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2-6 Players

Age 8+

Overview

People in your neighbourhood have gathered together to build a pyramid out of straw, wood, and stones!

You join in happily but soon you notice there are collapses, fires, and even explosions happening. Turns out

this may not be a friendly cooperative community project after all....

Objective

Be the first to get rid of all your materials (i.e. tiles), no matter how much mayhem you may cause!

Components

There are 40 regular tiles showing straw, wood, or stone. Each tile has a unique

colour/symbol and number combination. The number represents the tile’s weight.

There are also five special tiles: two Coals, two Blowtorches, and one Millstone.

Set Up

• The tiles are distributed randomly and evenly among the players. Players put their tiles into

facedown draw piles, from which they draw up a hand of five tiles, which are hidden from the other

players.

• When playing with an even number of people, there will be leftover tiles. These are placed face up

next to each other to become part of the bottom row of the pyramid, but any Coals or Blowtorches

get discarded.

Taking a Turn

Choose which of your five tiles you’d like to play. Each turn, you must play exactly one tile. If that tile does

not fit with the ones below according to the building regulations, then you must suffer the consequences.

Place your tile on the pyramid (see next section) and resolve any subsequent mayhem.

Draw back up to five tiles (unless your draw pile is empty).

Building Regulations (Placement Rules)

In general, place your tile to form a pyramid shape. Remember that all players are building on a single

pyramid while competing to be the first to exhaust their own supply of tiles.

In the following examples, the spaces outlined with green dotted lines show the place(s) where a tile can be

played.

If there are no tiles (A) or only one on the table (B), you can play any tile you’d like. B shows the two

possible places.

(A) (B)

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As soon as there are two tiles next to each other with no tile on top of them, that is the place where you

must put your tile. (C, D, and E)

(C) (D) (E)

If a pyramid shape is complete, extend the pyramid’s base on either side (F).

(F)

Sometimes (after mayhem) there will be multiple free spaces on top of two tiles or between tiles in the

bottom row, in which case you can choose which space to use (G and H).

(G) (H)

Building Regulations, Part Two: Triggering Mayhem

Numbers on the tiles reflect their weight.

Tiles placed on the pyramid’s base level can be any colour (I) Colours match:

and weight (number).

Otherwise, when placing a tile on top of two others, it must

match one of them in either colour (I) and/or number (J) AND

the tile’s weight must be equal to or less than that of the sum

of the 2 tiles below (K and L) ...or mayhem will ensue

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J) Numbers match:

K) Legal placement example: The top tile (Red 6) matches one of the tiles below (Red 40) in colour and its

weight is less than the sum of the two below: 6 < 40 + 2:

L) This placement will trigger mayhem (a collapse in this case) because the top tile’s weight, 60, is more

than the sum of the two below (34):