User:MCDeMarco

The user formerly known as User:Mcd. I've devised some pyramid games and tools, listed at my website and also below.

Favorite Links

• My Sandbox
• My ToDo list
• Recent Changes
• Special Pages
• Main Page/Weekly images
• The real Infobox template
• Documentation of wiki search queries and search operators
• My CSS

Icebox

My storage system is an old chocolate tin.

Icebox, splayed

It contains pyramids:

• a full Xeno set (5 trios of each Xeno color), from the Ice Towers boxed game (a.k.a. an IceTowers set), plus a tube of orange I won in a Looney Labs contest
• a Homeworlds set (3 trios each of the transparent rainbow colors) from the Homeworlds Pyramid Quartet boxed edition
• three trios from Pink Hijinks
• six trios of Kickstarter Green from the Pyramid Arcade kickstarter (and possibly a second purchase; it’s fuzzy now)

...and stuff:

• Homeworlds instructions, board and turn marker
• Instructions from Ice Towers
• ICE-7 cards
• Sandships
• two different decks of Zendo cards, the official one and one I printed up specifically for playing with Xeno colors
• travel Othello pieces and some generic green game pieces for playing Zendo
• an Opaque bag, useful for playing Zoning Out
• six yellow traffic cones of unknown origin for marking off unused parts of a paper board or the dimensions of an imaginary board
• a printed Color Wheel board (two-sided, with grayed-out spaces I used to use for a low-color variant of Color Wheel I used to play before I got Homeworlds)
• a printed Solomids board with a 6x6 Mega-Volcano grid on the back
• one Lightning die for Somids (see way below)
• one pyramid die and a 3x3 board from Pink Hijinks
• a chessboard bandana

Besides playing 5-stash games for Rainbow colors in Xeno colors, I also end up substituting white for black a lot (e.g., in Zoning Out), since black is the only standard color I don't have.

Coming soon: Pink Hijinks (to increase my selection of pointy, transparent pyramids) and a Chessboard bandana. I have wanted the latter for a long time, though the first thing I play on it may be Tak rather than a pyramid game. I think the tin is roomy enough to hold both without a reconfiguration, if not the pink bag. I may take new photos.

Rules and Tools

I’ve put together some rules summaries, randomizers and scoresheets for pyramid games:

• Zoning Out Randomizer, randomizes the random special rules for Zoning Out, a Sprawlopolis-like game, as well as the three draw bags, and includes a scoresheet and rules summary.
• a Pyramid Randomizer based on the code I wrote to randomize the draw bags for Zoning Out.
• Dectana Deciphered includes a player aid similar to the official one for Dectana, a Zarcana-like game, but with more pretty pictures.

Geeklists

I’ve compiled some pyramid geeklists for reference:

• Pyramid Arcade Games, games in the Pyramid Arcade, the Quartet, or the Sandships mailing.
• Pyramid Arcade Extra Games, the 22 extra games not included in the box, plus the 6 fan favorites not included in the 22 extras.
• The Arcana, my history and taxonomy of Zarcana-like games.
• Am I a Starship Captain?, my Starship Captain list, such as it is

My Games

I’ve half-designed a few pyramid games based on other games, mostly as an intellectual exercise. They have not yet been fully playtested or entered into the wiki.

Darcana

Darcana is an unpublished work in progress along the lines of Dectana, but with more Gnostica and less Zark City.

Deck Town

Deck Town is based on Zark City, a Zarcana for the rest of us by Andrew Looney. I devised it in order to work my way up to actually playing Dectana (after having merely deciphered it).

Jacynth City

Jacynth City is also based on Zark City, as well as the Decktet classic Jacynth by P.D. Magnus, I devised it after a discussion on my geeklist of Zarcana-type games.

Somids

Somids is a variant of Nomids designed for my pyramid-hungry toddler who refuses to shed.