Premove in Blocade: Queue Your Steps and Beat the Clock

You have won the race. The walls are gone, your pawn is four squares from the far edge, and your rival needs six. Then the clock does what clocks do: nine seconds left, a thumb that lands a square wide, and a game you had already won ends on time. Premove exists for that moment. From Blocade 3.6 you can queue your next pawn steps while your rival is still thinking, and they play the instant their move lands.

Premove comes from online chess, where chess.com and Lichess both let you make your move before your opponent has finished theirs. The move sits waiting, and the moment it is legally your turn it is sent without you touching the board. Blocade borrows the idea and adapts it for a game with walls: in chess a queued move fails only if it becomes illegal, but in Blocade a wall two squares ahead can leave your next step perfectly legal while turning your whole route into a dead end. So Blocade checks the entire queued route, not just the next step. More on that below.

Premove works in every live online game: ranked, friendly, Royale rounds and Knockout cups. It queues pawn steps only. Walls are never queued, because a wall placed without seeing the board is a wall you would not have placed.

Premove is off for everyone until you switch it on. In a match, open the Options menu and flip the Premove row, which sits under Sound and Reduce Motion with a small ADVANCED tag. The same switch lives in Settings under Match & Chat. Either way, turning it on shows a short sheet first, because a queued step plays before you have seen your rival's move, and premove cannot tell a good step from a bad one. If you are still learning the walls, leave it off. If you play Sprint or Royale, where the clock decides games, you will want it.

The simplest use. It is your rival's turn, you already know your next step, so you tap the tile. A dashed ghost of your pawn appears on it and the status line under the board says "Premove set". You can keep watching the board, because nothing has been sent yet. When your rival's move arrives, Blocade checks that the tile is still legal for you on the new board. If it is, the step plays with the normal move sound. If it is not, the ghost clears with a short message and it is simply your move, with the usual dots showing where you can go.

You can only queue a tile that is legal for you right now. That includes a jump, if your rival is standing next to you and the landing square is open. A queued jump plays only if it is still a legal jump when your turn comes. It will never become a plain step on its own, and a plain step will never become a jump.

One step is rarely enough in a race. There are two ways to queue more. Tap a tile next to the last ghost and the run grows by one, in any direction. Or tap a tile further away, and Blocade lays the shortest legal route from your pawn to that tile as a trail of ghosts. Tap anywhere on your goal row, the far edge of the board tinted in your colour, and the route goes to the nearest tile on it. The ghosts fade along the trail, so the step that plays next is always the strongest one.

Every step in the run then fires by itself, one per rival move. Three rival moves later you are three squares further along and you have not touched the board since the tap. Races in Blocade are rarely straight lines, and this is the part that makes premove worth having: a six-step zigzag through leftover walls is one tap, not six.

Routes are planned around walls only, which is how every route in Blocade is measured. When two routes are equally short, you see the one Blocade picked. If you wanted the other, tap a tile on it and that route is laid instead.

This is where Blocade's premove differs from chess. The moment your rival's move lands, Blocade re-checks the whole remaining route against the walls, not only the next step. If their wall has cut the route anywhere, even four tiles ahead, every ghost clears at once, the cut tile blinks red, and you see the message "Premove cancelled, route blocked". Checking only the next step would let a run walk you two squares into a pocket before it noticed. Checking the whole route means a rival wall can never do that.

The next step is also checked against your rival's pawn. If they have stepped onto the tile you queued, the run cancels rather than turning your step into a jump you never chose. A jump you did queue cancels if the rival has walked away, with the message "Premove cancelled, board changed".

Whenever a run cancels, nothing is sent. It is your move, the dots show your legal tiles, and you play by hand or lay a new run.

Here is the honest version. A normal move costs you two things on the clock: the time you spend reacting and choosing, and the time it takes for the rival's move to reach your phone and your move to reach the server. Premove removes the first entirely. It does not remove the second, because Blocade still waits for your rival's move to arrive before it sends yours. On a good connection that second part is a few hundred milliseconds.

Reaction is the big part. Across live games, a mid-game move takes players about two and a half seconds from the moment the rival's move lands. A premoved step cuts that to the network alone. In Sprint, where the whole bank is a minute, that is the difference between flagging in a race you had won and finishing it. In Dash and Tempo it matters less per move and still adds up across a run.

The clear case is the race: walls mostly spent, both pawns marching, the clock deciding. Lay the run once and let it fire. The clear case against is the middle game while both players still hold walls. A queued step commits you to marching during turns you might have spent blocking, and premove will not stop you walking into a strong wall as long as the route stays open. Nothing forces you to keep a run alive: one tap on a ghost ends it.

Two habits help. Queue a run only when you would play those steps by hand anyway, and keep an eye on the ghosts. A run that clears itself is Blocade telling you the board changed, and that is usually a moment worth looking at.

F

Francis

CREATOR OF BLOCADE

Francis is the solo developer who designed and built Blocade — its bots, ranked ladder, and daily puzzles. These guides come straight from the person who made the game.