Lonely Ice
| Lonely Ice | ||
|---|---|---|
| Designed by Ross Andrews | ||
| A solitaire game of attack. | ||
| Players: | 1 | |
| Length: | Long | |
| Complexity: | light | |
| Trios per color: | 5 | |
| Number of colors: | 4 | |
| - - - - - - Other equipment - - - - - - | ||
| deck of playing cards | ||
| Setup time: | 4 minutes | |
| Playing time: | 12 minutes - 60 minutes | |
| Strategy depth: | medium | |
| Random chance: | medium | |
| Status: Complete (v1.0), Year released: 2000 | ||
Lonely Ice
A solitaire game for Icehouse pieces Designed by Ross Andrews
What You Need
Additional equipment: At least 20 playing cards, or playing card shaped things. (Blank Fluxx cards work great. Or business cards) Number of Players: 1 Number of Stashes: 4 Playing time: 15-30 minutes. My record time is ten.
Overview
Lonely Ice is a game of sorting pieces. It is played on a board formed of playing cards, and uses a few simple rules to dictate which pieces may move where.
Setup
Set up the cards in a 4x5 grid (5x5 if you're using Black Ice as well), so that the cards go horizontal-vertical-horizontal-vertical and so on. Then put all the Icehouse pieces in a bag or box or something, and draw them out one at a time, placing them three to a card. If you get a card that has all three pyramids the same color, drop them back in the bag and draw three more. Stop when you have each card in the grid containing three pyramids of not all the same color (i.e. red-green-yellow is good, and red-red-blue is good, but blue-blue-blue is not).
Moving the Pyramids
The game is played by having a pyramid on one card "attack" a pyramid on another card. Cards may only attack the cards next to their short sides. Pyramids may only attack pyramids of equal or lesser value (3s can attack anything, 2s can attack 1s and 2s, and 1s can only attack 1s). When a pyramid is attacked, the attacker and defender trade places.
Winning
To win the game, attack pieces in such a way that it ends up where each card contains only one color of piece. For more fun than that (if you've got about 45 minutes to kill) see that each row contains only one color. To make it even more interesting (this will take over an hour, on average) make each card contain one small pyramid, one medium pyramid, and one large pyramid. Sound simple? It isn't.
A can attack B and C, D can attack A and E. Neither B nor C can attack A, neither E nor A can attack D.