pail

-Each deck includes: 10 red, 10 blue, 10 green and 10 yellow cards

Game Summary:

Dutch Blitz is a face-paced card game that is easy to learn and fun to play for all ages. The aim of the game is to get rid of your pile of 10 cards and have the most points at the end of a set number of rounds. There are 4 different decks;Pump, Carriage, Plow an Pail. At the beginning of the game each player decides which deck they'll be playing with. A regular game of Dutch Blitz only allows up to 4 people to play. There are 4 different decks, each with a different picture on the back of the cards. These are to help keep the cards separate for score keeping. Each player starts with a pile of 10 cards face down, called a blitz pile, and 3 cards out to the side of it face up. The rest of your cards go in your hand face down, this is called a "wood pile". Your wood pile functions kind of like your "hand" in solitaire. In solitaire, you have a pile of cards that you draw either 1 or 3 cards from and then use those cards on the field. Your wood pile functions the same way. Each pile starts off wit a number "1" followed by "2" in their respective colors and so and so forth. As soon as a pile hits "10" that number card gets flipped face down signifying that pile is complete.

The game play is sort of like Uno where players can only play the coressponding number to the corresponding color (e.g Blue 2 can only be placed on a Blue 1). When the player gets rid of all of her 10-card-pile, they yell "Blitz," everyone stops and the scoring begins. The only crads that count are the ones out in the field. For those players who didn't finish their pile, they have to subtract howevery many left over cards they have to their final score. Every pile gets flipped backwards where you can now see which cards belong to which type of deck (Plow, Pile, Pump or Carriage). The deck that has the most number of cards wins the game. For example, if Susan claims to be the "Plow" deck and she yelled Dutch Blitz with a total score of 15 while Danny who is the "Pump" deck, had to subtract 4 from his final score but still managed to get out Pump cards, he wins the game. The player who yells "Dutch Blitz" doesn't automatically make them the winner. It's still up to the cards to decide your fate!

Game Review:

I used to play Dutch Blitz on Friday night's Youth Group at my old church. There were usually 10 of us who participated in Youth Group. Dutch Blitz only allowed up to 4 players. So my Youth leader decided to buy another set of the game and we would have two groups playing at the same time and the other 2 players just rotating in and out. At first, I felt so lost with this game. Everyone was so fast and I felt incredibly slow. When I finally get my momentum going, someone yells "Blitz."

My Youth leader then announced we were having our very first Dutch Blitz Tournament. I refused to give up on this game and wanted to win the Tournament. So, I bought my own set and played with all kinds of people. I first played it (outside of my Youth Group) at Band Camp with a few friends. It was surprisingly easy to explain and they seemed to have understood the game right away. When I participated in the Tournament, I obviously didn't win but I got to top 4 which was a big accomplishment for me considering I was scoring negatives at the beginning of my Blitz journey.

I enjoy this game so much because anyone can play it. It doesn't matter if you're young or old, religious or not, a board or card gamer. If you want to have a good time, this game is for you! The game play is so fast. 5-10 minutes a round may seem like a long time but once you're in the heat of the moment, 10 minutes goes by so fast.

Despite it being a pretty simple game, Dutch Blitz is actually a very good game. The game is fun to play and is very easy to pick up. The easiest way to describe Dutch Blitz is to compare it to the game Solitaire. Dutch Blitz is essentially Solitaire if you made the game multiplayer and sped it up quite a bit. Like Solotaire you try to play cards by building piles from low to high (the Dutch piles) while storing cards in piles that you currently can’t use in piles that go from high to low (post piles). Unlike Solotaire, Dutch Blitz is more competitive and is faster paced. You need to have a quick reaction time in Dutch Blitz. You need to be able to quickly determine what cards you can play and where you can play them.

I also enjoy the fact that you can still win the game even if you weren't the first one to finish. Calling out "Blitz" doesn't necessarily make you the winne.

If I had to have an issue with Dutch Blitz, it's not the game itself but the quality of the cards. The cards are pretty thin. In a game like this, that could be a problem since when multiple people are trying to play their card on the same pile I can see cards getting bent pretty easily. Preventing the cards from creasing is a bit of a challenge for this game.