1. compound objects, what wiggy said.
2. raytrace is good for reflections and works with both scanline and MR, set the reflection to fallof>fresnel for realistic results, remember when doing reflections, they only look good when you have an actual environment to reflect. You can also set transparency if you want to be able to see through the ice.
If you want to get more advanced you could also try mental ray with sub surface scattering for the ice, check jeffpatton.net for an ice like shader example for mental ray.