On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:29 AM, miyu <xmiyux@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > It all stemmed from a meeting with my online video game buddies. They > wanted to play a game and i handed them Playing With Pyramids and a bunch of > Treehouse stashes. On their own they learned Zendo and Pikeman and probably > played those two games for 4-6 hours (rotating new people in and out of the > games). > > So today the kids were wanting something "new" to do and i remembered how > popular and easy Pikemen looked. They took to it just as quickly. > > My next goal is to learn Volcano and Homeworlds so i can use those in class > as well. Ack! If you haven't played Volcano or Homeworlds, you're missing out on two of the best Icehouse games. IMO. Homeworlds is tricky for first time players and they can easy freeze up with all the choices and not really having a direction. If I was teaching a new group, I *might* have them try a predator/prey variant, where they are trying to blow up the guy on their right and not get blown up by the guy on their right. -Jason Volcano is easy to pick up on and while two players is the norm, can support 4 players on the 5x5 board without too much trouble. I just tested out playing Mega-Volcano on a 37 hex grid today, worked very nicely. -Jason