Editing Pyramid (RDM)

[[File:Bscap3463pu.jpg|thumb|300px|A regulation pyramid court at [[Delphi Union High School]].]]
'''Pyramid'''<ref>The game was derived by the Re-imagined Series writers from the [[Triad (TOS)|triad]] games played in the [[Original Series]], viewed as a cross between basketball, rugby and lacrosse.</ref> is a popular professional-league sport watched throughout the [[Twelve Colonies of Kobol]] {{TRS|Miniseries}} and is also popular aboard Colonial warships {{TRS|Litmus}}. Teams include the [[Caprica Buccaneers]], [[Picon Panthers]] and [[Tauron Bulls]]; its players, such as the Buccaneers's [[Sue-Shaun]] and [[Samuel Anders]], are considered sports heroes.

==Rules and Regulations==
===Playing Regulations===
Pyramid is a close quarters ball game played on a pyramid-shaped court, hence the name of the game. The objective is apparently to score points by getting the ball into a goal at the top of the pyramid. Pyramid can be played one-on-one or in teams.

Players can take no more than "three paces" without passing, shooting, or rebounding the ball off of one of the walls. The outlined areas in the corners and the center of the arena are "neutral zones". When a player places the ball in these zones, other players must back off and may not make contact<ref>This may be a rule somewhat like the NCAA's old "halo" rule on the declaration of a fair catch of a kick off in American football.</ref>.

Full contact is allowed (when the ball is not in a neutral zone), and once a player has been tackled, they must pass the ball. How this is handled in one-on-one games is left unspecified. The game is won by the team with the most points at the end. However, under what circumstances the games ends is also left unspecified<ref>Perhaps, like basketball, a pick-up game could be played to a certain number of points, while professional (or otherwise more official) games have a clock or other timer.</ref>.

There are versions of pyramid for one, three or five players from each team on the court at once<ref>''[[Battlestar Galactica: The Official Magazine]]'', issue 1, pp. 28-29</ref>. The play area is consistently referred to as an "arena" and the corner with the goal as the "head". Apparently each team starts out in one of the corners besides the head and then vie for control of the ball. The initial ball placement is not defined, but a face-off is mentioned tangentially later in the article with no details.

===Court and Team Sizes===
Despite the small size of the regulation pyramid court at Delphi Union High School {{TRS|Resistance}} and the practice field used by the Caprica Buccaneers team just before the [[Fall of the Twelve Colonies]] {{TRS|The Plan}}, the home of the Buccaneers fifty-eight years earlier, Atlas Arena, offered a much larger professional playing area. The relationship between the two is unclear, but it is possible that the regulation court may be considered a segment of the larger professional field. If this is true, while teams consist of over eight people, it is probable that the sport rotates players on and off the smaller court between plays. Three players per side within this area are a probable arrangement. Non-professional play (high school and collegiate, for instance) may have fewer players than the professional teams, indicating a skill factor needed to play with a large number of athletes.

=== Positions ===

* {{Inlineref|serger}}: the top-most attacking position, perhaps akin to a striker (center forward) in [[w:Association_football|association football]]
** In {{BCH|58}}, [[Kevin Kovat]] is the serger for the [[Caprica Buccaneers]].

===Equipment===
[[File:PyramidGear.JPG|thumb|200px|Caprica Buccaneers player gear and pyramid ball.]]The ball is cantaloupe-sized, about the same size as a soccer mini ball. The ball's size, combined with the cupped structure of the goal mean that outside (towards the side-lines) shots are quite a bit more difficult than inside (towards the center of the arena) shots. However, the more inside a player gets, the more likely the defensive play. This defensiveness is why pyramid is so physical: battling over the good shooting space directly in front of the goal.

==Teams==

: ''For purposes of clarity, this section is split up into pre-[[Cylon War]] and post-[[Armistice]]. This is due to the fact that some teams may not have survived beyond the end of the Armistice, given the scope and depth of the Cylon War and its affect on all aspects of Colonial civilization.''

=== Pre-Cylon War ===

The following Colonial Pyramid League<ref>While the initialism is derived from ''[[The Caprican]]'' articles, it is never formally defined, and thus this can be considered a [[BW:TERM|Battlestar Wiki term]].</ref> ({{inlineref|CPL|bold=N}}) teams are professional pyramid teams that are known to have existed 58 years prior to the [[Fall of the Twelve Colonies]] and played for the CPL Kobol Cup. It is not known whether these teams existed after the end of the first [[Cylon War]].

* {{inlineref|Boskirk All Reds}} hail from [[Virgon|Virgon]].

* {{inlineref|Canceron Hydras}} hail from [[The Twelve Colonies of Kobol#Canceron|Canceron]].

* {{inlineref|Delphi Legion}} hail from the Caprican city of [[Delphi]].

:The Delphi Legion are scheduled to play the Caprica Buccaneers at [[Atlas Arena]] when [[U-87 Cyber Combat Unit|U-87s]] attached to the Caprican Marines land at the stadium in their first public combat role, attempting to stop a [[Soldiers of the One]] terror attack {{CAP|Apotheosis (episode)}}.

* {{inlineref|Gemenon Twins}} hail from [[Gemenon|Gemenon]] {{CAP|Unvanquished}}.

* {{inlineref|Hades Vice}} hail from [[The Twelve Colonies of Kobol#Canceron|Canceron]].

* {{inlineref|Leonis Wildcats}} hail from [[The Twelve Colonies of Kobol#Leonis|Leonis]].

* {{inlineref|Mangala Krill}} hail from [[The Twelve Colonies of Kobol#Canceron|Canceron]].

* {{inlineref|Olympian Stallions}} hail from [[Tauron|Tauron]].

: A month after the [[Lev]] bombing, they face off against the Caprica Buccaneers in a long awaited game at [[Caprica City]]'s Atlas Arena. It is the first game after a "controversial victory" involving the teams that transpired over one year prior, as well as the first game that [[Daniel Graystone|Daniel]] and [[Amanda Graystone]] spectate after the bombing {{CAP|Rebirth}}.

* {{inlineref|Sagittaron Archers}} hail from [[Sagittaron]].

* {{inlineref|Tauron Bulls}} hail from [[Tauron|Tauron]].

:[[Baxter Sarno]] mentions a game between the [[Caprica Buccaneers]] and the Bulls on his show, ''[[Backtalk with Baxter Sarno]]'' {{CAP|Know Thy Enemy}}. ''[[The Caprican]]'' later [http://showblogs.syfy.com/caprican/entertainment/tomas-vergis-makes-big-splash-on-backtalk.php clarified] this as "Bucs and the [Tauron] Bulls".

=== Post-Armistice to Pre-Fall ===

* '''Caprica Buccaneers''' hail from Caprica City.
{{mainarticle|Caprica Buccaneers}}

:Existing for nearly a century before the [[Fall]], the Buccaneers (also known as the "Bucs" or "C-Bucs") played in the CPL Inner Conference Alpha Division and was purchased by [[Daniel Graystone]] and, later, [[Tomas Vergis]], both contributors to the creation of the Cylons. The team would later be captained by one of the [[Final Five]] Cylons prior to the Fall.

* {{inlineref|Picon Panthers}} hail from [[Picon (RDM)|Picon]].

:The Picon Panthers were rivals of the Caprica Buccaneers. Moments after C-Bucs player [[Samuel Anders]] disembarks from the [[Raptor]]s that rescues he and his [[Caprica Resistance|resistance group]] from occupied {{RDM|Caprica}}, Admiral [[William Adama]] playfully tells him that the Panthers were his favorite {{TRS|Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II}}.

:[[Sharon Agathon|Sharon "Athena" Agathon]] yells "Go Panthers!" while in [[Breeders Canyon]] on [[New Caprica]] to ascertain that the people approaching her position are Samuel Anders and the rendezvous party. Anders replies by yelling "C-Bucs rule!" {{TRS|Exodus, Part I}}.

* An unnamed professional [[Pyramid (RDM)|Pyramid]] team from [[Aerilon]] played against the [[Caprica Buccaneers]] in one of the last games before the Cylon attack.

==Tie Ins==

===Pyramid X===
A game called "Pyramid X"<ref>{{cite_web|url=http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/video/index.php?cat=videoBlog&vid=51390|title=David Eick's video blog, "Taking a Break From All Your Worries"|date=|accessdate=|last=|first=|format=|language=}}</ref> which looks like the pyramid goal is set up in [[Joe's bar]]. Samuel Anders comments that it is nothing like the real thing.

== Additional Imagery ==

<gallery align="center">
Image:AtlasFieldBlimpView.jpg|An aerial view of the Atlas Arena field {{CAP|Unvanquished}}
Image:AtlasFieldLandingField.jpg|Closer view of the field during the [[Battle of Atlas Arena]] {{CAP|Apotheosis (episode)}}
</gallery>

== Notes ==
*The producers originally intended to show a full, professional pyramid game in the [[Caprica pilot|pilot episode]], with [[Daniel Graystone]] and [[Joseph Adama]] sitting courtside. The sequence was cut for budgetary reasons, but the idea was revisited for the broadcast version of the pilot.<ref>[[Podcast:Caprica pilot|Podcast for ''Caprica'' pilot]], timestamp 00:50:07</ref>
*In the [[Original Series]], pyramid referred to the poker-like card game often played by the {{TOS|Viper}} pilots. This became "[[Triad (RDM)|triad]]" in the [[Re-imagined Series]], and the [[Original Series]] game known as [[Triad (TOS)|triad]] was renamed "pyramid". This was the result of a mix-up by [[Ronald D. Moore]], as he explains in his [[Podcast:Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I|podcast]] for the episode "[[Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part I]]":

<blockquote>...somewhere along the line I transposed the names. I misremembered what they called it and I- the sort of racquet-ball slash basketball game that they played in the original and that we referred to in this series, I now call Pyramid, and the name of that game in the original which was Triad is now what we sort of call our poker game. So it's one of those "Oh, it's one of the charming differences between the old and the new.," it's either that or it's just a stupid error that the writer made.</blockquote>

== See Also ==
* [[Triad (TOS)|Triad]], the [[Original Series]]' counterpart to Pyramid.
* [[Pyramid (TOS)|Pyramid]], the Original Series' card game.
* [[Triad (RDM)|Triad]], the [[Re-imagined Series]]' card game.

*Despite the small size of the "regulation pyramid court" introduced in [[TRS]]: "[[Resistance]]", the prequel series ''[[Caprica (series)|Caprica]]'' presented a much larger professional playing field in Atlas Arena, roughly the size of a real-world soccer pitch or an American football gridiron. Assuming the difference is intentional, the relationship between the two is unclear: the regulation court may be considered a segment of the larger professional field, or it may be regulation for an officiating body separate from the one that governs professional teams like the Buccaneers, or it could represent an evolution of the game from its pre-Cylon War standards.

==References==
{{reflist}}

[[Category:A to Z]]
[[Category:Colonial]]
[[Category:Colonial Society]]
[[Category:Colonial Society (RDM)]]
[[Category:RDM]]
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