No, the paper foldable paper "origami" pieces available from Looney Labs are
not stackable as designed. You COULD cut a square hole in the bottom of
each, leaving a border of about 1/16" for some strength, to make them so.
To add heft to them, some people fill them with sand, aquaium gravel or
something similar. However, I can't think of a good way to make them heavy
AND stackable at the same time.
HOWEVER...
There are the recently-redesigned origami pieces. Here are links to the
Word and Acrobat versions of a document describing the folding steps and
giving cut-out folding diagrams sized just right for a large, a medium and a
small:
http://home.att.net/~ryanmcguire/OrigamiIcehouse/Creases.doc (by...
well... me.)
http://firedrake.org/roger/archive/Creases.pdf (converted by Roger
Burton West.)
Just photocopy the second page onto 20 sheets of verious colored papers, and
start folding. I've set myself a goal of folding two pages of pyramids a
day. In ten days I'll have a whole set. (Heck, in six days I'll have
enough for Binary Homeworlds.) If you use regular printer/photocopier
paper, the finished pyramids stack with pretty much the same reveal as the
real plastic ones. They're close enough to the real ones to play Zendo or
Volcano, but they probably have too much friction to play a real-time
stacking game like Icetowers. And they're too "puffy" to play Icehouse.
Re: Number of stashes.
Short answer: 4 (some, such as Homeworlds and RAMbots, specifically
"require" blue, green, yellow and red.)
Look at this page from Icehouse.org, the fan-run wiki website for all things
Icehouse:
http://icehousegames.org/wiki/?title=Choosing_games#Rating
I would qualify Icetowers, Zendo, and Volcano as the "Most Popular" games.
They require 1 stash per person, 4 stashes, and 5 1/3 stashes (five whole
stashes plus five smalls of another color) respectively. But look through
that page and the games it mentions, you might find something you like.
Also, you can look through the Sortable List of Icehouse's Cool Kindred
(SLICK) for how many stashes games take:
http://icehousegames.com/SLICK.html
It also doesn't list each game's popularity. But so what?
If you're looking for single-stash games, I'd start with IceSickle:
http://home.neo.rr.com/danisaac/LooneyLabs/Games/IceSickle/IceSickle.htm
I hope this helps.
Ryan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Crane" <craniac@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Icehouse] n00b: paper pyramids--heft and stackability?
Are the paper pyramids stackable? And has anyone found a way to add
heft while retaining stackability?
How many pyramids do I need to be able to play the bulk of the most
popular games?