Volcano Board Setup

Well, may as well toss up the other volcano'y image I have.

A variant setup with no contiguous colors. With all the non-starting colors in an equal but rotated position so no color is seen as a bad choice to go after initially due to position.

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Edit:
Standard setup included for reference. Generally the greens and yellows (in this image) aren't popular choices due to the difficulty of capturing pieces from the center compared to the edge. (at least that's what I've seen)

Volcano: "Safe" Opening Move

I think I may have figured out a safe opening move in a game of volcano... that is, a move that will not allow the second player to get a large and medium piece with one move.

It would help to understand the rules to volcano. Please comment if you can disprove this (find a move from this board position to get 2 pieces...)

-Evan

2min later, edit:

Damn, a diagnol move from the oppiste corner will give a large (center) and a small (corner)... back to the drawing board.

Sketchup Icehouse update

After getting my pieces finally (wow, that must have been a few weeks ago at least), I can see some flaws to my sketchup models.

For instance, the pieces make contact at the point when stacked, rather than the base as I had assumed. Also, I now have an idea of how to place the dots, even if I don't really know how to display them in the software.

And I still need to figure out how to create anchor points for the pieces so they can be arranged to illustrate games and such without needing to flub with positions forever.

Plush icehouse/chess

So I was thinking of whether or not it would be easy/feasible to make a plush set of icehouse pieces (normal sized, sorry daddy oh)... I suppose I should first try and design a pattern for them.

The chess pieces idea came up though thinking about how to play with a cloth chessboard (without a bunch of pointy things)... I suppose I could merely make them out of cloth... or perhaps small pillows/bean bags rather than plush/stuffed.

Hmm... beanbag icehouse... there's an idea.

-Evan

Martian Chess Board

Here's a rendering of ee0r's tri-chess board (for playing martian chess with anywhere from 2-6 people).

It's arranged in a 3-player layout at the moment, and I had to run off before I could put some pyramids on it... oh well.

Sketchup Icehouse

I've been playing with sketchup and decided that a nice project would be to create an Icehouse Set since the plans were still available on the looneys' blog.

So far I have the three pointer done (no spots yet), and the other two should be fairly easy. From there I can make them into components and use them in other models. I wonder if there's a way to get the pieces to snap to preset points when they're stacked... I'll have to look into that.

Edit: It's a family!
I finished the two and one pointers, and proudly display them on a barren sketchup-scape.