Talk:Snowball Fight!

2010 Ice Awards comments

I tried Snowball Fight with three players, and found the rules mostly straightforward and easy to understand. One point that could be clearer is the setup. What exactly do you mean by distributing pyramids sequentially?

We jumped into the game, and were surprised that no pyramids started the game in the melee. It meant that the first few turns involved players shrugging and throwing a small into the melee. This kept going until there were enough to justify sending a medium in to capture a number of smalls. Players had no incentive to stick their necks out early on, and had to give up a pyramid for nothing. Once there were a few varieties of sizes in the melee, the exchanges got a little more interesting. We noticed that larges are very difficult to capture, and that smalls are incapable of making a capture outside of a tree, making them nearly useless beyond cannon fodder.

After several rounds of this, we all felt like we were spinning our wheels and not getting anywhere. I didn't see how it was possible to end the game by capturing all the pyramids, since there was always going to be at least one pyramid in the melee. We aborted the game after ten minutes. I believe that the endgame as written is impossible, and that the soldier exchange mechanism might have a better place in an economic or set collection game, rather than a winner take all slugfest. - Cerulean 13:55, 18 March 2011 (UTC)