This article presents six different options for playing Homeworlds with more than 2 people. But first, some background information.

History

The Looney Pyramids game system began with a short story I wrote in 1987, about a group of friends who obsessively played a turnless, boardless board game called Icehouse, featuring small, colorful pyramids. My friend, John Cooper, was inspired to create real rules for such a game, and it was good enough to launch everything we’ve built since then… but, of course, it wasn’t really as good as the version in my story.

After we started creating other games for the pyramids, I took my own stab at designing a game like the one I had originally envisioned, and thus was born IceTowers. We’ve had a lot of fun with that one, too, but again, it’s not the incredibly compelling game my characters would carry with them everywhere and play at any opportunity.

But then John created Homeworlds, which for me has really become the true Icehouse game. It lacks the turnless element that so fascinated us in the early days, but otherwise it checks all the boxes: beautiful arrangements of colorful pyramids on an otherwise featureless playing area, with chess-level gameplay that makes you want to carry a set with you everywhere you go and which continues to be a game I’m always interested in playing even after 20 years.

Like Chess, it’s a perfect information game for two. But it didn’t start that way. The first time we published Homeworlds, in 2002’s Playing with Pyramids, it was described as being for 2-6 players, with 4 being ideal. The game also included a hidden information element, with each player being assigned a secret alignment: Good or Evil.

The rules for Homeworlds didn’t coalesce until the last minute before publication of Playing with Pyramids, and as I then started playing it obsessively, it became clear to me that the two player version was the best, since the Good vs. Evil element didn’t apply. I also determined that the classic full Icehouse set was too many pieces, and that the game played best with 3 trios of each color instead of 5. At first, I called attention to this version by naming it Binary Homeworlds, but as it gained popularity, the 3+ version of the game went the way of the dinosaurs (as did Icehouse, for that matter). When we finally published it as a standalone set in 2020, we simply called it Homeworlds even though, technically, it’s Binary Homeworlds.

Non-Binary Fundamentals

So what were the extra rules for Good vs. Evil, and what are the best options for playing non-binary Homeworlds? I’m getting there, but first, a few notes that apply to all 4 versions described in the following section:

* More Players, More Pyramids: Binary Homeworlds is best with 3 trios, but 5 trios is indeed best when playing with 4. In addition to the other added rules, the bank should contain N trios, where N = number of players + 1.

* Mandatory Setup Equality: During the first round, as the players choose the pairs of pyramids that form their Homeworlds, additional constraints are recommended for fairness. Players should discuss and agree on these limits before starting. The goal is to start everyone on the same footing, connection-wise. One option is for all players to choose the same sizes, which we call Small Universe. With 3 players, everyone can choose a different pairing, and thus play in a full size universe, but with 4 (or more), someone will have to match someone else, so for that to be fair, it’s best if everyone matches an equal number of other players.

* Table Talk: All forms of open discussion are permitted. But can you believe what the other players are saying?

Four Options for Non-Binary Homeworlds

1) Good vs. Evil: Each player gets a card or other marker labeled Good or Evil. For an even number of players, use an even split of cards; with an odd number of players, start with an extra Good card in the mix. Players must look at their cards while keeping them hidden from others. Evil players then have the goal of eliminating any other player, while the Good players win collectively if all Evil players are eliminated. Note that the optional nature of calling a Catastrophe will be a factor here, as trust becomes an element in determining someone’s secret intentions. Whenever a player is eliminated, both their hidden alignment and that of the player who eliminated them are revealed. The game continues until an Evil player wins or all Evil players have been eliminated.

2) Sinister Homeworlds: You win if you eliminate the player on your left. If some other player causes their elimination, the game continues without that player and your goal changes to the new person on your left.

3) Last Captain Standing: The goal is simple: outlast all other players!

4) Federation vs. Alliance: This version is for 4 or 6 players. Each player has their own Homeworld and takes their own turn, but each is also part of a 2 or 3 player team. The teams must be seated evenly interspersed, and should use starting arrangements that connect their stars but don’t connect to the other side’s stars. One team wins as a group when anyone on the other team is eliminated. Players on the same team can use the color of other team members’ ships at stars they also occupy as if they were their own.

Two Other Options for More Than Two Players

These last two aren’t really non-binary versions, they’re just ways of involving more than two players in a two player game.

5) Double-Cross Style: On the face of it, this is just a regular game played by a pair of two-person teams, with both players on each side openly discussing their options before settling on the next move. (That right there is also is a valid way to play.) One player on each team is the Captain and makes the final move, after being given advice on the best option by their First Officer. But here’s the trick: No matter how good that advice is, the Captain MUST refuse it, and make some other move. The First Officer will be motivated to figure out and make the best recommendation each time because, surprise, they are actually working for the enemy and they win, along with the other Captain, if their own Captain loses. (Our first name for this was Commander Worf Style, inspired by the observation that Captain Picard always said “No, Mr. Worf,” even though the Klingon’s advice often turned out to have been the right decision.) Note that the Captain can ignore the First Officer’s recommendations during setup and the second turn.

6) The Interstellar Threeway: This version is for 3 players and requires 3 full Binary Homeworlds game sets. It’s basically just 3 people playing 3 two-player games at the same time. If each player wins one game, play again until one player wins both of the games they are in.

The photos above were taken by Dr. Leila Zucker at Constellation 2022, where John Cooper, Wil Allyn, and I played an Interstellar Threeway on the Spiral Galaxy effigy, inspired by the James Webb Space Telescope and built by Michael Verdon and his team, which was burned the following night. (Wil won.)

As I write this, I’m halfway through a drive across America in my little box truck Betty, and I’m having a grand time. It’s great to be out on the road again after such a long hiatus!

My first stop on this trip was Plainfield, Illinois, where I made my first game store appearance in years, at the Wandering Dragon Game Shoppe. Of course, there are a lot of cool game stores I’d like to visit and now that I’m traveling again I can start doing more of that, but I was particularly interested in checking out the Wandering Dragon because this is the game store which Laura Martin and her husband own and operate.

I’ve been getting to know Laura for about six months now, since she became our Operations Specialist back in March, but she’s only ever been a face on our video screen until now. Of course, before the pandemic it would have been difficult to imagine hiring someone so far away to help run our daily operations, but since we all just work from home now it’s been no problem. Even so, it was nice to finally meet her in person. And I was very impressed with their game store! If you’re ever in the area, be sure to visit the Wandering Dragon!

The ultimate point of this journey is Burning Man, and I’m really excited to be returning, again after such a long hiatus. I’m particularly thrilled because I’m finally getting to test the enormously revised version of the epic gaming experience I’ve been working on for the past several years, called Dustworld.

Even if you aren’t going to Burning Man, you might be interested in looking at the program book I put together for the convention our camp puts on, called RaiderCon. (Check out the detailed description of Dustworld on pages 12-13.) And obviously, if you are going to BRC, be sure to visit our camp, Captain Pump’s Raiders! We’re in the Center Camp Circle @ 4:30, so we will be easy to find!

There are 4 kinds of people in the world:

• Fans of Just Desserts who’ve been playing the game for at least a year
• Fans who got their copy fairly recently
• Fans who’ve only ever played Just Desserts onlline at BoardGameArena
• Folks who (somehow) aren’t fans of Just Desserts

This article will mainly be of interest to those in the first group, since the topic is errors we fixed when we reprinted the game last year. However, fans in the second group may also be interested — assuming they don’t have an irrational dislike of neapolitan ice cream.

OK, so what are the differences between the first edition of Just Desserts and version 1.1?

Let’s start with Granny. Long-time fans will probably remember that her favorite dessert is Apple Pie a la Mode, but that her icons originally showed a craving for cake, not pie. We’ve been making replacement Grannies available for a long time, and if you’ve got the first edition we can still send you an updated version of Granny, but it’s great to have finally resolved that problem.

However, that’s actually not the biggest change in version 1.1. That would be the replacement of Neapolitan Ice Cream with a Zucchini Muffin. But to explain that, we have to talk about the Hippie.

You see, in the original version, the Hippie has 2 favorites: Banana Split and Neapolitan Ice Cream. I did that because, from a game-play standpoint, the two are identical, with both desserts having the same 3 icons: Chocolate, Fruit, and Ice Cream.

However, the real-life Hippie (aka Kristin) who really does love Banana Splits, also just happens to actively dislike Neapolitan Ice Cream. It’s definitely not one of her favorite things; indeed, she wonders why I even put it in the game. She strongly disagreed with my idea of equating them, but unfortunately, I didn’t understand that until it was too late to change.

In the years since then, whenever Kristin has had occasion to autograph the Hippie card in someone’s Just Desserts deck, she also likes to make a correction to the card, scribbling out the part about Neapolitan Ice Cream so that her only favorite is the Banana Split.

Of course, once I got the chance to make revisions, I formalized that change. But it wasn’t enough simply to remove Neapolitan Ice Cream from the Hippie’s card: I needed to completely remove it from the game. Again, from a game design standpoint, the desserts are equivalent: the point of a Favorite dessert in the game is that those are the only desserts that can satisfy all of a Guest’s cravings in a single card.

But what would we replace it with? The good news is, I just happened to have an understudy waiting in the wings. As those who’ve played my Parsely game Muffins may recall, I’ve been using an illustration of a zucchini muffin on a promotional item for that, which was done for me by the same artists who illustrated Just Desserts back in 2015. So it was kind of a no-brainer to replace the dreaded Neapolitan Ice Cream with an even more dreaded Zucchini Muffin.

With its Cake + Veggie icons, the Zucchini Muffin will be no one’s favorite, but is actually rather helpful in bringing up the total number of vegetable-based desserts (although as the Emperor, I can’t abide by such things). And it’s OK for the Hippie to only have one favorite; there are 4 other Guests with 2 faves.

All of this, of course, creates a small problem for everyone in the first two groups of fans. First Edition owners will be saying, “but I want to add Zucchini Muffins to my game! Is there any way to just get that card?” Meanwhile, new fans who’ve never seen Neapolitan Ice Cream will be hankering for some of that.

We here at Looney Labs like to fully satisfy all of our customers, so we came up with a plan to make both groups happy: We’ve made promo card versions of both Zucchini Muffins and Neapolitan Ice Cream, so you can buy whichever one you lack at our webstore! (Note that it’s not necessary in either case, but collectors are gonna collect!)

We made a number of other little changes and corrections in this edition:
• The rulesheet now includes details on breaking ties, and introduces the two expansion packs.
• We added the Ice Cream icon to Orange Sherbet (it just feels like it should have that icon, even if sherbet isn’t technically ice cream).
• Coffee Cake now has the pink milk carton icon, indicating that it’s the favorite of someone in the Just Coffee expansion.
• Chocolate Dipped Strawberries now has the brown fork icon, indicating that it’s the favorite of someone in the Better with Bacon expansion.
• Candace and the Little Boy had the order of their icons changed to match how they are on their Favorite desserts.
• The Little Boy’s artwork has been mirror flipped to correct the fact that it was mirror flipped once already, which matters because of the LL logo on the kid’s shirt.

However, please don’t ask about getting corrected versions of any of these other cards. We’re only making the Muffins available.

BTW, if you’re a fan of Just Desserts, you should know there’s an excellent adaptation of the game available now at BoardGameArena.com. It’s doing very well — as of this posting, it’s been played more than 343,000 times! And if you’re among those who’ve played that version, you are already familiar with these changes, all of which were included in the excellent adaptation created by Mizutismask!

John Cooper is my oldest friend. We met in 1977, when we both joined Explorer Post 1275, which held its meetings at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where both of our fathers worked. Later, we both followed in our father’s footsteps and went to work at that same space center, as part of our own careers. (I was there for 8 years, and John just retired after several decades at GSFC.)

My first memory of John is the time we were making paper airplanes at a Post meeting held in the Building 8 auditorium. While most of the kids were making traditional paper airplanes and launching them off the stage to see whose would go the farthest, John spent the whole time folding up an origami space shuttle. I thought it was so cool, I begged him to give it to me afterwards, and he did!

John and I have had many adventures together since then. John was my Best Man when I married Kristin, and we introduced him to his future wife, Gina, at our house.

John and I have our own special handshake, and we even went Right Thru the Wall together a few times.

John is the inventor of Homeworlds, my favorite game ever, as well as the playable version of the fictional game I envisioned so long ago, Icehouse, which launched so much of what we do. John and I are the co-inventors of US Patent #4936585.

John and I still get together to hang out and play games every week. Also, now and again we go camping with various other friends of ours, and this weekend, we finally got back out there. And this at last brings me to the point of this little ode.

While we were camping this weekend, we decided to recreate this photo from about 40 years ago. Aren’t we cute?

Anyway, thanks for being my friend for the past 45 years, John!

It’s so painful to watch the news these days. What’s happening in Ukraine is so tragic and terrible, my heart breaks.

There are many angles to cover, many things to say. But I’m sure you can predict how this old peace-loving hippie is feeling.

But as the designer of Chrononauts, I do have a unique perspective on world events like this. Just as I wrote after 9/11, “I immediately started thinking about how this hideous assault would fit on my TimeLine.” Again, this is clearly a Linchpin event, and we will see in the years to come what the Ripplepoints of this attack will be.

So here it is, the card that will eventually memorialize this terrible event. Click on it to see the other side.

My heart goes out to all the Ukrainians (and the Russians and everyone else) who have had their lives ruined and even taken from them because of one person’s evil ambitions.

It’s that time of year when everyone is trying to plan their calendar of annual events, but we are struggling with the return to conventioneering.

Some of the events we’d like to go to are still just being canceled, like Toy Fair, which we would normally be exhibiting at right now; others are moving forward with the best protections against Covid they can muster, like GAMA next month; and yes, as I described in my last update, still others are trying to hold events even though their state has passed laws that prohibit them from limiting attendance based on vaccination status.

So it’s difficult to know what to expect when we think ahead to the summer, and specifically to events like GenCon. We are very much hoping that we will feel like we can safely attend… but should we sign up for a booth?

Although the Covid factor makes this year particularly difficult to figure out, the question is actually much bigger than just this year. Indeed, the Great Interruption has given us cause to re-evaluate everything about how we used to do things. For example, like so many companies, it’s difficult to imagine forcing employees who’ve gotten used to working from home to accept the idea of commuting to cubicles again. (Which is not to say our office is a cube farm, it’s really quite nice. But commuting. Ugh.) Anyway, as we contemplate our return to conventions, we are considering all of the possibilities… including once again not getting our own booth.

The need for a booth is obvious… we make a lot of direct sales that way, and it’s also important marketing, as our booth becomes our HQ for the weekend, where we have meetings, demo our games, give out promo materials, etc. However, a lot of those things can be done without running a sales booth in the exhibit hall, with my favorite being a dedicated gaming space like our old Big Experiments, which we ran for 9 years at Origins.

And setting up a sales booth is a lot of work, especially now that our product line has gotten as big as it has. We basically create a pop-up retail store for 4 days, a task that usually ends up requiring extra help to tend the cash register and such. This isn’t true at industry-only trade shows, where we’re just showing off samples and taking orders. But at events like GenCon, we have to ship in a pallet of product to be able to sell everything in our catalog. Of course, we’re lucky that our games are all so small, since it would take a lot more pallets if we made big box board games!

But managing a pop-up game store isn’t really how we want to be spending our time at conventions. We’d rather be focusing on the playing and promoting of the games themselves, and creating gaming experiences instead of working retail.

The point of all this yammering is that we are interested in partnering with another company to sell our games for us at GenCon and other big consumer events.

We actually have quite an on-again-off-again history as far as GenCon booths are concerned. We’ve probably only gotten a booth during about half of all the GenCons we’ve attended. The very first time we went, back in 1997, Kristin had arranged with another company — at the last minute — to sell our brand new game Fluxx. In that case, the company was called Cards 4U. They specialized in Magic and other CCGs, but their owner Bill Jaffe was happy to be the official vendor for that hot new card game everyone was talking about 3 weeks earlier at Origins. We even made a new Fluxx promo card, All You Need Is Love, to help them drum up business.

The following year, we got our own booth, selling Aquarius decks, but many times since then Kristin has made deals with other companies to sell our products for us while we just did demos and ran events. For several years it was Adventure Retail (the “exact change” guys); before that, we partnered with Paizo Publishing a couple of times; and one year, we made arrangements with 5 different independent game sellers to sell our products for us, with each of their booths being the place to get one of that year’s set of promo cards.

In the last few years before the pandemic we were back to running our own booth and would probably still be doing that if Covid hadn’t happened. But as we emerge on the other side, we have decided to focus on promotion, not on event sales. Therefore, we are actively seeking a partner to run our GenCon sales this year and, if it works, for years to come. Ping Kristin if you want to be said partner or want to suggest a company you think would be a perfect fit for us. Thanks!

MidSouthCon is now less than two months away, and I’m sad to report that we have decided that we cannot attend.

We’ve been scheduled to be their gaming Guests of Honor since March 2020, when MidSouthCon became the first of our events to get canceled. After the vaccination era began, we became hopeful that MidSouthCon would also herald the start of our return to conventions. And with some conventions, like Pax Unplugged, moving forward with a vaccination requirement for all attendees, we’ve been hopeful we’d feel it would be safe enough for us to go.

As we all know, the pandemic is continuing to rage out of control, with new variants breaking through the protection of vaccination. Also, Kristin is recovering from abdominal surgery, and really needs to not get sick right now, so this makes it all the more important to us that we only attend events where everyone is vaccinated.

Unfortunately, according to the Covid policy just announced by MidSouthCon, they are legally unable to limit attendance to those who are vaccinated, due to Tennessee law that actually prohibits events from screening attendees in this way. Given this, we have decided not to attend.

We eagerly await the time when this whole thing is really over and we can attend conventions without feeling so much concern for our health. But until Kristin is back to full health, we are going to play it safe – we are determined to maintain our status as members of the ever-shrinking Never-Had-Covid Club for as long as we can.

To sum up: It is our current policy only to attend events where everyone has been vaccinated. If your state is preventing such precautions, then we must regretfully decline. Hopefully next year.

I often like to think about what I would tell myself if I could go back in time 40 or 50 years.

There are just so many things about the world of today that would have been amazing to me back in the 1970s… where do you even begin? But I think I would focus on my smartphone.

“In the future,” I would tell myself, “your most important possession will be a little glass and metal slab you’ll carry in your pocket everywhere you go. People will refer to these objects as phones, because one of the many things this little slab can do is to function as a wireless telephone. It’s like a walkie-talkie that can connect to regular phones just about anywhere you go. But it’s SO much more than just a telephone.

“Think of it as being like a pocket-sized TV set,” I would say, trying to think in terms that would have made sense to me back then. “But this little TV doesn’t just pick up whatever’s being broadcast right now. You can watch any show or movie ever made, right there on your own little pocket sized TV, at your personal command. And you can pause it. If you missed something, you can roll it back a few seconds or minutes and watch it again. Or you can skip over boring parts or ads. (Yes, there are still ads in the future. So many ads.)

“I know that sounds amazing enough already, and yet, I’m just getting started. Not only will you be able to summon up any movie you want on this device, but you’ll also be able to use your little TV screen to read just about anything ever written. Think of this thing as being like a little book, with the page you are reading displayed on the front. Instead of turning the page, you touch it and the next page appears. And this is a book with infinite pages, loaded with all the world’s current knowledge.

“It’s also a music player. You can load all of your favorite songs and albums into this little box, and listen to your tunes anywhere you go. It has a little built-in speaker, with better sound than that tape player you just got. And if you’d rather listen with headphones, you can do that too… but you won’t have to worry about the wire, you’ll just have these little earplugs which can pick up the signal from the device in your pocket without a physical connection, just as the device itself receives TV signals.

“Like I said, you can use it as a telephone, but we have an even better way of staying connected in the future. It’s called texting. You can just write little messages to each other and they’ll pop up on each other’s tiny TV screens. You can write long messages too, and if you don’t feel like tapping out the words on the little keyboard that appears on the screen, you can just talk to your device, like they do with the computers on Star Trek. But we don’t say “Computer, blah blah blah,” we use their proper names, which are usually either Siri or Alexa.

“You’ll never need a roadmap again, because your little device can display up-to-date maps of anywhere you want to go. The device will know exactly where you are, too, and will show your current location on the map. Then you can tell the device where you want to go, and it will figure out the best driving route to use. It will compute the exact amount of time the trip will take, with allowances for traffic jams, and as you drive, the device will talk to you, giving you instructions on where to turn and what lane to get into.

“There’s still so much more this device can do. It’s a camera — and a way better camera than anything you’ve ever seen. This entire device is smaller than your Instamatic pocket camera, but it doesn’t use film. It’s like a polaroid, in that you get to see the pictures you take instantly, because there’s nothing to develop. The camera displays your pictures right there on your little TV screen. You can get them printed on little cards if you want, but you don’t really need to… you can keep all of your photo albums right there on your device and look at them any time you want.

“Oh, and when I say ‘camera,’ I should probably say ‘movie camera,’ since you can film little movies with it as well. And you can send your movies out into the ether and your friends can find them and watch them on their own little pocket TVs.

“Furthermore, since it works as a phone AND a movie camera, these devices have become the videophones we’ve been waiting for since the 1964 New York World’s Fair. But again, it’s better than they ever imagined: we can do multi-person video conferencing using our phones, with everyone joining in at once, like a classic party line! And you can dial in from home using your actual TV screen (which is impossibly big and flat nowadays) and it looks like the opening to the Brady Bunch!

“Then there are the games! You know those awesome video game cabinets that are starting to show up next to the pinball machines at bowling alleys and pizza places? The ones you have to spend a quarter to play for just a few minutes? First of all, those are going to get much, much better. Instead of colorful dots and lines, those will start to look as real as movies, and going through those games will become epic experiences. And you’ll be able to play those amazing games of the future right there on your little pocket TV set.

“And speaking of things getting better, the TV shows and movies you’ll be wanting to watch in the future are SO much better than what you’re seeing now. The special effects industry has gotten so good, they can make movies of impossible stuff that looks totally believable. You should see the Star Trek shows we’re watching in the 2020s. (Yes, it comes back. Many times.)

“Oh, and when I said you could watch any movie ever made, yes, that does include dirty movies. And you won’t believe just how dirty.

“And when I said it has instant access to all of the world’s knowledge, I mean that in ways you can’t even imagine. For example, if you want to know who recorded a song you are listening to, or who painted a picture you are looking at, you can just point your device at the thing in question and it will instantly figure out who the artist was. It can also translate foreign languages for you on the spot. It’s not always perfect, but it gets better every year.

“There are still a million things this device can do that I can’t even fully explain to you. You’ll never need a pocket calculator again, because this device IS a pocket calculator. It’s also an alarm clock, a rolodex, a day planner, a tape recorder, and a flashlight. The only thing it cannot do is make julienne fries!

“All that said, these devices do have a few drawbacks. They’re expensive, and every few years you have to get a new one, because the companies who make them keep changing how they work. (By the way, invest in a company called Apple Computers as soon as you get a chance.) Also, you may not need a wire for your headphones, but you will need a special cable to keep the device charged up, and you’ll always be worrying about your device running out of power before you can get it plugged in again somewhere. Also, as you might expect, it’s devastating if you lose or break your little device. Lastly, even though they keep us all connected like never before, we also tend to get a little too focused on our devices. This can be a deadly problem when people get distracted by their devices while operating heavy machinery. ‘Never drink and drive,’ is a message you’re starting to hear a lot, but in the future, we say ‘Don’t Text and Drive’ just as much.

In the movie 2001, we see several gigantic black monoliths that indirectly affected our lives. But in the reality that is 2021, our lives are very directly affected by millions of little black monoliths we obsessively carry with us everywhere we go. And we love it.

This piece was slightly inspired by A Day in the Future, written in 2011.

Twelve years ago, we released as our holiday gift the rules to a new pyramid game called Nothing Beats a Large. This year, our holiday gift is an actual Thing we’ve been sending out (act now to get yours if you haven’t yet), but as a bonus gift I’m also releasing a new version of the rules for Nothing Beats a Large.

Sometimes my game designs develop very quickly, with ideas seeming to appear, almost fully-formed, in my brain. Other designs take a long time: months or even years of iterative design changes requiring numerous playtesting sessions. Sometimes a half-finished game will sit in my prototype bag for years, and then becomes the perfect foundation for some other idea that I add to it later. And in some cases, we will even publish an early version of a game that will become obsolete later when we release a more refined version of the game.

For example, in 2005, we published the first version of Just Desserts, featuring black & white sketches and a very rough first version of the rules. I spent an entire decade tweaking the rules until we published the final version in 2015. Also of note is my all-time favorite game Homeworlds, which began life as something called Ice Traders which we published several years before the game took on its final form and name.

Anyway, we decided to release the rules for Nothing Beats a Large as our holiday gift for 2009 because I managed to convince everyone — including myself — that the game was ready for release. But in retrospect, it still needed work.

The original version of NBaL was meant to be a game you could play with a Treehouse set, since that was the main way we were selling the pyramids at the time. Given this, my original design was for 2-5 players. But again as with Homeworlds, I’ve come to realize I should just focus on the 2 player version.

But the real problem with NBaL was the victory condition. The game’s strength is the whole “what beats what” chart, with nothing beating a Large and all that. But that was just the core mechanism. I needed to add something onto that foundation, something with hidden information of some kind and a bigger picture goal.

What I came up with at the time was the addition of Twin Win cards and a goal of collecting two different winning combos. But I was never really happy with that… it was just a little too klunky and overly complex for the quick, simple game I wanted it to be.

When we were choosing the games to feature in Pyramid Arcade, I had to admit NBaL just wasn’t good enough to include. Ever since then, it’s been on my list to re-visit the design, and now, for reasons I won’t go into here, I finally have. And I’m rather excited about it!

My new version of NBaL uses a new set of 3 goal cards (an ace, two, and three from any standard deck of cards works great) and you only have to meet a goal once to win.

Now that I have a set of rules I’m actually happy with, I’ve formatted them in the new style and added them to the list of games featured at the Looney Labs Pyramid Games index. I even made a PA style patch for the game.

So if you’ve got 6 pyramids, 3 cards, 2 minutes, and 1 friend to play with, please give my new version of Nothing Beats a Large a try!

PS: Speaking of new webpages for old games, I also recently made this new information center for Cosmic Coasters, which is being featured this month as a free game on the lid of pizza boxes used by Slice n Dice, the board game pizzeria in Jackson, Michigan, which is also featuring an ever-changing Fluxx pizza special!

Twenty-five years ago, Kristin challenged me to invent a card game we could publish. On Wednesday, July 24th, 1996, I wrote a memo outlining the core ideas for Fluxx. By the time that weekend rolled around, we were already taking the first prototype to gaming parties and becoming excited about the possibilities. We quickly started looking into card printers and making final artwork, and just as we were finalizing the files for the printer, we decided to start a new company (rather than trying to make it work as Icehouse Games, Inc) and that’s when Looney Labs was born: November 10, 1996.

We’ve been celebrating the 25th birthdays of both Fluxx and Looney Labs all year with a series of online events and special promotions we’ve been calling our Silver Jubilee. We’ve given away a lot of out-of-print games and cool old artifacts through special participation-based raffles (the Q4 raffle is under way), we are running over 100 online events (check the schedule to see what’s still coming up), and we’ve given away thousands of Tiny Fluxx decks.

You may have already checked out our events, or seen pictures of the most interesting raffle items, but the main point of this article is to make sure you know about our Tiny Fluxx giveaways, while supplies last.

Here’s the deal: all year long, we’ve been including a special packet free with every outgoing consumer order from our webstore. This packet contains a greeting card from us (spoiler: the picture is the one shown here, of myself and Kristin from September 1996 visiting our future selves in November 2020) along with a free copy of Tiny Fluxx (packed loose with a tiny fold-up box). But that’s not all! Each of these packets of fun also contains a smaller envelope with a matching card and another free copy of Tiny Fluxx! It’s one for you, and one for a friend!

As we move towards the end of our Silver Jubilee festivities, the days when this deal will be available are dwindling. We believe the supply we have left will allow us to continue including one free with all orders through the end of the year, but we only made 3770 of these packets, so don’t wait too long to get yours!

When we do run out, we plan to make the Tiny Fluxx decks available for sale in our webstore. But why pay for one later when you can get 2 free now?

Many of you, of course, will already know all about this. Thanks for reading anyway!

BTW, if you want to know more about Tiny Fluxx, check out this little video!