I am pleased to announce that I’ve finally revised and reformatted the rules for 3 of the biggest classics of the pyramid game system – Icehouse, Zendo, and Zarcana – in the style of the Pyramid Arcade rulebook. This is something I’ve been needing to do for almost 8 years, ever since 2016 when PA was first released.
Also, I think I’ve finally fixed that annoying deadlock issue in Nothing Beats a Large!
Icehouse
The original game for the pyramids has become something of a dinosaur: a fearsome beast that used to rule the land, but which died off a long time ago.
Icehouse began its slide into obscurity as soon as we started inventing other games for the pyramids. As new, easier-to-learn games crowded into the spotlight, we decided to start calling them Looney Pyramids, instead of Icehouse Pieces.
We didn’t even include the rules for Icehouse in Pyramid Arcade, although that decision was driven in part by the fact that Icehouse requires a classic “full stash” of each color (15 pyramids) whereas Pyramid Arcade focuses on the small stash of just 9 pyramids per color.
But the original game still has its fans and we still want to make the rules available for those who might yet discover it. So here at last are the rules for the original classic, reorganized and formatted in the new style. (The previous version of the downloadable rulesheet dates back to 2012.)
Zendo
In 2017, we released a newly reimagined version of Zendo, featuring 3 shapes (pyramids, blocks, and wedges) instead of pyramids. For this edition, we dropped the “Buddha Nature” theming and introduced rule cards for the Moderator, which are marked with clips to indicate which options currently apply.
That edition has now sold out, and we’ve decided to let it go out of print. We are back to Zendo being just one of the many games you can play with Looney Pyramids.
Fortunately, the rule cards (which were the best part of that boxed set) will live on. Three years ago, when we published the Pyramid Quartet games, we revised the Zendo rule cards to work with pyramids as an extra for Kickstarter backers, and those cards will continue to be available at our website.
I’ve been meaning to update the downloadable rules for Zendo ever since releasing those cards, but now I’ve finally gotten those redone and approved by Kory and here they are!
Zarcana
One of my very favorite pyramid games is also one of the oldest: Zarcana, designed by John Cooper. The rules for Zarcana were first published in More Icehouse Games in 1996, and it was an instant hit with the Icehouse community. It was one of the most popular pyramid games when we included it in the plastic box edition of 2000.
But then, John began tinkering with the rules, eventually creating a very different — yet superficially similar — game called Gnostica. In 2002, initial enthusiasm for Gnostica led to its inclusion in Playing with Pyramids, in the place of Zarcana, since there was only room in the book for one complex pyramid game played with Tarot cards.
But I was never happy with that decision, and soon afterwards I posted an article explaining in full detail why I like Zarcana better. But the damage was done: by featuring it in PWP, the community bought into the idea that Gnostica was the official game for pyramids on tarot cards, and either made the switch or moved on to other games.
One issue both games have is that tarot cards can be off-putting for some folks. For that reason, in 2008 I created Zark City, a similar but much easier game that instead uses regular playing cards. At that point, I began exclusively promoting Zark City, which provides much of the same fun (but none of the baggage) and which is featured in Pyramid Arcade. But like Gnostica, Zark City is a good game… but it’s not as good Zarcana.
That said, the original rules for Zarcana are not without flaws. (This is why John started experimenting with other rules in the first place.) But instead of going wherever new ideas might take him (and his re-design cohorts, Kory Heath, Jacob Davenport, and Kristin Matherly), my goal was to change as little as possible about the original, while also making a couple of important improvements.
During the past year, I’ve been playtesting my tweaks with John and re-writing the rules from the ground up, using the new standard rulesheet format. I’m extremely pleased with the results!
If you’ve never played Zarcana, you can skip the rest of this section and just start playing. But for game design scholars, here are the details about what actually changed:
1) I think the original game’s biggest problem is what I call Action Starvation, i.e. when you just can’t get the type of move you need. You might have some really good cards in your hand, causing you to be reluctant to choose the “discard entire hand” option, but you have other cards you can’t use and no ability to get what you need at that moment. Therefore, we added a new option: You can discard two cards of the same type to take a Wild action.
2) The previous change makes the unpopular Discard Hand action completely unnecessary, so that option is being removed.
3) Zarcana can be a long game — too long, in many cases. So we decided to add a “short game” option in which a large number of randomly chosen cards are set aside at the beginning of the game. This creates a wonderful uncertainly about which cards are actually in play each time, so we decided you should always remove at least three cards at the start.
4) The power of the Gateway has been broadened to allow teleportation to any card, not just a card of the same type.
Those are all of the gameplay changes reflected in my new Zarcana rules. And they make the classic better than ever!
Nothing Beats a Large
I was never really happy with the version of Nothing Beats a Large that we released as our Holiday Gift back in 2009. Two years ago, I posted a greatly simplified new version, and almost immediately realized that I hadn’t done enough playtesting and had missed an edge case that basically breaks the game. It took me two more years, but I’ve finally come up with a truly elegant solution: faking it!
Here’s what I mean by that: You can now Cast with a size you don’t have by combining two smaller pieces. Specifically, a Small and a Medium can pretend to be a Large, or two Smalls can represent a Medium.
Stalemates may still be possible under certain circumstances but overall I think these new rules are a big improvement.
Happy New Year!