So, you want to play Sprawlopolis with pyramids

 Zoning Out is a Looney Pyramid adaptation of Sprawlopolis. That’s the elevator pitch and also pretty much everything you need to know if you’re going to be interested in it.

Personally, I have been a longtime fan of the pyramid games. I started following Button Shy when they kickstarted Cunning Folk and the Sprawlopolis line is one of their high points. I’m about as target demographic as you’re going to get.

You are building a city out of pyramids. All the pyramids go in a bag so the only thing you can decide when pulling one out is the size. And that’s key because the big placement restriction is that a pyramid can’t be next to a pyramid of the same size. 

The rules don’t quite out and out say this but is very clear that the city is a grid and a little pyramid and a big pyramid functionally occupy the same amount of space. Diagonals don't matter so you’re only worrying about orthogonals. 

Where Zoning Out really shows it’s Sprawlopolis roots is that there are eighteen special scoring conditions. I made cards for them but you could just use scraps of paper. In addition to new ways to get points or rule changes, they all have a number. You use three to a game and the sum of their numbers are your goal for the game.

Just like roads give you headaches in Spawlopolis, black pyramids are there to make life difficult. They are worth negative points. Each one costs its size multiplied by the number of pyramids around it. Which doesn’t sound that bad but the bad stuff piles up fast.

You score the largest group of each color, the special scoring conditions and subtract the black pyramids and hope you win.

There are two questions that Zoning Out has to answer: Is it any good and of itself? Would I rather play it than Sprawlopolis? From where I’m standing, Zoning Out is a good game but Sprawlopolis is better.

You ultimately have more control in Zoning Out. Each move is only dealing with one square while Sprawlopolis has you juggling four at a time. You decide what size pyramid you’re pulling. And you know that all forty-five pyramids are going to be in your city. 

Sprawlopolis was a game changer. Zoning Out reflects that. Sprawlopolis has inspired expansions and spinoffs. Zoning Out doesn’t have the breadth to do that. It is a solid tribute though.

Egyptian Solitaire and other pyramid thoughts

 The first activity I used the Pyramid Arcade for was playing Egyptian Solitaire. Honestly, I thought it would be Treehouse since I have a long, happy history with that game but there you have it.

Egyptian Solitaire is a Looney Pyramids variant of the classic peg solitaire. The twists are that the pyramid doing the jumping can land on another pyramid the same size or an empty space and the fact that each space has three pyramids to clear.

By the way, I am profoundly terrible at it. I do enjoy it and I can’t help but hope someday that something will click in my head and I will solve it. And it’s a perfect information puzzle so it is solvable.

The base version is a three by four grid but you can expand it it make it more difficult/interesting.

So, you use some stackable pyramids to recreate a puzzle that goes back to the 1600s, if Wikipedia is to be believed. (Since anyone can edit it, you should always have approach Wikipedia with a grain of salt) So the question is: does it do something unique that you’d need the pyramids for and is it any fun?

And I think the answer to that is yup.

Now, I wouldn’t buy a pyramid set just to play Egyptian Solitaire (I did buy both colors of Treehouse when they came out, just to make a comparison) It is a nice little something to do with pyramids you bought for other games though. (I will say that Food Chain Island is a vastly superior reinvention of the peg solitaire puzzle)

Egyptian Solitaire does highlight two elements of the Loony Pyramids and gaming systems in general. Does it let you play a game and do you need the game system to play it?

On one extreme, Ricochet Pyramids lets me play a game almost exactly like Ricochet Robots without the trouble of having that oversized box in my closet. However, I could use that rule set to play Ricochet Pyramids with some other bits. (I don’t but I could) On the other hand, I think it would be really hard to cobble together a Volcano set without anything other than the pyramids and I think that’s an absolute banger of a game.  

Egyptian Solitaire in no way reinvents any wheels but I do like an excuse to play with little plastic pyramids.

Looney Labs included the kitchen sink in Pyramid Arcade

 I recently made what I feel is one of my most indulgent game purchases in years, Looney Labs Pyramid Arcade. I had been interested in it ever since I saw the Kickstarter back in 2016.

After a regular deck of cards, the Looney Pyramids are my favorite game system. (Dominoes and the Decktet are pretty awesome too) I started playing with pyramids back when they were still called Icehouse (Get off my yard, you young whipper snappers! The gaming table’s in the house! Catan’s waiting for you)

And the reason why I didn’t get Pyramid Arcade right off the bat was, well, I basically owned almost everything that was in and could cobble together the rest. I had already bought at least one cache of every color that Looney Labs had made and I did back the Kickstarter at a level to get the new one.

However, if there is one flaw in the system (and this is a very subjective flaw), it is that the pyramids don’t really stand alone. Almost every game requires some additional components. A board, some cards of some , dice, etc. I don’t consider this to be a legitimate failing. Yes, you can play hundreds of games with just a deck of cards but purity of gam system definition doesn’t actually affect function.

Even more than I had originally believed, Pyramid Arcade collects everything and the kitchen sink in one box. It includes ten different boards (I’m counting double sided boards as two boards), nine dice, two decks of cards, a drawstring bag and a chunky player token.

And yeah, years before the Pyramid Arcade came out, I put together in my own pyramid kit. But Looney Lab made a better one. 

So, while it’s easy to argue that I didn’t need to buy Pyramid Arcade (and even easier to argue you don’t need to buy any games lol), it’s going to be fun to have it around

So what is a foundation deck?

 Button Shy’s June Kickstarter is Mysticana: A Foundation Deck. I haven’t finished making a copy of the demo version but I did want to get some thoughts out before the Kickstarter ends.

(And, yes, I can make a functional copy with a regular deck of cards. However, let’s be honest, artwork does make a difference in how a game feels. Also, the built-in rock-paper-scissors of Mysticana’s element system is a good visual shorthand)

So, what is a foundation deck? That just sounds like a way of saying a game system that you can try and copywrite. Well, it turns out a foundation deck is a subset of game systems. 

A game system is a set of components that you can use to play multiple games with. A standard deck of cards is the most quintessential example that I can think of. Even the most conservative estimates say there are over a thousand games you can play with the regular deck of cards.

A foundation deck is a game system where you add additional cards for different games. Some games just require the base deck but you can modify the deck with other cards for specific games.

This isn’t a new concept. Looney Labs Looney Pyramids is totally a foundation system. Almost all its games (at least the good ones) add things like boards and dice or other stuff. And I think there’s nothing wrong with that. Yeah, the purity of a game system that uses a core set of components is appealing but purity tests are just for gate keeping.

What I think will make or break Mysticana is whether or not it has a killer app. If a game system has one really good game, one that people want to play, then it will have legs. A game system can survive having plenty of meh games as long as it has one good one. Poker is a great example of a game system’s killer app, although the standard deck of cards has a whole bunch of them. (Being around for centuries helps with that)

And I don’t know the answer to that yet. It’s not even a decision I can come to. It will end up being a community call.

I was very pleased that the designer diary explicitly mentions the Decktet as a major influence. A six-suited deck with multi-suited cards, the Decktet remains one of the most flexible game system decks I have found that isn’t just a modified standard deck. And it’s killer app, Magnate, requires additional components so it’s a foundation deck too.

My inner game snob can’t beat Treehouse

One game, or really a game system, that was never in danger of being purged from my collection is IceHouse/Treehouse/Looney Pyramids. Yes, back in my day, we bought pyramids in sets of fifteen in tubes that didn’t come with any rules!

I feel a very important milestone in the system’s history was Treehouse. While boxes sets had existed before (I have copies of Ice Towers and the original Zendo and I understand one of the earliest releases was The Martian Chess Set), Treehouse was an accessible, low price point entry into the system.

Looking back, one of the last times I really wrote about Treehouse was ten years ago. Where I dismissed it as too light and random while also admitting that I played the heck out of it with a wide variety of places and people. Man, I can be a game snob!

Some years in between, I was at a convention where I met James Ernest of Cheapass fame, which was the same convention where I learned he was a real person. He commented on how some designers were surprised that there was a market for a family of pub games like Pairs. (He said this in a tone that clearly said that some people need to get out more)

That comment has stuck with me. Moving away from my old group in Illinois that focused on new and increasingly complex games made me realize that there was a world of causal games and gaming out there that was clearly doing well enough to be profitable. A world of gaming that had more people in it than the insular gaming world I’d been living in.

And Treehouse totally fits in that paradigm, part of the world of casual gamers and family games and pub games. Heck, all the pieces are waterproof and a game doesn’t take up a lot of space so it checks off some important pub game boxes. And it works very well for all kinds of audiences.

While I think that the earlier pyramid games Volcano and Zendo have aged well and are brilliant (particularly Zendo), Treehouse was a more accessible entry point. A ine tube game for everyone.I believe it helped the pyramid brand grow.

I ought to get it out again.

Okay, you can play with Daddy's Looney Pyramids

Our son has often wanted to play with Daddy's games, even though it makes Daddy turn pale and shake. At first, I just let him play with some of my dice games, although I may never find all the dice from Zombie Dice :'(

But I have been trying to expand what games I'm exposing him to as he grows older, not counting the actual games that we bought specifically for him and he can actually kind of play by the rules. (The snails only moving one space at a time in Snail's Pace Race still alludes him. Those are some rocket snails)

And I finally took the scary (for me) plunge of letting him play with some Looney Pyramids. He's never been one to put thing other than food in his mouth and, at three, I can trust him to play with the moderately pointy bits under supervision.

Of course, I am not going to let him play with my Zendo set or Ice Towers for that matter. I have too many extra pieces in those, along with the fact that I want to make sure that I keep all those pyramids together.

Ice Dice proved to be a good compromise. Soft cloth bag, five different colors of pyramids. (I forgot I also added a Treehouse set in matching colors so the bag lets me play a wide variety of light games. I can see this little bag coming in even more handy with our son in a few years), as long as you can count on the toddler not to try to swallow a pyramid or throw them behind furniture, they are very interactive. You can discuss colors. You can discuss sizes. You can stack them in a variety of ways.

The pyramids have long been my favorite product from Loony Labs. Right now, with our three-year-old, they are really just toys. But we will be able to work up to simple games like Thin Ice or Tic Tac Doh, with Treehouse or Ice Dice waiting in the wings. And, farther down, I can see deeper games like Zendo or Volcano waiting for us.

The Looney Pyramids can make a toddler think but they have the potential to burn the brains of 40-year-olds.

Of Ricocheting Robots and Pyramids

OK, since I have been thinking about real-time, turnless games, let us look at Ricochet Robots, which I feel pretty safe saying is one of the classics of the genre.

Ricochet Robots is a speed puzzle game. One of those games where there are no turns. People just compete to solve the puzzle on the board the fastest.

You create a board out of four double-sided pieces. The boards both have both the goals on them and righty of different walls. It's not an actual maze but there are still enough walls to give the robots plenty of things to bounce off of.

There are four different colored robots, in the form of sturdy plastic pawns, that you randomly put on the board. Each turn, the goal is randomly drawn and players compete to find the shortest number of moods to make the robot that matches the color reach the goal.

Each move is moving any given robot. They move in a straight line, never a diagonal one, until they hit a wall or the side of the board for another robot. That ends the move. 

So, the game doesn't come with built in perfect solutions. Depending on the position of the robots in the gold it's chosen, different solutions will be available.

Ricochet robots was designed by Alexander Randolph, who was one of the earliest designers for modern game designs. He also gave us Ghosts and  Twixt, among other games. He was friends with said Saxon and I have heard that the two of them help organize the freelancers who designed 3M's game line. (They had a network of game designing friends)

I have also read that ricochet robots was a extensive redesign of one of his earlier games, Moonstar. Now, I have played Moonstar and so I can see the resemblance. At the same time, if he did redesign Moonstar into ricochet robots, is a serious improvement on almost every level. It's both much more intuitive and much more flexible.

But I really have to admit that I admire Ricochet Robots more than I enjoy it. It is a brilliant design, combining both a speed game with a very thought-provoking system of puzzles. It is like a party game met a brain building exercise.

But it isn't the kind of game I normally go for. I do think is one of the best of its kind but it rarely saw play and not everyone enjoyed it. So it ended up getting purged from my collection.

More recently, I discovered that Russ Williams (Hi Russ!) had made a Looney Pyramid variation on Ricochet Robots. All you needed was three monochrome stashes and a chessboard. Well, I keep a chessboard bandana in my Looney Pyramid tool kit so it took me two minutes to set up a game.

If you already know how to play Ricochet Robots, Ricochet Pyramids is beyond easy to learn. Put the chessboard down where everyone can see it. Randomly placed a small pyramid in each color as the robots. Randomly place nine towers made out of a big pyramid and a medium pyramid (one for every color combination with three colors) to serve as goals and terrain. With the remaining pyramids from the three stashes, draw one of each size to determine which robot has to reach which tower.

The real question is, does it feel anything like playing Ricochet Robots? The answer is it feels almost exactly like that.

The most significant difference, at least for me is that Ricochet Pyramids is played on an 8 x 8 board while memory serves me that Ricochet Robots is on a 16 x 16 board. The smaller board creates a  more tighter environment.

That being said, you could easily make the board bigger, even putting for checkerboards together if you felt like it. You could also add more colors in more robots and towers without changing any of the rules.

In all honesty, at least for me, the biggest question is would it be harder to get people to play this than Ricochet Robots? Let's be honest, homemade games don't have the same chrome appeal as fully manufactured games. 

But, the pyramids are awfully nice looking and chessboards can be as nice as you want them to. Really, a glass or mirror chessboard with the pyramids and you'd have something really nifty looking going on.

Ricochet Robots is a really fascinating design. However, it was not a game that I enjoyed for many of my friends enjoyed enough to keep. But, thanks to Russ, I can still experience it when I feel like it. Shucks, I probably will playing Ricochet Pyramids more than I would play Ricochet Robots.

Looney Labs sent one heck of a holiday gift this year

I've been on Looney Labs Holiday Gift list since...2005. Wow.

And, up until this point, my favorite holiday gift from Looney Labs has been the 2008 World War 5, because using the pyramids to play a simplified Risk just tickled my fancy. 

But the 2016 Holiday present of Sandships is a new high park for me. 

Sandships is a light war game/area of control game. You build towers in Martian cities and fight with the title Sandships on a claustrophobic board. While your options are determined by specialty dice, there is a wild face and other ways of getting wilds so you actually have a lot of flexibility.

It also came with stickers so you could turn three playing dice into lightning dice, which are part of the Pyramid Arcade set. Since I have so far decided against getting that, since I have tons and tons of pyramids already, that is a really nice bonus.

But here is the real reason I was so thrilled when I open the mailbox.

One of the prototypes that Andy Loney showed us Looney Lab fans at Rincon was Sandships. And I got to play it three times in a row, with two, three and four players. And I had a really great time, despite getting crushed every game.

So I knew exactly what was in the envelope and it was something that I had had a lot of fun with.

It is always fun to get one of Looney Labs' holiday gifts. But this year, it was the bee's knees, the cat's pajamas and the crocodile's suitcase.

Pyramid Arcade funded with flying colors

It isn't a surprise that the Arcade Pyramid got funded, seeing as how it matched its funding goal on day one. Additional stretch goals, like reprinting the Looney Labs chess board bandana and thirty extra pyramids (so you can play games like Zendo or Pikeman) were reached. So, it was a smashing success and Looney Labs has a good history as a company so I'm confident in the project getting fulfilled.

I do have to admit that I backed it at a lower level, in part to get the special green pyramids and in part to simply show my support and be a part of the project. I already have well over two hundred pyramids and pretty much every additional accessory for them that had been already produced, including the bandana. :D

In fact, I bought the boxed sets of Ice Towers and Zendo back when they were being produced. Zendo, in particular, has served as a great tool box for the pyramids. (The color contrast in that color set is better for my color-blindness) The Pyramid Arcade is the super-sized version of that.

Honestly, while I have always been a big fan of the pyramid system, the Pyramid Arcade project has reminded me just how much you can do with it. The part of me that loves researching print and play projects loves the system because it lets me explore new games all the time. And I am sure the Pyramid Arcade only encourage more development.

It has even made me end my hiatus on Superduper Games, since there are pyramid games on that site. (I have no issues with the site. I think it's amazing place to play some very unusual abstracts. I just periodically take breaks from it.)

I have had many years of good play from the pyramid system. I think that the Pyramid Arcade is only going to spark more interest in the system and encourage more games to be developed.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/187988/pyramid-arcade

http://icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Zendo is the best pyramid game

I have played a lot of games over the years with the Looney Pyramids. Hands down, the best game I have played has been Zendo. As far as I am concerned, it is the crowning jewel of the system. I have played it in many different settings with many different groups and it has never failed to be a hit.

I was once teaching it at a meetup group and an observer said 'So it's like Mastermind with Tetris pieces?' and I turned to her and said 'it is EXACTLY like that' 

Zendo belongs to the school of deduction games where one person comes up with a code or rule and everyone else has to figure it out. Mastermind is the defining game of the genre but Zendo blows every other game of its type out of the water.

One player will take the role of code maker or master. Everyone else will be their students or code breakers. The master will come up with a rule about the Buddha and then build two dioramas called koans out of the pyramids , one that demonstrates the rule and one that does not.

The rule really can be virtually anything. It can relate to the colors of pyramids, the number of pyramids, the orientation of pyramids, the size of the pyramids or any combinations of them. For instance, a rule could be that a koan has the Buddha nature if it has a large blue pyramid pointing up.

Students take turns building koans of their own and then asking the master either master or mondo. If they ask master, the master simply marks if the koan follows  the rule or not. Mondo has all the students guess what the master's answer will be before the master marks the koan. Everyone who guesses right gets a guessing stone.

At the end of a student's turn, they can turn in a guessing stone to guess  the Buddha's nature. If they get the rule right, they win. Otherwise, the master will build another koan that demonstrates the student's rule but still does not have the Buddha's nature.

Zendo is an amazing gaming experience, unlike anything else I've played and I've played a lot. While there is a 'winning' condition and it can be seen as competitive, I've always found it turns into a cooperative experience. And unlike cooperative games like Pandemic, it isn't about tension but exploration and discussion.

The master's goal isn't to stump the students. Trust me, that wouldn't be a challenge. The master's goal is to challenge and engage the students. The students are going to inevitably work together, whether they intend to or not since every turn gives new information. In almost every game I've played in, it has become intentional.

Zendo is really about communication. A game of Zendo is a conversation between the master and the students, as well as the students with each other. That gives the entire game a vibe that is unique.

You can play Zendo with just about everything. I've read about people using pocket change to play it or words or even emoticons. However, the pyramids are a very good way to play Zendo. They create a striking visual look. More importantly, they create a distinct language to have the conversation with.

Zendo is an impressive game. Each piece of the game is designed to help people not just explore reasoning but communication. Other deduction games, like Clue or Sleuth, are about find answers. Zendo is about talking to each other.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6830/zendo

http://www.looneylabs.com/rules/zendo

Volcano, one of the classics of Looney Pyramids

If there is a game that truly embraces the unique nature of the Looney Pyramids, it is Volcano.

There are a lot of abstract strategy games in the Looney Pyramid catalog. A good chunk of the early games, for instance most of the games in Playing with Pyramids, are pure abstract strategy games without any random elements.

Played out on a five by five grid, Volcano is a game about collecting sets of pyramids by strategically causing volcano eruptions. Some years ago, I wrote a fairly detailed review and rules summary : https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/202091/very-unconventional-abstract Looking back at it, I have to say that Volcano is much easier to demonstrate than to explain.

The thumbnail sketch of Volcano is that you move the volcano caps around to cause eruptions, which are basically the pyramids playing hopscotch. When a pyramid lands on another pyramid the same size, you get to keep that pyramid for scoring. You get extra points collecting  a trio of the same color and when someone gets a pyramid in every color, the game ends.

There is definitely a learning curve to Volcano. As I said, actually understanding how the game works mechanically doesn't seem to click until you see the game in action. The next part of the learning curve is figuring out how to set up good moves :D

Volcano is a game that really requires the stacking nature of the pyramids, as well as three different sizes. It clearly was developed out of the very nature of the pyramids. Plus, there's no denying that, as abstract as it is, the pyramids help it live up to the Volcano name.

Plus, Volcano is a very solid game. Definitely forces you to think in different ways so it is intellectually challenging. At the same time, causing eruptions and collecting colorful pyramids is an off a lot of fun. For such a different game, it's an easy one to get people interested.

I've been playing Volcano for years. Sadly, not regularly enough to get really good at it but I keep coming back to it. I consider it one of the games that really elevated the Looney Pyramid system, a game I'd buy and keep playing even if it was the only game in the system.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13084/volcano

http://icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=Volcano

Treehouse was the killer ap for Loony Pyramids

When discussing the Looney Pyramids, it's impossible to not touch on Treehouse because it was an important change in the way that the system was sold and marketed.

When Looney Labs rose from the ashes of IcehouseGames, they needed a lower cost product since they needed to work up to the production costs of the pyramids. Andy Looney came up with Fluxx, which became their flagship game.

In a lot of ways, Treehouse was meant to pull a similar trick.

Before treehouse, the primary way to get the pyramids was in colored caches of fifteen. Both Ice Towers and Zendo came in boxed sets but it was a lot easier to find the caches. The problem was that you needed multiple caches to play virtually anything and the caches themselves didn't come with any rules.

So if you wanted to get into the pyramids, you had to invest in multiple sets, along with digging up the rules. Mind you, that wasn't a problem for me. By the time treehouse came out, I have gotten every single color that was available and bought the Playing with Pyramids book of rules. But I am kind of crazy that way.

What Treehouse did was give you a low price entry point into the world of pyramids. You got fifteen pyramids divided into five colors (so you got one of each size in each color), a die and the rules to Treehouse. Instead of buying a bunch of parts, you bought a complete game.

Treehouse was a pretty simple game. Everyone got one trio of pyramids, with an extra one set in the middle in the treehouse formation. On you were turned, you would roll the die in the results would give you different ways of moving your own pyramids, with your goal to have your pyramids matching the treehouse.

(I wrote a review of the game shortly after it came out which describes the rules in greater detail: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/121940/ever-changing-treehouse-icehouse)

Treehouse didn't just represent a new way to package the pyramids. It also showed a new philosophy for the game design. Before Treehouse, most of the pyramid games were pure abstracts. Treehouse is a quick, luck-filled little filler.

And, as near as I can tell, Treehouse did succeed at being a killer app for the pyramids. Treehouse is still in print after 10 years and has had several different editions. In general, I've seen the different forms of pyramids sold in more stores than I did back in 2006.

Compared to a number of other pyramid games, Volcano and Zendo in particular, Treehouse doesn't seem that strong to me. It really is just a little time filler with the die often forcing you to make choices you'd rather not make.

But... I have gotten a lot of games of Treehouse in over the years. 15 little plastic pier meds and one plastic guy makes for a game that you can carry in play just about anywhere. You don't have to worry about it getting wet or muddy so it's perfect for restaurants and coffee shops and picnics.

So maybe my inner game snob just to has to own up to the fact that it is a fun little game.

And there is no is no denying that Treehouse helped spread the pyramid system and helped make it more mainstream.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21955/treehouse

http://www.looneylabs.com/looney-pyramids

Pikemen: a traditional game done in pyramids

Since I've already written about Martian Chess, I feel like I should also talk about Pikemen, the Looney Pyramid game that most closely resembles Chess.

Pikemen first came out in 1997, which makes it one of the older pyramid games. (I personally mark 2006, when Treehouse came out, as one of the major milestones of the pyramid system) And, more than any other pyramid game I've played, it is the one that most closely resembles a classic abstract.

The game is pretty simple. Everyone gets a set of pyramids, made up of all three sizes (they come in big, medium and small, by the way) The number of pyramids and the board layout depends on the number of players. You can even use some quickly rhombus-shaped pieces for unusual numbers, like three players.

On your turn, you can do two different actions. You can align a pyramid, pointing it in any direction (including up and the diagonals) or you can move a pyramid. Pyramids can only move in the direction that they are pointing and realign after they stop. They can move any number of spaces but they can't jump over another piece.

But they can capture. You can capture any piece if they are on their side, in the moving and attacking position. However, if a piece is pointing up, it is defending and can only be captured by a larger pyramid. So a big pyramid that's pointing up can't be captured at all.

Every captured pyramid is worth points, one to three depending on their size. The first player to get to twelve points wins the game.

There are two rules that make a critical difference in the play of Pikeman (because games about moving and capturing pieces are pretty common but all too many aren't that good) First of all, being able to reorient a piece after moves is big. It effectively gives you two moves in one, which makes the game a lot more dynamic.

Second, you don't play until someone runs out of pieces. You play to twelve points. That definitely makes the game shorter than it would be and it also helps make it more dynamic. Pikemen isn't about defending. It's about attacking.

Like I wrote earlier, Pikemen feels like a much more traditional game than most of the games in the Looney Pyramid system. If someone told me it was adapted from an earlier, nineteenth century abstract, I wouldn't be surprised. It's also not the kind of abstract that I personally go looking for. After I got into Go, I've been more interested in abstracts build around placement than movement.

All that said, Pikemen is a solid game. It offers plenty of choices and surprisingly dynamic play. Not every pyramid game has to invent a new kind of wheel. Some can just offer good play.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20269/pikemen

A knife fight in a phone booth that keeps shrinking

I really like Branches and Twigs and Thorns more than I should. It's one of the slightly obscure Looney Pyramid games. By slightly obscure, I mean it isn't one of the big ones like Volcano or Treehouse or Zendo but it's generally agreed that it doesn't stink.

Admittedly, one of the things that is a blow against Branches and Twigs and Thorns is that it was originally billed as the pyramid version of Go and that is a comparison that it just can't live up to. Go is a colossal game in so many ways. Branches and Twigs and Thorns is a quick little abstract that has only sixteen spaces on the board per player.

So let's not compare it to Go. Let's call Branches and Twigs and Thorns a quick little abstract that has a bit of a knife fight in a phone booth going on. And when you look at it from that angle, it looks a whole lot better.

Branches and Twigs and Thorns is a two or four player game that uses either a checkerboard or half a checkerboard, depending on the number of players. Depending on the number of players, the game begins with placing one or two roots and one or two nulls. After that, players take turns placing one of their fifteen pyramids in open spaces.

Branches and Twigs and Thorns takes advantage of the fact that the pyramids are pyramids by requiring you to leave them on their side so that they're always pointing. They must always be pointing to either a root or another pyramid. They can never point to a null.

If you are pointing at a root or one of your own pyramids, everything is fine. However, when you point at another player’s pyramids, they gain points equal to the size of your pyramid and you lose points equal to the size of their pyramid. And the board is so cramped and claustrophobic that someone is eventually going to have to break down and point at someone else's pyramid.

The game ends when you fill the board, which is going to use up all the pyramids as well, by the way. At that point, whoever has the most points is the winner!

Most of my games of Branches and Twigs and Thorns have been two player. Those games have felt like both players were trying to get the other player in a Go ladder.

I once described Branches and Twigs and Thorns as having one or two major decisions per game. I was wrong about that. Branches and Twigs and Thorns is a game that has one or two confrontations. All of your decisions are working up to that confrontation. It's not just a knife fight in a phone booth. It's all about being the one who is able to stab the other guy.

Branches and Twigs and Thorns isn’t a life changing, amazing abstract. However, I do like how it’s a fast, little dynamic game, every move quickly pushing you towards that inevitable confrontation.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17298/branches-and-twigs-and-thorns

Martian Chess showed me the secret of the pyramids

Martian Chess was the first game that really got me into the Looney Pyramid system.

At the time, a lot of my experience with Looney Labs have been through Fluxx and Aquarius. Which are still games that I do enjoy but the pyramids and Martian Chess definitely opened up a different side of the company to me.

Fluxx is, of course, a very random game and Aquarius, while it is solid, is still very light. Martian Chess, on the other hand, is an abstract with no random elements whatsoever. It has some definite depth and strategy.

I did a fairly detailed review of the game about eleven years ago (https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/82875/game-changing-pieces-and-shifting-ground) but here's a general overview. You have three different pieces with different movements, up to the Queen who moves like a chess queen. Captured pieces go in your score pile with the most points winning.

Ah, but there's a clever bit and it's a good one. No one owns any particular pieces per se. Instead, you own part of the board and every piece on your part is under your control. (And, no, you can't capture your own pieces. Thanks for trying) So every piece you use to capture then belongs to an opponent. 

Oh and there are a wide variety of board layouts to accommodate different numbers of players. Personally, I prefer a simple four by eight two-player game but it's cool how many options there are. The boards made out of rhombuses are neat.

All that said, the sparkle has worn off Martian Chess for me since I wrote that review in 2005. It became too easy for games to descend into almost null moves, making stalemates. (I have read suggestions on how to deal with that, including the first player to eighteen points winning, since they have the majority of the possible points and will win anyway)

I also got into Go which changed my tastes in abstracts. I came to like stones on the board with the flow of the game always mov my forward more than moving pieces.

I also went on to learn other pyramid games that are, quite frankly, better. Volcano, as a clear example, is another pure abstract that is a better game and makes better use of the unique nature of the pyramids.

Still, Martian Chess is an interesting game. Players owning the board, not the pieces is a very neat idea. And it did help me get into the pyramids, which has never stopped being rewarding.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19803/martian-chess

Pyramid Arcade is on Kickstarter

Looney Labs has just started a Kickstarter project called Pyramid Arcade, which is the largest tool kit they've offered for their Looney Pyramids.

I've been playing with their pyramids for so long that Looney Pyramids is the third name that they've had for the system. I first started playing with them back when they were called Icehouse Pyramids. Then, they were Treehouse Pyramids. I have a feeling Looney Pyramids will stick since they finally named them after the company.

Looney Pyramids aren't a game. Instead, they're a game system. Think of them as a tool box, a collection of pieces you can use in different ways to play a wide variety of different games. Just like a deck of cards, only more pointy.

I am a big fan of game systems. Not just because they are a lot of game packed into a small space but because they really let you look at the nuts and bolts of mechanics. When you take away the chrome, you get to see all the moving parts.

Although, having just said that, the colorful stacking pyramids are awfully pretty chrome.

There's a lot of different games you can play with the pyramids, ranging from abstracts to dexterity to deduction to area control to resource management to war games. Okay, light war games. I'm pretty sure that Homeworlds qualifies as a 4X game.

There are a number of reasons I think that the pyramids have become a really good game system.

First of all, the actual pyramids themselves are very versatile. Pyramids that are stackable, come in three sizes and come in a wide variety of colors can be used in a variety of ways. And they make nice eye candy.

Second, the pyramids are really just the jumping off point. A lot of these games use boards, dice, cards or tokens. Alien City uses a whole other game system, the Piece Pack. That does kind of spoil the whole game system standing in its own (Hey, take this handful of pyramids. It's all you'll ever need) but the end result is a lot of fun, different games.

Finally, the pyramids have been supported and nurtured by both a game company and design community. One way or another, it has been supported since 1989. The pyramids are a living system that is constantly being developed by professionals and not-quite-as-professionals. 

I've played about half of the twenty-two of the games that will come in the Pyramid Arcade and eight of them I'm pretty sure are original to this set. Just from what I've played alone, I know it's a good collection.

The one glaring omission to the set is Zendo, which is my favorite pyramid game. Unfortunately, Zendo would require a different distribution of colors. On the other hand, you can still use the set to play Zendo, just not using colors. Really, you can use a handful coins to play Zendo if you felt like it.

And one of the stretch goals is to work on a sequel project that would allow people to play Zendo and other older games that used the older color distribution. 

Looney Labs has already reached their funding goal. I think they might've done it on the first day. The pyramids have been around for decades and they have really proven themselves as a gaming system. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/looneylabs/pyramid-arcade

http://www.icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page