Pyramidice

• Designer: Luigi Ferrini
• Publisher: Ares Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 12+
• Time 30-45 minutes

On the Giza plateau, the best architects of ancient Egypt are called to imprint the mark of the Pharaoh. It’s not just a matter of building tombs, but of erecting actual engineering masterpieces, monuments that will be worshipped and that will forever raise the honor of the Pharaoh to heaven.

The competition among architects is a snake hiding in the sand ready to attack; project building and worker management mingle with the worship of the gods. Wisely choosing which god to ask for blessing will be crucial for your fame to outshine all others, ensuring the immortality of your name. Hold tight to your precious Scarab and with the power it infuses you, be ready to make Egypt the most incredible place in the world…

Pyramidice is a game of dice and card combos that makes timing and control of the opponents’ strategies a core element. Fast and deep, the game boasts high replayability and different strategic paths to pursue victory. In the solo mode, you challenge one of the great architects of ancient Egypt: Snefru, Hemiunu, Amenhotep, or Imothep.

To setup the game, place the necessary pyramid boards on the table, and then assemble the Sphinx and Gods boards together, filling in the space between with Rest tiles and the Quarry tile (which starts with 4 orange prayer dice on it). The Gods card deck is constructed and shuffled, and then 3 are laid face up under the slots on the Gods board. The supply of Stone dice is placed on the table where everyone can reach it. Also make a supply of all the Workers and Cats. Finally, each player takes a player board, starting with 1 Stone die, 1 Cat, 4 Workers, 1 Project card and 1 scarab card chosen from 2 random ones.

Workers are the main resource in the game – you will use them to collect dice, build dice onto the pyramids, buy God cards, etc. Cats are valuable as they allow you to modify any die roll by +/- 1. Stone Dice are the only type of dice used to build Pyramids; and once placed on a pyramid, they are there forever. They can also be used to buy Gods and do other things.

On each turn, the active player chooses to take a Rest Turn or a Work Turn – each has its own format. 

Rest Turn (summarized at the top of the player board)

• Activate a God – if you have a God Card which can activate on a Rest Turn, you may do so and resolve it
• Choose and Activate a Rest Tile – take one of the available Rest tiles from the board, place it on your player board and resolve all the effects on it. 
• Check Rest tiles – if you have 3 Rest tiles on your board now, discard them all to the supply. Discard the rightmost God card, slide the rest of the Gods to the right and deal a new card in the leftmost space
• End of Turn – Untap activated God cards and then check to see if the game has ended. If not, the next player goes.

Work Turn (summarized at the bottom of the player board)

• Move Stone Dice to Quarry – move all the stone dice from your board to the quarry
• Choose and Roll Dice – For each worker you have, take a die from the quarry (can be prayer or stone); roll all of the dice
• Use Dice – use the rolled dice to do things. Note that once per turn, you can re-roll any or all of your currently unused dice. You can do these actions in any order and as many times as you like
  1. Worship a God – buy a face up God card paying the cost found to the left
  2. Build on a pyramid – use stone dice to play on a pyramid board; the cost determined by the face showing and the height of the build, immediately scoring points (also determined by face showing and other modifiers)
  3. Activate a God which has an action in this type of turn
  4. Replace a God – discard a die to the Quarry to remove a face up God card from the display and deal out a new one
  5. Gain Fame – discard any 2 dice to the Quarry for 1 Fame point
• Support the Cult of the Gods – count the number of God cards on your board; if you have more Gods than resources (Workers + Cats), then you must discard one of your God cards.
• End of Turn – Untap activated God cards, replenish the God display if needed, and then check to see if the game has ended. If not, the next player goes.

This process continues until the end game is triggered: either the stone dice supply is exhausted or the Gods deck is depleted. Whoever triggers the game end takes the Pharaoh token. Everyone else gets one more turn, and the holder of the Pharaoh token gets the last turn of the game.  At the completion of that turn, endgame scoring happens:

• Scarab Cards – as written on the card
• God Cards – some provide VPs seen in the upper right corner
• Project Card – these score based on the dice in the pyramid; the scoring rules found on each card are different

The player with the most points wins.

My thoughts on the game

Pyramidice is an interesting resource management game that adds in a good share of dice luck to keep things fairly unpredictable. Workers and stone dice feel like the most important resources – you need the workers to get dice from the quarry, and you can only build the stone dice onto the pyramids (likely costing you workers in the process).

That being said, there is also a small engine building component of the game – though the God Cards – which probably can’t be ignored. Gaining some God actions that give you small benefits can really turn out to be advantageous. Of course, as you collect more Gods, you’ll have to pay closer attention to your worker situation as you might have to discard a God Card if you don’t have enough workers to support them!

When we first learned the game, it felt like the Gods deck was way too large for the length of the game. However, as we have learned, the Gods display gets cycled pretty often – AND there are plenty of reasons to discard a god from the display and get a new one… whether offensively, as you search for a God you want or can buy OR defensively by discarding a God that you know another player wants to have. Needless to say, for whatever reason, the Gods deck has been empty or nearly empty at the end of every game that I’ve played.

I like the way that your turn is generally used to collect resources (Rest Turn) or to use them (Work Turn). As you have to choose which kind of turn you are going to have before you start, you are often faced with an interesting decision of whether you think you have enough resources to take a meaningful Work Turn or whether you need to Rest one more time to get most stuff. Of course, it may depend on which Rest Tiles are in the supply when your turn comes up… But, if you can push your luck well, you’ll get more Work Turns that the other players if you’re willing to risk those fine margins.

The components are a mixed bag. The art and cards are really nice. Iconography on the cards is easy to understand, though I do appreciate the full explanation of the Gods cards in the rules as a backup. The Sphinx and God board combo is a little less awesome. It would have been better for this to be a single piece – as the two separate pieces constantly slide apart as our fat fingers scrabble for the Rest tiles which lay in between them. By the end of our first game, we had just separated them. Even worse though is the score track – which is unfortunately pretty awful. The score markers are very small triangles, and the track has an attractive looking path of alternating triangles. While it looks great, it makes it impossible to easily move the score markers as you always have to rotate them 180 degrees. The score spaces are the exact size as the score markers, and the little triangles don’t stack well… and, if they aren’t on the exact outline of the score space, it’s sometimes unclear where they actually are. So it gets good points for being pretty, but almost no points for functionality.

There are a number of different ways to score points, though I find that my strategy usually points towards laying high valued dice into the pyramids or at least upper level dice (to gain the height scoring bonus) though this is definitely not the only way to score lots of points. Some of the Gods cards, especially the one which scores for set collection, are a very good way as well. The Project cards are somewhat of a mixed bag, and though I have seen players score as many as 6 connections (12 pts) for their card – so that shouldn’t be ignored either…

If you’re into Egyptian themed games and/or you like resource managment games, this would be worth a try!  The Gods cards definitely keep you thinking about how to play your turn optimally and ensure that each game plays out differently.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor