Pyramid Pick
Terrace
Published by Siler/Siler Ventures
Designed by Buzz Siler and Anton Dresden
$24.95
To me, a "pure strategy game" is one where chance is not a factor, where cards or other external components are not involved, where the board doesn't bear printed words, and is graced, in fact, by nothing else than the playing pieces. Chess is such a game, and so is Terrace. But the latter has something up its sleeve.Played on a 6x6 board built like an Escher staircase, Terrace looks like nothing else out there. Twelve black hemispheres face twelve of their white counterparts, the pieces staggered over superimposed terraces that create a battleground with six different levels. The gaming pieces come in three sizes, from the four largest and most powerful, to the four smallest and less threatening, one of which -- etched with a "T" -- is your opponent's Achilles' heel. And yours, too, of course. For this is the first way to win: capture your opponent's "T". But there is another path to victory, which consists in bringing your own "T" all the way to the opposite corner of the board. Now Terrace claims on its box that it is "the purest strategy game," and it might very well be just that. Learning how to play could hardly be made easier. All the pieces move in the same way, governed by only four simple rules. The only difference lies in capturing, where a piece can only capture one that is of equal or smaller size. Oh, and taking your own pieces is allowed, which opens the . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 16, 1999
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