Ice Palace

Ice Palace is an abstract strategy game for 3 or more players using the Icehouse Pieces game system.

To play the game one needs:

 Different single-color stashes of Icehouse Pieces per player, plus two additional stashes in White and Black
 An opaque bag or hat for blindly drawing pieces
 A turn marker or token

Ice Palace is divided into two fundamental, repeating phases:

In the first phase, players alternate playing pieces from their six-piece hands into a temporary structure designated "the yard", subject to three restrictions;

 Pieces on any color may be placed on top of another provided the new pyramid is larger than any of the pyramids in the stack
 A new stack can be started orthogonally adjacent to a previous stack provided the top pyramids are the same color
 Black pieces match no colors, and white pieces match all colors

The player who is last able to play into the yard wins the hand. They then proceed to the second phase, building the ice palace. During the ice palace phase, the winning player takes all the pieces from the yard and adds them onto the ice palace structure, subject to three restrictions:

 A pyramid can only be placed on top of a larger pyramid
 Orthogonally adjacent new stacks can only be formed provided the topmost pyramids of both are the same color
 All pieces from the yard must be added to the ice palace

Players then draw back up to 6 pieces in their hand and the yard-building phase begins anew. Play continues in this manner until a player draws the last piece from the bag, at which point the game ends and is scored.

Players get points for every pyramid in a stack (in the ice palace) which has a piece of their color as the topmost pyramid.

Ice Palace was designed by Geoff Hanna. The rules are available online.

Ice Palace tied for 2nd with Undercut in the Autumn 2004 Icehouse Game Design Competition.