Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

[James Hamilton <spamcan210@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

According to the setup instructions, "Players add their pyramids to the board in turn order." Does this mean each player puts the pieces out one at a time (as I've been playing), or all 3 at once? Asked another way, does placement take n turns, with n being the number of players, or 3n turns?

Also, suppose a player who controls 2 sectors of a foreign continent mounts a successful attack on the third, allowing them to move in and claim victory. However, the loser also controls 2 sectors of a different foreign continent. They retreat to the empty sector and claim victory. (This almost happened.) Is this a tie? Who wins? My reasoning is that the player who made the successful attack wins, based on the Treehouse rule "your turn, your win." Is this correct?

As a variant, I've been assigning continents via die roll (N. America to Asia, 1 2 3; S. America to Australia, 4 5 6), with excellent results. (Mostly, new players don't have to carefully analyze the board to choose the "best" starting area. Neither do veteran players, so the game starts faster.)