Saturday Morning Gaming: Stone Age
Stone Age is one of those board games that isn’t entry-level itself, but is a great game that is entry-level to moderately complicated board games. Like, if you’ve got people who are able to sit down to something like Lords of Waterdeep and not need an explanation at this point, then I’d say that they are ready for Stone Age.
Stone Age is a fairly straightforward game where you place your workers and gather up resources. There are several different kinds of resources to gather: The ability to grow wheat, the ability to make tools, the ability to make more cavemen (wink wink, nudge nudge), engage in trade, or try to gather up wood, brick, stone, or gold. Oh, and food, of course.
The “Chieftan” marker says who goes first in the turn (I imagine your players will come up with a name for him quite quickly) and they will place anywhere between 1 and 5 of their cavemen. Then player 2 will place his or hers. And around the table until you get back to the Chieftan and they will place more of their cavemen, and around the table, until no one has cavemen left. Then each player resolves their cavemen. Did you grow wheat this turn? Move your wheat marker up one. Did you instead make tools? Grab an axe. Did you make more cavemen? Good news! You don’t have to feed them this turn (next turn, however, you will).
If you went for food, wood, brick, stone, or gold, count up your cavemen and roll that many dice. If you’re going for food, you get one unit of food for every two pips on the dice. If you’re going for wood, you get one wood for every three pips on your dice. Brick for every four pips. Stone for every five. Gold for every six. Remainder pips are worthless but tools can give you extra pips. If you’re *THIS* close to getting food, just use an axe. Now you’re there.
Engage in trade and get some victory points, and then feed your cavemen. Each one eats one unit of food. And if you don’t have food, that’s okay. You can trade a unit of wood or brick or stone or gold for a unit of food. (Wheat will reduce the cost of feeding your cavemen by one for each Wheat unit. So if you have 4 Wheat and 6 Cavemen, you only have to provide 2 food at the end of the turn.)
Then hand the Chieftan to the next player.
You get points by purchasing various buildings with your wood, brick, stone, or gold. (A building that costs a wood, brick, and gold will give you 13 points… one for each pip in the cost of the goods). You can also purchase goods at the market. Some of the goods give you a bonus at the end of the game… one or two points for every axe you have. One or two points for every caveman. Other cards have pictures at the bottom… and each unique picture will give you a square of points. If you have one unique, you get one point. Three uniques give *nine* points. If you get all eight, you get SIXTY-FOUR points. (When I played, I only managed to get seven of them. Bummer.)
The engine of the game is a blast, the pieces for the game are fun and intuitive and if there’s a complaint it’s that it takes forever to set up and forever to put away… but who cares about that! This is a great game to add to any board game afficionado’s collection and it’s easy to teach to new players and engaging for people who have played it before. Seriously, check it out.
So… what are you playing?
