David Artman: > A) The re-run of Xeno should replace Treehouse with another single-set > game. > B) The new mixed-colors set (henceforth called "Eco" as a working name) > should have a third single-set game. Will it? Doubt it. The Looneys have made it clear that Treehouse is a good seller. It's easy to teach and quick to play. No reason to mess with a winning formula. Tic Tac D'oh and IceSickle comes to mind as a good single stash games, but neither of those use the Treehouse die or the pyramid color. Yes, I know... any even semi-experienced game player would be able to ignore the colors and die, but those extra bits would just prove confusing to the general public (i.e. the target market). You could try to explain that the same pieces can be used to other games in addition to the one sold with the pyramids, but an experiment over the course of more than a decade has shown that that explanation doesn't really sell the game system. If a new game (or two) that needs five colors and a Treehosue die can be developed, then this sounds like a reasonable idea. > C) The Eco set is being planned to lay the ground work for a 3House + 3 > sets package/boxed game. I'm not sure what you mean by 3House + 3. Regardless, I can't believe that the Looneys are planning that far in advance for specific game YET. Zendo had a tremendous following before it was made into a boxed set. Likewise, IceTowers was fairly well known before its appearance. I can't think of any current games that could be descibed as 3House+3. The most likely candidates for boxing would be just plain old 3House games (Homeworlds, Black Ice, etc.), but even with those game it was determined that publishing the rules separate from the bits made more sense. Ya know... I'm not really sure at all why (or even IF) having a third Treehouse is a good idea. Some might think the excitement generated here on the mailing list indicates a big market for another variant. But I suspect (and the Looneys have pretty much verified) that the small number of Icehouse color collectors is not a sufficient market to keep stocking poorly selling existing product, much less develop new ones. Apparently they think (and I have no opinion either way) that a third color scheme would be good seller. I personally think a third color scheme would be cool. To be honest though, there's already enough confusion with mapping Homeworlds powers to Xeno colors, without throwing another column on that conceptual table. I like it, but I don't get it. Wait I know... Rainbow and Xeno gives us ten colors total. Adding in Eco would give us 12 transparent + 3 opaque = 15 total colors. If you got a 3house set in each of the Treehouse color schemes, you would have enough to play 6x6 Volcano with the 12 transparent colors, and up to 9 small opaque caps. Hmmm... 6x6, 12 color Volcano for $115 (9 * $10 + $25 for the board). That's just silly. <fx voice="Austin Powers-ish overly dramtic">...or is it? </fx> > D) I will be buying 5 sets the day they are made available, so my FLGS > needs to be warned to stock-up! Yes, I agree. You probably will, so your FLGS better. :-) Ryan