Avatar War

This game is missing an infobox. If you're familiar with this game, feel free to fill one in.

Background

This game is set in the Avatar: The Last Airbender world. In each generation, one person is capable of Bending (or manipulating) all four elements; this is the Avatar, the spirit of the planet manifested in human form. When the Avatar dies, he or she is reincarnated into an unborn baby native in the next of the four nations in the Avatar Cycle, which parallels the seasons: winter for water, spring for earth, summer for fire, and autumn for air. For the purposes of this game, Aang (the show's main character, and the current avatar) has nearly mastered the four elements and seeks out the help of some of his previous incarnations for some much needed battle training. The former Avatars will test Aang in an Avatar Vs. Avatar War...

What you need

• 1 treehouse set per player and a table.
• 1 stash pad per player.
• 1 Shield per player (to hide what your techniques are)

Setup

The black nest in the treehouse set should be set to the side for each player. These will be the avatar's "hit-points" or endurance or whatever.. Each of the other nests should be set on each player's stash pad in whatever arrangement the player desires.

Overview

Players attempt to defeat each other by building koan-like structures called "techniques" with their pyramids. These techniques represent attacks and defense and will do different things based on their configurations.

Orientations

• Standing: Any pyramids standing on their base are considered Defensive. Defensive pyramids can stop any attacking color of the same size or smaller.
• Weird: Weird Pyramids of any size can "deflect" attacks of any size except for attacks from its Weak color. (Example: Fire cannot deflect water attacks, etc.)
• Pointing: Pieces that are laying down are considered to be "pointing" and reflect attacks. A successful attacking piece will remove one of your opponent's black pyramids.
• Ungrounded: Pieces that are not touching the playing surface are considered to be Ungrounded. Ungrounded pyramids can be in any of the above configurations. Ungrounded attacks are more powerful than grounded ones because they can only be blocked by other ungrounded pyramids. Note: Stacked pyramids count as ungrounded "standing" pieces

Colors and Their Weaknesses

• Red/Fire: Weakness = Water
• Blue/Water: Weakness = Fire
• Green/Earth: Weakness = Air
• Yellow/Air: Weakness = Earth

Techniques

All Players will simultaneously build up to 4 different "techniques" behind their shields. A Technique is a pyramid structure much like a koan from Zendo. Unlike a koan however, all of the pieces within a technique must be touching at least one other piece. A Technique may contain up to 4 pieces of any size and color and may contain no fewer than 2 pieces. Each piece in the technique can reflect any orientation the player desires in any combination of sizes, colors and orientations.

GamePlay

ATTACKING: while building his/her techniques and at any time, a player can call out "ATTACK!". When this happens, the round starts and all building stops until all attacks are resolved. The attacking player designates the target player and reveals his first technique. At this point, the defender may choose which of his/her techniques to defend with.

Compare each attacking piece (within the attacker's technique) to any defending pieces (within the defender's technique). Any attack pieces that are not negated by Standing or Weird pieces are successful attacks and cause damage to the defending player.

COUNTER-ATTACK: After the attacker's initial assault, the defender may counter-attack using any of his remaining techniques. If the original defender chooses not to attack, then the next player may make an attack. Example: Joe attacked Susan thus beginning the round. Susan defended and now has the opportunity to counter-attack. Unfortunately, Susan did not have time to build any good attacking techniques, so she chooses not to attack. Now, Mike (also in the game) can choose to attack if he wishes. After he attacks, then the person he attacks may counter-attack and so on until everybody is out of pieces and a new round may begin.

DAMAGE: Damage is done in this way: For each attacking piece that gets through, the defender loses a piece of matching size (example: if a large attack piece got through, then the defender loses his large black piece.) Note: Any additional attacking pieces of the same size are disregarded. Example: If a large attack piece has damaged me, then all other attacking larges are disregarded and do no further damage for the rest of the game.

ATTRITION: As the round progresses, pieces will be lost from your pool of available pieces through attrition. A player will lose a piece during attack/defense in the following situations.

• A standing piece is lost when it blocks an attacking piece.
• A attacking piece is lost when it is blocked by a standing piece
• (optional:) Pieces used in specials are always lost.

ROUND CONTINUES: If no-one wishes to counter-attack after the initial attack has been made, then the round continues. Note: Until an attack is called, any techniques that players have left can be changed around as much as you want.

ROUND ENDS: The Round ends either when at least one player is out of pieces to build techniques with, or when one player has been defeated.

Winning

A player who loses all his/her black endurance pieces is out of the game... And therefore does not win. The last remaining Avatar is the "True" Avatar!

SAMPLE GAME

Below is part of a sample game. Enjoy!

Jonathan shouts out "attack!" and so reveals his attacking Technique. Devin chooses and reveals one of his techniques that he will defend with. We see this exchange below:

So, Jonathan has two attacking pieces in this technique. Devin has two Standing Pieces in his which cancel out Jonathan's attacking pieces. Each player must discard the pieces that were canceled out, so both of their techniques go below the requisite 2 piece limit. This means that they will now need to discard the remaining piece left in their techniques.

Optional Rules

Special Techniques: A special technique is one in which all of the pyramids within the technique are the same color and arranged in specific Orientations in order to get a Special Effect. Example: 3 weird Yellows = This special will deflect ANY attack.