I’m loving Gamewright these days, the fun factory that churns out Sushi Go, which I reviewed last week, as well as the latest game in my house, Pyramix. The self-described “three-sided strategy game,” which takes about 15 minutes to play, starts off with 56 cubes stacked into the shape of a pyramid (okay, not a true four-sided pyramid, but what the hey). The cubes each sport a symbol of an ankh (1 pt), a crane (2 pts), an eye (3 pts), or a cobra (0 pts). The object is to take turns removing the cubes to earn the most points.
Sounds simple enough. In fact, I collected as many eyes and cranes (high point cubes) as I could during the first game I played, thinking the game a bit too simple. And then I lost by a landslide. What I hadn’t taken into account was the strategy level the game’s handful of rules create, such as: 1) you can only take a cube with two or three sides exposed, 2) you can’t take a cube that’s right against a Cobra cube, 3) although you can take a cube from the bottom of a stack (causing the rest to slide down), you can’t take the last cube standing in each stack, and 4) at the end of the game, whoever has the most ankhs in each color category takes whatever is left on the base board in that same color. The fourth rule gives the game an interesting twist, making 1-point Ankhs often more valuable than the others combined.
I turned my strategy upside-down in my subsequent games and have since won more than lost. As with Sushi Go, two players make for a fun game, but three to four players add an extra layer of merriment that gives the game high replay value.
Pyramix
by Gamewright
Ages 8 and up, 2-4 players
