Nickel
| Nickel | ||
|---|---|---|
| Designed by Kat Costa | ||
| Use strategy to form a line or L shape on a colorful, randomly-generated board | ||
| Players: | 2 - 2 | |
| Length: | Fast | |
| Complexity: | Low | |
| Trios per color: | 0 | |
| Number of colors: | 5 | |
| - - - - - - Other equipment - - - - - - | ||
| 5x5 grid | ||
| Setup time: | 1 minute | |
| Playing time: | 5 minutes - 15 minutes | |
| Strategy depth: | High | |
| Random chance: | None | |
| Status: Complete (v1.0), Year released: 2020 | ||
Nickel
Nickel is a two-player combinatorial game played on a 5x5 grid that is randmly populated with 25 pyramids. The goal is to form an L shape or straight line of 5 pieces in your color or to leave your opponent with no valid moves.
Materials
- 25 small pyramids in five colors
- A 5×5 grid
- 12 tokens in two colors (these can be pyramids of unused colors, if you have them, or they can be coins, stones, bottle caps, etc).
Nickel works best if you own five nests each of five colors so that all pyramids are identical in size. Small pyramids work best because they fit perfectly in the squares on a Volcano board when lying down. That said, size is unimportant to gameplay. You can get by with only a Pyramid Arcade set by substituting mediums for two of the smalls and using a larger board.
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Goal
There are three ways to win Nickel.
- Form a straight line of five pieces in your color (diagonal or orthogonal)
- Form an L shape of five pieces in your color
- Arrange it so that there are no valid moves at the start of your opponent's turn
Setup
The board will need to be randomly filled with 25 pyramids. Each pyramid will have a color and an orientation characteristic that makes it unique from all other pieces on the board. To begin setup, sort the pieces into rows and columns of color and orientation (North, East, South, West, and Standing-Up). Do this next to the board, not on the board.
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Now, alternating turns and moving quickly, each player takes any pyramid and, preserving its orientation, places it into a random space on the board. (Alternating players is simply the fastest way to accomplish placement. If it is more convenient for one player to do the entire setup in advance, that's fine.) Once the board is full, play can begin.
| Example Setup | ||||
Play
Choose a start player.
| Start player must play on an edge | ||||||
| For the first turn only, placement is limited to one of the 16 squares on the edge of the board. | ||||||
| Turn 1: Start player moves to the space and places that pyramid in front of Player 2 | ||||||
| Start player decides to place his token in the square occupied by the . To do this, he picks up the pyramid in the square and, preserving its orientation, places it on the table in front of his opponent. Then he proceeds to place his token in the empty square. | ||||||
| Player 2 can move to any of the highlighted squares | ||||||
| The next player looks at the pyramid in front of her: she must place her token in a square that matches this pyramid in one of its two characteristics: in color or in orientation. Since the pyramid her opponent has given her is a , she must place her token in a square occupied by a red pyramid or a pyramid pointing East. | ||||||
| Turn 2: Player 2 chooses the space and gives that pyramid to Player 1 | ||||||
| She follows the same procedure as above for placing her token: carefully remove the existing pyramid, place it in on the table front of her opponent with its orientation unchanged, and places her token in the vacated space. At turn-end, she clears the space in front of her by setting the aside to form a discard stack. It will not be used for the rest of the game. | ||||||
The game continues like this until one player has successfully formed an L shape or a straight line. That player wins! A player also wins if her opponent, on his turn, has no legal placement available.
Victory
A player wins by successfully forming an L shape or a straight line (diagonal or orthogonal) of five pieces in their color. If one player has no legal moves on their turn, the other player wins.
| Win by L-shape for X | ||||
thisthing
| Win by straight line for O | ||||||
| She follows the same procedure as above for placing her token: carefully remove the existing pyramid, place it in on the table front of her opponent with its orientation unchanged, and places her token in the vacated space. At turn-end, she clears the space in front of her by setting the aside to form a discard stack. It will not be used for the rest of the game. | ||||||