Three Faces

A board with corners

Most games of this kind are flat. Three Faces is a cube, seen from one corner so that its top, left and right faces show together. Each face is a 3 × 3 grid, which makes twenty-seven cells, and every cell lands a symbol on each turn: a crown, a comet, an anchor or a compass, or one of four plainer shapes.

The nine lines are the point of the game. Three belts run across the left face and carry on round the front edge across the right face. Six climbs run up a column of the left or right face and keep going over the top. Every line is six cells long, and it pays for a run of three or more matching symbols counted from its first cell. To reach five or six in a row, a run has to turn a corner.

What to expect

Three Faces swings more than Quarter Turn. About seven turns in ten return nothing at all, and the returns that do come are spread unevenly: plain shapes give back modest amounts, the four themed symbols more, and the keystone, which stands in for anything, the most. Long runs round a corner are uncommon by design.

The cube looks busy, so the result line under it does the counting for you: how many lines paid, which symbols and how many in a row. Read that line rather than the cube, and choose a single stake and keep it all evening so the session total stays easy to follow.