Homeworlds is a pure strategy game played using a set of colored pyramids. The colors and sizes represent different resources, and the goal is to build an interstellar supply chain to destroy your opponent’s home planet.

Because the game is pure strategy, there’s a risk of the meta becoming stale someday. Chess and Go are intimidating to new players because you basically have to study centuries of meta before you can do anything new in them.

So I’ve been thinking about ways to modify Homeworlds to be “imperfect strategy”. This is my favorite pitch so far: the Secret Weapon.

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When building your homeworld at the start of the game, each player also secretly places a 12mm dice under a large opaque pyramid. I’m using black 'mids here because they’re not used for any purpose in game. The number on the hidden die represents one of the four resource types: 1 = yellow (warp), 2 = red (steal), 3 = green (replicate), 4 = blue (transform).

Once per game, without costing an action, you may reveal your Secret Weapon. Immediately take any piece of that color from the bank, and build it at your homeworld.

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I haven’t playtested this yet, so let me know if you do. I’m hoping it would lead to situations in the early- to mid-game, such as “hmm, I think it’s safe to build a large piece, because you can’t steal it this turn… unless your secret weapon is red, of course.” The bluff and counter-bluff would make it impossible to play perfectly, so the meta would always have room to evolve.