by Dan Isaac
For some time, I have wanted to create a game which uses opaque pieces to create hidden information in an IceHouse game. About a year ago, I even started a brief brainstorming discussion on the IceHouse list to discuss ways to put the opaque pieces to use. Dan Efran, Ryan McGuire, Dale Newfield, Olle Johansson, & Tyler (dancingguy) all contributed to this discussion, but it died out fairly quickly.
A couple years ago at the Origins Gaming Convention in Columbus, Ohio, one of the free items received at check-in was a booster pack of a new game called "Pirates of the South Seas" by WizKids. It looked very interesting, and gave me the idea to attempt to make a similar game using IceHouse pieces.
At that point, I came up with quite a few ideas for how it could work, and spent some time playing around with different possible rules. But as usual, I had to put it aside for some time while I had other things going on in my life. Then during the Third Ice Game Design Contest there was an entry called "StarRunners" by Andy Looney. This was a single-stash game based on "Homeworlds" by John Cooper. As I know that single-stash games are always in demand, I had the idea that I could probably boil down the ideas that I had for Ice Pirates into a single-stash game. And I also figured that it would take much less time to work out, and would be available in time for the final IGDC before Origins 05. Thus was born Armada.
Armada seemed to be well liked by many in that competition, and even earned a place next to the IGDC #1-4 winners in Hypothermia #16 as "Editors Choice". The game does seem to have one minor flaw which was pointed out by a few people. It seems that the Small+Medium forces are better then the Large force. I had accounted for this in the Advanced Setup section of original rules where one player would choose the numbers of each piece to be used in the game, and the other player would choose which of those groups of pieces they wanted to use. Anyway, the success of Armada prompted me to at least put some more time into working on the full IcePirates game, and to attempt to have it ready for the IGDC #5 competition.
One thing that people have noted about Armada (which is also used in IcePirates) was the unique movement mechanism. I must say that it appears that I did not come up with this mechanism completely by myself. I have been following the Looneys games since the late 1990's and have read just about every game using IceHouse pieces that people have posted to the mailing list since then. Back in July of 2001 a game was posted called "Martian Rugby" by David Morgan-Mar. As with what usually happens, I read the game, and then filed it away unplayed. I don't remember consciously thinking about this game or its mechanisms during the early developing IcePirates & Armada, but pieces of it were probably floating around somewhere in the back of my head. Eventually, I thought that the movement mechanism might have been from that game, and consciously decided not to check on it until after I had submitted Armada to IGDC4. I didn't want to be directly influenced by it. So after it was submitted, I decided to look up Martian Rugby to refresh myself on its rules. The movement mechanism was similar, but also had its differences. But I do attribute it as an influence to these games.