by Eric Zuckerman, November 1999

A game of Precary-Ice in progress

Materials: two colors' worth of Icehouse: the Martian Chess Set pieces for each player, 1 six-sided die, paper & writing implement for each player

Background: at the first Berkeley Area Gaming Roto-Salon (BAdGeRS) after the pre-orders of I:tMCS shipped, we were playing some IceTowers, and scoring up our pieces by just kinda stacking them by size for easy counting. Paul then piled his stacks together, and they looked like they were going to fall over. "Hey!" I suddenly found myself exclaiming. "IceJenga!" We threw some ideas around, none of which really added up to a working game mechanic. I asked people to let me develop the concept on my own, and came up with the die idea later that weekend.

Rules:

1. Each player selects 2 colors of Icehouse pieces. (If you have more than 2 players, you'll need more than one set, but unique colors are not important. You may wish to set them up in a stack of 10 of each size to one side, but that's up to you.)
2. Each player then takes one pyramid of each size from their pieces, and stacks them with the 3-pointer ("queen") on the bottom, 2-pointer ("drone") in the middle, and the 1-pointer ("pawn") on the top. Then each player writes "6" on their scoresheet.
3. Now that you're set up, take turns rolling the die, adding a pyramid to the stack as per the die:
   • Beginning of the game: 1-2 = pawn; 3-4 = drone; 5-6 = queen
   • If you run out of one size: 1-3 = smaller remaining size; 4-6 = larger remaining size
   • If you run out of two sizes: die no longer necessary... %-} -- just add one pyramid of the remaining size per turn.
4. After each placement, pick up your pen (no fair holding onto it while placing) cross off the previous number and add the value of the new piece to the total. Leave all previous numbers legible, in case you need to reconstruct the stack later (see below).
5. If your stack falls over as the result of a placement (this is left to the mutual judgement of the players involved, in the expectation that everyone can be reasonable...), you score what's on the sheet. If you had enough time to cross off the old number and write the new number, that's what you score, but you're done for the round.
6. If your stack falls over incidentally (unauthorized feline player intervention, bystander bumping the table, minor temblor, etc.) then reconstruct it from your scoresheet and continue on your next turn.
7. Relax, and don't get nervous about the height of your stack until it starts to approach 40 points. If you actually use all 60 points available to you without an oopsy (this actually happened once in playtesting), give yourself an extra 10 bonus ponts.
8. Play a number of rounds equal to one more than the number of players.

Hope you had fun playing! :-D

Initial brainstorming session: Paul Livingston, Ginger Markley, Mike Sugarbaker

Playtesters: Michelle Lepovic, Gill Stanfield

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Last updated 1999/12/17