Pointsettia: a Boardless Icehouse Game

by Alexandre Muñiz, last modified November 2000

When I got my Icehouse set I played around with making dendrite figures, but at the time I couldn't find a way to turn it into a game. I came up with the first draft of this game in May 2000, after getting the Black Ice set; ironically it doesn't absolutely require the extra colors in that set, but having them there allowed me to think of the colors having a different relationship than they typically do in Icehouse games. Although I use black and clear pieces in these rules, you can switch them with blue and yellow respectively, if you don't have the Black Ice pieces. (For that matter, red and green may be swapped with other colors of the players' choices, but then the colors wouldn't fit the title.)

Definitions:

Stash:
The set of pieces not yet in play.
Plant:
The set of pieces in play, which are arranged graph-theoretically in a tree structure.
Root:
The highest node in the Plant, which is represented by a standing piece. The rest of the Plant extends radially from the Root.
Branch:
A piece that is placed on its side pointing to another piece. It is considered to be the child of the piece pointed to, which is its parent. A leaf is a branch with no children.
Distance:
the number of pieces, excluding the starting point, in a path between two pieces.

Starting the game:

Initially, the stash consists of 4 of each size (small, medium, and large,) of red, green, clear, and black icehouse pieces. (48 pieces in all.) The game is begun by placing a large clear piece from the stash as the Root. It should be placed standing in the center of the playing area. The players may use any method to determine who is red and who is green. Green gets the first turn; players then alternate turns.

Restrictions on the Plant:

Each piece excepting the Root may have up to two children. Each child must point to one of the two corners on the back of the parent pyramid that lie directly on the playing surface, and they may not point to the same corner. The root may have up to 3 children, each pointing to a different corner of the base. No piece have a distance of more than 4 from the root. No additions to or manipulations of the Plant may break these restrictions.

Order of play:

Each turn consists of placing a piece from the stash onto the Plant as a child of a piece already in the Plant, and then, if the piece is clear or black, optionally using the power of the color of the piece played. The piece should be placed lying down, behind the piece that is its parent, and pointing toward one of the corners in the back of the pyramid. After using color powers it may be necessary to move pieces around slightly so that their relationships remain clear.

Color powers:

Clear:
The clear piece played is put in the position of another piece above it in the heirarchy. This displaced piece in turn displaces its child in the direction of the piece originally played, and so on, until the last displaced piece takes the position vacated by the piece played. The maximum distance between the clear peace, as it it played and the piece it displaces is equal to the number of pips on the piece played.

It is not possible to displace the Root in this manner.

[FIXME: Add graphic and example of the use of the clear power]

Black:
The root is tipped over toward the child of it that is an ancestor of the black piece played, (or the piece itself if it is a direct child of the Root,) and this piece is then placed standing, so that it becomes the new Root. This power may not be used if the black piece played has a distance from the Root greater than the number of pips on the piece. If the number of children of the old or new roots is less than the maximum, one may choose which of their corners the children point to.

On the left, Red has just played the medium black piece. As shown on the right, e then uses the Black power to turn the green piece into the new root. The clear piece that was the root becomes a child of the green piece.

Ending the game:

The game ends when no more pieces can be played. At this point 46 of the 48 pieces should be in play. They should form a vaguely flowerlike structure, with 24 leaves around the edges.

[FIXME: add graphic of completed game here.]

Scoring:

The base value of a piece is equal to the number of pips on it. Each piece of a player's color that lies on the outermost layer on the graph, or for which there is a direct path inwards from a clear piece on the outermost layer that passes only through other clear pieces, is scored. The base value of these pieces is multiplied by the number of consecutive positions around the circumference of the plant for which a piece is scored, minus the number of the pieces scored that point to black pieces.

Winning:

The player with the highest score after the game ends wins. If the scores are equal, it is a tie.

Strategy

Early in the game, it is good to play large pieces of your opponent's color, since they are likely to remain near the center of the plant and fail to score. Later in the game, place your remaining pieces where they are most likely to contribute to a high score, and use clear pieces to form a path to pieces in the interior, and to rearrange the plant to your advantage.

If pieces of your color are concentrated on two of the three main branches, you can use the black piece ability to move the root away from these branches, making your pieces closer to scoring.

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