Ice Solo
| Ice Solo (4 Color and 5 Color versions) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Kristin Materly, with new variant by Ryan McGuire | ||
| A solitaire game. | ||
| Players: | 1 | |
| Length: | unknown | |
| Complexity: | medium | |
| Trios per color: | 5 | |
| Number of colors: | 4 or 5 | |
| Setup time: | 3 minutes | |
| BGG Link: | [1] Ice Solo | |
| Status: Complete (v1.0), Year released: 2004 | ||
Rules for Original Ice Solo[edit | edit source]
Goal:[edit | edit source]
Try to get all of they pyramids nested in groups that are all the same color. (Plus some harder bonus point conditions. See Scoring.)
Step 1: Falling Down[edit | edit source]
Dump the pieces out onto a flat surface. (If dumping is impractical , they can be just placed randomly on the surface, but it's not as much fun.)
Step 2: Getting Up[edit | edit source]
Stand them all up where they fell, unnesting and unstacking as needed.
Step 3: Towering[edit | edit source]
Create twenty 3-pyramid towers following these rules:
- A pyramid may not be placed directly on top of one of the same color.
- 2s must be placed on top of 3s and 1s on top of 2s
- To place a piece you must be able to draw a straight line between the two pieces in question without crossing another legal placement.
- Once a pyramid is full place it to the side forming a grid of completed pyramids in this order (numbers indicate the order in which you completed the pyramid.)
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 - If you get to the point where you have no legal moves remove as many rows of pyramids as necessary from the completed stacks, mix those up and try again. You lose 5 points from your score for every row you had to remix.
- If you realize that you lost some pyramids in step 1, just find them, put them back on the table and continue. (If anyone else is around, pretend
you meant to do that. It won't work, but you can try.)
Step 4: Nesting[edit | edit source]
Moving pyramids within the grid, try to get 20 one color full nests. (all of the pyramids nested in the right colors, 1s in 2s in 3s. )
Movement Rules:[edit | edit source]
- Once a piece is part of a full nest it can no longer move.
- Only the top piece in a tower can move.
- A movable piece can move onto any other piece of the same color in its row or column regardless of size.
- A small piece can move into any empty space in its row or column.
When you can make no more legal moves, it's over. (In case that wasn't obvious.)
Step 5: Scoring[edit | edit source]
Clean Nest: 1 point ( Full Nest of 1 color with no other pieces under or on top of it. ) Fully Nested Bonus: 5 points (20 Full nests of one color each) Rainbow Bonus: up to 45 points (5 points for every row or column that has a clean nest of each color) Style Bonus: 10 points (Overall bonus if you get 20 clean nests AND they make a really cool looking pattern. You are your own judge of this.) DoublePlusCool Bonus: 20 points (If you get at least 25 Rainbow points AND the style bonus, you deserve some more points) Total Possible points: 100
Step 6: Clean Up[edit | edit source]
Sweep them all back into the box.
Step 7: Repeat[edit | edit source]
As needed.
Ice Solo (5 Colors)[edit | edit source]
"A solitaire Icehouse/Treehouse game originally by Kristin Materly and updated by Ryan McGuire for 5 monochrome stashes or five Treehouse sets."
The orignal game was designed to be played with the 60 pyramids that were in the Icehouse: The Martian Chess Set, Zendo or IceTowers boxed sets or 4 single-color "stashes". Since the pyramids are now (middle of 2010) being sold in Treehouse sets, it makes sense to extend the game to five colors, making it requite five Treehouse sets. This is also the pyramids needed to play Volcano (minus the volcano caps). Heck, if you have a Volcano set, you might as well use the Volcano board for a nice game of Ice Solo."
Setup[edit | edit source]
Setup the game by stacking the pyramids into trees on a 5x5 grid such that no stack has two of the same colour stacked on top of each other. IE, a blue drone should not be on top of a blue queen. (The rules detail that the setup is part of the game and should be done in a specific way, but I find that it distracts from the main gameplay so I just skip it and place the pieces randomly).
Goal[edit | edit source]
The main goal is to get all the pyramids into 25 same-coloured nests by using the following rules:
Rules[edit | edit source]
- Only the top piece of a tree can move.
- A Pyramid can only move horizontally or vertically.
- A pyramid can only be placed on top of the same colour pyramid.
- Pawns can be placed in empty spaces.
- Once a nest is complete, it can not be disassembled or moved.
Once there are no more legal moves, then scoring is done, which is detailed on the rules page.
Observations[edit | edit source]
It is needed to think several moves ahead and bad moves won't reveal themselves until later in the game when it's difficult to fix them.
The scoring system also adds levels of difficulty to the game. If the game is too hard, one goal could be getting 25 full nests. If it's too easy, the goal could be to go for full style points, or a specific design.
This game is challenging because you can't move nests once they're complete. Once the nests start becoming complete, it be comes critical to move the existing pieces with care, or else you might not be able to make a nest where you want to (or even at all!).