Homeworlds is an Abstract Strategy Game invented by John Cooper and first published in 2002. The game is played physically with Looney Pyramids (also known as Icehouse pieces, after the game the pieces were originally designed for).
The game abstractly depicts interstellar warfare. The pyramid-shaped game pieces represent either stars (when oriented upright) or spaceships (when laid on their side). Each player has a "homeworld" comprising a binary star system, and other star systems can be discovered during the course of the game. A player loses the game if their homeworld is left undefended or if both of its stars explode.
The official Homeworlds page can be found here
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The game provides examples of:
- Alien Geometries: Individual stars are considered connected if they are of different sizes. Binary star systems are considered connected if they share no stars of the same size. This is difficult to reconcile with any real-world concept of distance (the rulebook says "It’s just the way the wormhole technology works...").
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: There can be no more than three pieces of a given size and color in play at once. note This limit is shared among all players, and is shared between spaceships and stars. This means that you can potentially deny your opponent the opportunity to construct certain spaceships by building them yourself first, or by discovering them as stars.
- Bequeathed Power: Spaceships can be sacrificed, which lets you use their power in any star system. Moreover, sacrificing a medium or large spaceship allows you to perform (respectively) two or three actions in a turn, as long as those actions correspond to the sacrificed spaceship's color.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Spaceships and stars come in one of four colors, corresponding to the power they grant access to:
- Green spaceships are Worker Units which can construct other spaceships.
- Blue spaceships are traders which can exchange spaceships for other ships of the same size.
- Yellow spaceships grant the power to move to other stars and discover new stars.
- Red spaceships are battleships giving the ability to capture other spaceships. Unlike in Chess, "capturing" in this context entails gaining control of a spaceship rather than destroying it.
- Explosions in Space: The rulebook is ambiguous about exactly what happens during a catastrophe, but some versions include an illustration of a pyramid-shaped spaceship exploding.
- Geo Effects: Stars grant powers to the spaceships which occupy them, depending on the star's color.
- I Surrender, Suckers: Allowing one of the stars in your homeworld to be destroyed brings you closer to defeat (since you have only one star remaining) but can also create new paths for you to win. In particular:
- Your homeworld now has connections to other star systems, making it easier to launch a counterattack. Your homeworld may now be directly connected to your opponent's, allowing you to invade your opponent's homeworld from your own on the very next turn.
- The destruction of the star will have removed many pieces from the board. For some pieces the Arbitrary Headcount Limit may no longer be in force, allowing you to build spaceships which were not available before.
- Overpopulation Crisis: If on your turn there are four or more pieces of the same color in one star system, you can declare a "catastrophe", which destroys all the pieces in that color. If one of the destroyed pieces is the star system's only star, the whole star system is destroyed, destroying all the spaceships at the system.
- Standard Human Spaceship: When laid on their side, pyramid pieces resemble the Star Destroyers in Star Wars, with a pointed end aimed towards the enemy and a wider, flatter surface at the back.
- Star Killing: Destroying all the stars in a system also destroys all the spaceships occupying the system. Since you usually need to send in at least one of your own spaceships to trigger an overpopulation, this is most often a Suicide Attack.
- Starting Units: At the start of the game, you choose the sizes and colors of the stars in your homeworld, as well as the color of your first spaceship. Most players choose green for their spaceship, blue for one of their stars and either red or yellow for their other star.
- Zerg Rush: The so-called "direct assault" strategy aims to win by overwhelming the opponent's homeworld with more (and larger) spaceships than they can capture, so that you can capture all the ships in their homeworld. This usually requires a significant numerical advantage. This contrasts with the "stellar demolition" strategy, where your opponent may actually be disadvantaged by having more spaceships defending their homeworld (since it makes the system easier to overpopulate).
