Sometimes a game grows beyond its initial incarnation to become something more. Looney Pyramids began in a short story written by a young Andrew Looney in 1987, and over the following 35 years it has evolved through numerous incarnations to become a full fledged game system. As such, a single review seems insufficient, and so we present Looney Saturday, a regular, bimonthly, look at a different Pyramid game.
Sandships
We technically started with “Pyramids: A Primer, Abridged” which is a great place to start if you’ve never played a Pyramid game. In this month’s review, we going to look at Martian Chess, the third of four individually packaged games, collectively called the “Pyramid Quartet” as well as being included part of Pyramid Arcade:
This is by far, my favourite Pyramid Arcade game I have played to date. Today we are reviewing Sandships. I like to call this game Homeworld’s little brother. I feel like this is a similar game to Homeworlds but less of a learning curve. I also may be biased, as this is the one Pyramid Arcade game I seem to excel at and not lose every single time. Sandships can play 2-4 players.
When this game was first introduced to me by Dave, we played a couple rounds and were evenly matched. I didn’t feel I had fully grasped the game at that point and could accurately write a review. I then introduced the game to my usual board game friends, played with family members, and even my partner who lives a country away. I have played with multiple people at different times and came to a crazy conclusion; I will never feel like I’ve played enough to make a proper review. I don’t have any ground-breaking moments or stories to explain why this game is so amazing. Every time I play this game, I feel like I’m playing it for the first time over and over again for all the thrill and excitement. This game definitely works with the way my brain thinks and problem solves, I love the puzzle aspect and how your strategy can change at any moment, depending on what the dice give you.
That is why I can accurately say this is my favourite Pyramid Arcade game to date. I believe I could play this game for a long time and never get sick of it. I have even made myself a little travel kit for all the supplies and rules to transport around. The game is classified as medium difficulty, and it does take a minute to learn, but once you’ve played a round, I would call this game easier than some of the other medium-difficulty games in Pyramid Arcade.
This game requires 3 trios of pyramids per player, plus a trio of pyramids for each unused city, 3 lightning dice, and the Sandships board. They do recommend the trios for the unused cities to be black, but you can use any colour. The Sandships board consists of 5 circles in an X shape, all connected by lines and little triangles taken off the edges of each of the circles. There is also some important terminology to learn; a circle is called a city, a spire is the upright pieces or stacks of pieces of a single colour, the lines on the board are called canals, Sandships are pyramids on their sides, zone is the open space between the lines and cities (also called wasteland), ports are the triangular notches on the edges of the circles and control is when one’s spire has a higher pip count than any other on a city.
The purpose of the game is to build a stack of pieces of your colour into 3 cities, each of whose pieces have more total pips than any other colour in that city. Reminder that pips are the number of indented dots on the side of each pyramid. If you have 0 pieces remaining on your original city, you are out of the game and all your pieces are removed from the board.
The setup is quick and simple. You place a trio of each player’s colour onto their respective city and stack them into spires (smallest pieces on top). Black trios are in the center city, as well as any unused cities. In a three-person game, you will utilize the center city and the 2 dead (black trio) cities will be on opposite corners.
The gameplay is straightforward, and the turns go by quickly. You will roll the 3 dice and play your moves in any order you like. You will need the rule book nearby when first learning, as to remember what each symbol on the dice means. The dice options are: transform, build, unfurl, move, zap and wild. Transform is take any piece from your spire and turn it into a sandship and place it in an open port at the city. Build is adding to the spire in your original city. Unfurl is upgrade your sandship in play to one size larger. Move is move a sandship into another port (same city or same zone). Zap is remove an enemy piece from a spire where you have a sandship docked. Wild is pick any of the other 5 actions.
There are some special rules where duplicate dice rolls become wild, or if you are unable to perform an action it becomes wild. This is where the order you choose to play the dice is important. Sometimes an action is not possible, but once you’ve completed your first action, the previous action becomes doable again. You will also gain an immediate 4th action if you roll 3 of a kind.
I do truly love this game. I find it is a nice, chill game to play with friends where there are far fewer groans and shouting compared to Fluxx or other high-energy games. You are constantly thinking on your toes and rearranging your strategy, which helps keep your brain working. I wouldn’t call this a warm up game, but it is on the easier end of the “medium difficulty” ranking that Pyramid Arcade gives their games.
You can find everything Pyramids on its dedicated homepage at looneylabs.com/pyramids-home. or in the Starships Captain’s Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/StarshipCaptains.
More generally you can find Looney Labs online at looneylabs.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/LooneyLabs.
