Strat-O-Sphere

Beautiful coffee table game. Best with four. Good fun but ability to win partly dependant on turn order so for serious play need to play a round of four games with four players. Not a problem as plays quite quickly.

This is an earlier game than Pylos (a.k.a. Pyraos and Elevation) and the inspiration for that game.

Best with two. Much better than Pyraos / Pylos. The game was created in 1964 according to his inventor who I met in Essen. On 21 April 1980 he founded Strat-O-Sphere Limited to market his game. He started to play it with real Snooker balls. There were tournaments in England. It is also known as "Elevation".

The older brother of Pylos. Though you can immediately recognise some of the family resemblence to its younger sibling, Strat-o-sphere is not just a multiplayer version of the kid brother but stands entirely on its own. The play is significantly different, the strategy requires an different mindset (especially in the early phase) and there is a deeper complexity of rules.

From my one game it appears that the first phase is incredibly important, you literally set the foundation for the rest of the game, and if a player has a comparatively strong position at this point the rest of the game maybe just fulfilling the inevitable. However, I would like to play this again and see if this holds any weight. I would be happy to be proved wrong and would enjoy learning strategies to force a comeback in the mid and endgames.

If you are fortunate to come across the game grab your chance to play it. Recommended.

Interesting precursor to Pyraos (pylos)