Liar's ICE

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Liar's ICE is an ancient game that was popular among Martian pirates. It is similar to the games Liar's Dice and Perudo here on Earth. In fact, some archeologists believe that those games may have been inspired by Liar's ICE.

Equipment needed:

• 3 or more Treehouse sets.
• A large opaque bag (Crown Royal bags work very well)
• A cup, bag, box, screen, or other device to conceal pieces from other players. One per player. Pieces may also simply be under the table, or simply concealed in one's hand from the prying eyes of other players.
• 5 stones or chips per player. (Zendo stones are ideal)

Setup

Place the Icehouse pieces into the large bag. Give five stones to each player.

Goal

The goal is to guess the minimum number of pieces of a certain type that are present among each player's hand, or to bluff players into making incorrect guesses.

Rules

Determine who goes first in any way that seems appropriate. Rock/Paper/Scissors, dance-off, spelling bee, fisticuffs, drinking contest, dice roll, etc. The author is not responsible for bad choices on the part of players. Alternately, whoever owns the pyramids can declare themselves or any other person the first player.

Starting with the player going first and proceeding clockwise, each player draws 5 pyramids of any size out of the bag, and keeps them hidden from the other players. Then, the first player begins the bidding phase by picking a type of pyramid (such as size or pip value) and a quantity (For example, 3 Red pyramids). The next player either may either raise the bid, or challenge the previous bid.

If the next player wishes to raise the bid, they may do so by either increasing the quantity of the previous bid, or by bidding any number of a higher value. So if a player bids 3 Pawns, the next player may raise the bid by either bidding 4 or more Pawns, or bidding any number of a higher value, such as 2 Queens. The value of bids is listed below, from lowest to highest.

1. Pawns
2. Drones
3. Queens
4. Any color (Red, Blue, etc)
5. Wild pyramids (see below)

The lowest possible bid is 1 Pawn, while the highest possible bid (if using 3 Treehouse sets) is 9 Wild.

Wild Pyramids

The opaque pieces in whatever type of Treehouse set you are using (Rainbow=Black, Xeno=White) are Wild pyramids. They count as any color AND any size.