On 11/8/07, David Artman <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> wrote:
Do you mean "each player needs two matching stacks (e.g. two blue
stacks)"? That is clearly a case of arbitrarily forcing colors--as you
say (if I am reading right here) one could just as easily play it "blue
and green stacks versus yellow and red stacks." Put it another way: what
if the rule read "each player takes two stacks that aren't the same
color as the other player's stacks"? Now it's even clearer that a given
player's stacks needn't match--there's nothing mechanically significant
about their colors at all (unlike Find The Green Mid).
Yep. That's what I meant. So a game that has pieces spread in two sides needs to require more than 7 pyramids per side in order to qualify for the contest. So a chess-like game that uses 6 pyramids per side, as you say, won't meet the requirements for the contest. I understand the reasoning, but I don't know if it's too harsh...
There are many ways to adapt games to be played with less pyramids, some games don't even need pyramids if we take it to the extreme, as many games don't use all the characteristics of the pyramids, and other pieces like coins, dice, etc... share a number of these characteristics (pips, direction, etc...). For example, Martian Chess needs 3 nests per player, but the only characteristic from the pyramids used is pip number. You can play with one treehouse set and three dice for the missing nest, by placing the side with the correct pip number up (or three kinds of coins). You can even substitute all the pyramids this way... So, should a game that can be played with other pieces instead of pyramids be out of the competition too? I don't think so... In fact, if this were so, only games that use all the characteristics (color, pips, direction and stacking) would qualify for the competition.
That's why I think we should relax the requirement a bit...
-Jorge