Description
Launched in March 2019, Tombola’s fast-moving Blocks (not to be confused with 90-ball Blox from Gamesys) presents a bingo concept involving cheerily coloured blocks that’s refreshingly different. With two ways of winning plus jackpots of up to £20k, and tickets kicking off from 10p, it’s also potentially lucrative.
It’s played with 60 balls – or blocks – across four different rooms, each of which can host unlimited players and each with its own theme and chat function – although they link up in the early hours between 2 am and 8 am to create a single huge prize pot.
Like previous Tombola game Pulse, this one is mobile-optimised, you can only play in one room at a time and it’s a multi-stake offering with one ticket per player.
How to play
Choose one of the four themed rooms, taking your pick from island, forest, ocean or mountain, and then decide on your stake – 10p, 25p, 50p, £1 or £2. Prizes depend on the stake level chosen, so while a £2 participant has the same odds of winning as someone with a 10p ticket, they bag 20 times as much if they do win.
How to Play Blocks Bingo
After you’ve bought into the game, just wait for it to start, not forgetting to enjoy a bit of banter with your bingo buddies beforehand.
Some of the rules here are quite similar to a 75-ball game. Each ticket has a wall of 36 numbers, six in each of the six available colours, and your mission is to clear all six blocks in one of the colours, rather than destroying the wall completely. (Which number is which colour varies between games.)
As each number is called, mark that block off if you have it and it will explode, before any other blocks above on top will fall into the empty space.
Blocks in each column are organised in numerical order from top to bottom. Meanwhile, each column has, for example, numbers 20 to 30, 30 to 40 and so on until the column on the far right, where numbers are all between 50 and 60.
Clear all blocks of the same colour first and you land the Blocks prize, typically won within 20 or fewer calls.
The ‘score’ prize
Receive score points when blocks in the same shade on your ticket touch for the first time; the player with most score points at the end of the game bags a prize.
Touch two blocks to get 20 points, three to earn 30 and so on, with the maximum being 60 points.
Special features
Jackpots
A player who clears their ticket of one colour of blocks within 10 calls or fewer bags the jackpot prize. It’s 10,000x stake, with a second-tier jackpot of 1,000x stake.
Just a few days following the launch, the £20k top prize had been won, alongside smaller jackpots 50 or so times.
Chat feature
As ever, this is one thing you won’t want to miss out on. Moderators are there to jolly the chat along and to keep you up to date with Tombola happenings.
Return to Player (RTP)
While RTP or Return to Player isn’t always advertised for individual games, with Tombola it’s guaranteed to be at least 80%, a healthy average for bingo.
Verdict
Blocks has become a busy game in a relatively short period of time, often with hundreds of players in one room. And we have to agree with Tombola that it has the potential to be a blocks-buster! What’s more, it’s entertaining, affordable, and democratic in that all players have the same chance of winning.
However, one or two reviewers have remarked that games finish too quickly, while some have reportedly found the rules hard to follow at times. And, as mentioned, rooms do get quite busy, meaning it may not be the ideal choice for new players.
But try it for yourself, and see if it’s a game that works for you.
Bingo 
