[Icehouse] Icehouse strategy

[Brian Campbell]

On Nov 25, 2006, at 11:43 PM, Timothy Hunt wrote:

> Well, I played my first game of Icehouse the other day, and well, I
> thought "meh".   However, we were all novices, so it could be that we
> had no idea really what we were doing.  we read the rules here:
> http://www.wunderland.com/icehouse/IcehouseRules.html and that gives
> some strategy tips, but I think we were all missing something.

My best advice would be to, if possible, play against people who have  
played it with the wider Icehouse community, such as the people who  
go to Origins or other conventions. I played it once, just against  
some friends from reading the rules, and thought "meh". Then I played  
it against someone who had played against the Looneys and everyone  
who competes in the Icehouse tournaments, and it made a lot more  
sense to me.

> Can anyone direct me to some basic strategy tips?  (Or, better yet, if
> there's anyone that plays Icehouse regularly and is in the St Louis,
> MO area...)

Well, the key is in the diplomacy and negotiations. If everyone just  
plays on their own, attacking other players and defending their own  
pieces, then you usually just play all of your pieces and wait for  
the game to end. It's not easy to take prisoners if people are  
playing carefully and not doing any sort of diplomacy, and prisoners  
are key to many of the strategies.

So what you do is notice that more of your pieces are iced than you  
would like. This is no good; with pieces iced, you're going to have a  
hard time winning. So, you find another player with some pieces iced.  
Now you can negotiate a prisoner exchange. What that means is that  
both of you over-ice each others pieces. Now that you each have over- 
iced pieces, you can take prisoners and restructure the attacks  
against you. Be careful not to waste the piece they used to over-ice  
you; that would be Uncool, as I discovered in one of my first games;  
instead, use it to attack a different opponent's piece, so it can  
still provide points to your ally. Now that you have people  
restructuring attacks, the situation opens up to new attacks, or  
other players messing with your restructuring, and the game gets a  
lot more interesting.

The strategies I just described, and more, are described in detail on  
http://www.wunderland.com/icehouse/IcehouseStrategies.html . The  
thing about playing against people who know what they're doing is you  
get to see the strategies in action, figure out when they're  
appropriate, and get a better sense of what's Cool and Uncool. But if  
you want to play on your own (that is, with other people who are  
new), I'd say the prisoner exchange and restructuring strategies are  
some of the best to help you get a feel for the dynamic, diplomatic  
nature of the game. Make sure you play with 4 or 5 players; fewer and  
the diplomacy doesn't really work, and more means that it just gets  
too big and crazy.

Also, Icehouse itself isn't really a game for everyone. If you  
haven't played other Icehouse games before, maybe try one of the  
others listed here: http://icehousegames.org/wiki/?title=Choosing_games