Pyramid Scheme
| Pyramid Scheme | ||
|---|---|---|
| Travis Larchuk | ||
| Build pyramids, attack your enemy, and earn Ra’s favor by being the first to gather the correct number of favor tokens. | ||
| Players: | 2 - 4 | |
| Length: | Medium | |
| Complexity: | Medium | |
| Trios per color: | 5 | |
| Number of colors: | 1 per player | |
| - - - - - - Other equipment - - - - - - | ||
| favor tokens, stones (in 2 to 4 different colors), chessboard | ||
| Setup time: | 2 minutes | |
| Playing time: | 15 minutes (if you pick a small goal number) - 1 hour (for a larger goal number with more than two players) | |
| Strategy depth: | High | |
| Random chance: | None | |
| Game mechanics: | Placement, Stacking | |
| Theme: | Egypt | |
| Status: Not Specified (v1.0), Year released: 2002 | ||
Description[edit | edit source]
Players are each pharaohs in Ancient Egypt, around 4,000 years ago. Of course, it isn’t standard procedure to have more than one pharaoh, but due to a corrupted election in which 1/4 of the population accidentally voted for Akhetaton instead of Snefu, they decided to resolve the situation by letting all of the canidates share the job.
Ra, the head honcho god of the Egyptions, was not amused. There is only one place in the great restaurant of the afterlife reserved for each true pharaoh, and Ra began to think that at this rate it seemed that it would remain vacant.
So did the pharaohs. They knew that they would have to do something drastic to be held in Ra’s favor in the afterlife-so they decided to do what comes naturally to all pharaohs. Gather ‘round a couple of slaves and build some pyramids.
This game was inspired by Torres, by W. Kramer/M. Kiesling.
Object[edit | edit source]
OBJECT: Earn Ra’s favor by being the first to gather the correct number of favor tokens.
Rules[edit | edit source]
This interesting game from 2002 comes to you by way of the old SLICK archive and Archive.org's WayBackMachine. Several pictures are broken on the page, but, unlike his lost game Gemini (see Discussion tab), this game is playable in its current form without any problems. Because of the copyright entered at the bottom of the page, I'm linking to the rules HERE..
Conjecture on setup: It seems clear that the game uses a chessboard, with the outer rows being those indicated for the year markers. Thus the game play takes place on a 6X6 grid. It only makes sense that the rows that are set aside for players not playing should remain out of play if, for example, you are only playing with three players. After playtesting, I recommend that two players games use a 5X5 game space, plus two additional rows for the year markers.
Suggestion: The “Plague” action seems too powerful an action to cost one only a single point. I encourage making a house rule that costs a bit more. Since it is more of an obvious issue in a two-player game, I suggest that it cost three points to do the action. For a three or four-player game, two points seems appropriate. A bit more playtesting will help to better find what works best.