The term '''Pyramid''' can refer to the following:
{{DisambigTab|Pyramid (TOS)|Pyramid (RDM)|List of Pyramid players}}
* A [[Pyramid (RDM)|court-based ball game]] in the [[TNS|re-imagined ''Battlestar Galactica'']]
[[de:Pyramid]]
* A [[Pyramid (TOS)|poker-like card game]] in the [[TOS|original ''Battlestar Galactica'']]
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Latest revision as of 04:03, 26 July 2025
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The predominant pyramid playing style is a comparing card game, with the highest winning hand is a "full pyramid," which is reputedly rare. While playing with at least one GemoneseWarrior, Starbuck is about to win a large pot when an alert interrupts the game (TOS: "Saga of a Star World").
Starbuck, Boomer, Giles and Jolly play pyramid with Boxey in the barracks, with jellybeans as the stakes instead of cubits, to help keep him occupied when Apollo fails to report back from a patrol. Boxey wins a large pot by having a "full pyramid" before Cassiopeia takes him away (TOS: "The Lost Warrior").
Starbuck later plays a few hands of pyramid with Dipper and Duggy, who are flush with quantums after the theft of SiressBelloby's energizer, in the agro settlementSerenity on Sectar in order to buy seed from SireBogon. Bogon later challenges Starbuck to a hand, not realizing Bogon's plan to entrap him as Serenity's new constable, and so Starbuck is maneuvered into "winning" the badge of the constabulary during the game (TOS: "The Magnificent Warriors").
An alternative version of pyramid plays in the form of a banking game similar to blackjack, utilizing at least three different card decks. Players are able to direct the dealer to either "build me" (hit) to receive another card or refrain by stating their desire to "hover" (stand).
After re-devising a gaming system, Starbuck plays at a table on Rising Star where he meets Chameleon. After losing to the house who has a "capstone" card, Chameleon informs Starbuck that he devised a system similar yahrens prior with much the same result.
Rising Star's chancery allows players to use calculators during the game session (TOS: "The Man with Nine Lives").
Starbuck has two brown full pyramid cards, while the unnamed dealer has a third brown card, suggesting that at least three decks of pyramid cards are in play.
As the name suggests, multiple deck blackjack is a variant that uses multiple card decks to increase difficulty to reduce card counting. This appears to be practiced at Rising Star chancery tables playing this variation of pyramid.
It is unknown if these hands are included in the card banking style pyramid, as the winning hand in that style is noted as having a "capstone" (TOS: "The Man with Nine Lives").
Card decks have four color coded suites: red, black, green, and brown. Card values are aligned beginning at the vertex of the card's edge, and repeat at all vertices inside the hexagon-shaped playing card. The only exception is the "capstone" card, which features the triangle in the center in addition to a triangle at each vertex.
According to Encyclopedia Galactica (a non-canonical piece of merchandise published in 1979):
The card game Pyramid is played universally. Its origins are lost in antiquity, but it seems certain that it was played in the days of the Lords of Kobol themselves.[1]
While fandom has made rules and cards related to the Pyramid card game, these are non-canonical to the Original Series.
It should be noted that the preponderance of capstone cards outnumbers those found in a standard deck, suggesting their screen-use to be a preference by the directors. This is common with all scenes depicting the game.
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[2].
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[3].
There are versions of pyramid for one, three or five players from each team on the court at once[4]. 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.
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.
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.
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.
The following Colonial Pyramid League[5] (CPL) 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.
Delphi Legion hail from the Caprican city of Delphi.
The Delphi Legion are scheduled to play the Caprica Buccaneers at Atlas Arena when 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").
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 and Amanda Graystone spectate after the bombing (CAP: "Rebirth").
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.
The producers originally intended to show a full, professional pyramid game in the 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.[7]
...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.
↑The game was derived by the Re-imagined Series writers from the triad games played in the Original Series, viewed as a cross between basketball, rugby and lacrosse.
↑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.
↑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.
