Turning Points

An Icehouse game for 1 to 6 players

What you need:


	1-6 players
	5-15 minutes
	A square or hexagonal grid:
		1 or 2 players – 4x4 square grid
		3 players – 3x3 hex grid
		4 players – 5x5 square grid*
		5 or 6 players – 4x4 hex grid*
	Enough Icehouse pieces to fill the grid.
		Size doesn’t matter.
		Color only matters in the solitaire game (for which you need 4 different colors)

* Actually, in my opinion, the game plays better with fewer players. If you’ve got 4 or more players, you’re better off breaking into two smaller games. But that’s just a personal preference.

Set Up:

Each player takes a seat on a different side of the board. In a two player game, the players should sit opposite one another, and in a 3 player game, they should sit with an empty board side between each pair of players. The board starts out empty.

Determine who will go first by holding a double elimination mud wrestling tournament.

Game Play:

On each turn a player will place a single piece in a space on the board, lying down and pointing to an adjacent space (or off the board). If there is another piece in the space pointed to, that piece is rotated one notch clockwise (i.e. 90 degrees on a square grid, 60 degrees on a hex grid.) If the pieces just rotated now points to a space that contains a piece, that piece is also rotated one notch clockwise, and if that piece now points to a space which contains a piece… This process is continued until a piece points to an empty space or off the edge of the board. Then play passes to the next player to the left.

Game End & Scoring:

The game ends when the board is full. Players then each score one point for each piece that is pointing toward them. Highest score wins.

Sample Move:


	Here is the situation in a mini 3x3 two player game just as the player at the North edge of the board is about to move. North is losing to South by a score of 1 to 4. (Incidentally, the 3x3 two player mini-game is a rather pleasant enough 5-minute filler.)

	North plays the Black piece, which points at the Yellow and causes it to rotate clockwise.

	Yellow now points at Blue and causes it to turn.

	Now Blue points at Red, which turns.

	Red points back at Blue, which turns again.

	Blue now points off the edge of the board, so the turn is over. North has tied up the game, with a current score of 2 to 2. Pity that South can win simply by dropping a south-pointing piece on the last remaining square.

Solitaire Version:

This version requires a 4x4 square grid, 4 different colors of Icehouse pieces, and a bag from which the pieces can be drawn randomly.

Take one large of each color and place them on the outside edges of the board, one on each side. These pieces are to indicate that (for example) the north edge is blue, the west edge is yellow, etc.). Place the remaining large pieces in the bag.

One at a time, draw a piece from the bag and place in anywhere on the board pointing the direction of the edge of the same color. In our example, all blue pieces must be placed pointing north, all yellow pieces must be placed pointing west, etc. The same rules about rotating pieces apply as in the multi-player game.

Solitaire Scoring:

When the board is full, score one point for each piece that is pointing towards you.

0-3 points		You’re sitting on the wrong side of the table.
4-7 points		You’re not even trying, are you?
8-11 points		Not bad, but you can do better.
13-15 points		Excellent!
16 points		Admit it! You cheated!

FAQ:

	What if the chain reactions go into an infinite loop?
	Never happens – Don’t worry about it.

	No, really. It happened to my cousin once. He refused leave the table until he finished the game. He wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep. He became totally obsessive about the game. He would have starved to death if he hadn’t gotten severe carpal tunnel from turning the pieces and got hauled away to the hospital by paramedics where, after psychiatric evaluation, he was put away in a little rubber room where they don’t let him play with sharp things like Icehouse pieces anymore.
	That wasn’t a question.

	Is it even possible to get a score of 16 in Solitaire Turning Points?
	Yes, but you have get really lucky in the order in which you draw the pieces…