Talk:IceTowers

I don't see how IceTowers can be played with only 3 Treehouse sets, since Andy Looney decided not to include it in his 3HOUSE book. He said it just didn't work. ---Splooge169 12:47, 22 December 2007 (EST)

A few questions:

If a player has two adjacent pieces in a tower not under her control, can she still mine one? (Nothing in the rules seems to prevent this, but she may have to act faster than another player who wants to split the tower.)
If one player is very slow or gets targeted by the other players, then he might soon find all his pyramids capped, effectively eliminating him from the game. Is this a problem? I suppose it wouldn't make sense to have a "safe zone" where all the pieces start, because no one would want to make the first move ...
Does this game play well with fewer pieces? (e.g., with two or three Treehouse sets)

MrMoto 07:15, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I think it's sort of self explanatory, here:

The Green player (as an example) may at any time:
pick up a freestanding green pyramid and use it to cap a pyramid or tower, mine an excess green pyramid from a tower that's not green on top, but has two or more green pyramids, or
split any tower into two towers between two same-color, but non-green, pieces.

So, first, the tower HAS to be out of your control to mine it, and adjacency doesn't matter for mining, just more than one. And thus, yes, it can be a race to mine before someone splits you. Conversely... so what? A split of your color means that you now control a (smaller) tower that you once didn't. Let her split it. If all your pyramids are capped, it's likely you have a mine somewhere; if you don't--wow, that's a crushing defeat (never seen someone score zero). And I doubt it plays well with fewer pieces--but so what? To really get the most out of the Icehouse System, you really need to buck up and get five matching TH sets. Check the What Can I Play? page and you'll see that MANY games are one full stash (15 mids) per player, and MANY depend on having four full stashes. After all, the system sold that way for some five or six years; it's only recently that designers have thought about single TH set games, 2HOUSE (an IGDC restriction recently), and 3HOUSE.

Ice Towers was originally proposed for inclusion in the 3HOSUE booklet, but Andy took it out after several people pointed out it really didn't work well without players having a full stash of their own colour.— Timotab ^{Timothy (not Tim}^dagnabbit!) 17:05, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Thanks to both of you for the clear and prompt replies. MrMoto