Stone Age

Over the past decade, a new genre of board game has emerged, largely from Europe. This new category falls between the casual and simple Parker Brothers games and the heavy and serious old school Avalon Hill games. If Monopoly feels like a waste of time dominated by luck, but you aren't interested in dedicating an entire weekend and basement to a giant game with miniature figures, the new "eurogames" might be just the thing for you. Rio Grande is one publisher that targets this niche. Popular and approachable games in this category are "Settlers of Catan", "Carcasonne", "Ticket to Ride", and "Puerto Rico".

Stone Age is an excellent new addition to this field. It's easily the best game I've played in the past few years, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it win several board-game-of-the-year awards. Like other "eurogames", it's not so light as to be dominated by luck or trivial to master; it's strategically deep and compelling, with many different paths to victory. Yet at the same time, it's easy to learn and you can play an entire game in under 2 hours.

Stone Age is particularly well balanced for 4 players, though you can also play with 2 or 3. The 4-player game lasts about 2 hours after you've learned the rules. It's deep enough to be enjoyed by hard-core board game fans, yet simple enough to learn that casual game players will be able to pick it up in a few minutes. Best of all, Stone Age has an excellent design feature that keeps all players actively engaged at all times; gone are the dead times where you wait for 3 other players to take their long turns, and you won't find yourself getting up from the table and asking someone to play for you. (If you want or need to take a break, though, there's a great way to do so; you can simply put all your people out to hunt/gather with minimal loss in strategic advantage.)

The board consists of approximately 15 different locations where workers might be deployed. Some locations give you more resources such as food, wood, and of course, stone. Other locations give you opportunities to spend your resources building huts or advancing your civilization, both of which contribute to your score. A third group of locations contribute to your "infrastructure", so to speak: you can plant crops to ease a food shortage, build tools to make workers more effective, or focus on increasing your population. If it sounds complex, it's not, it's actually done in a very straightforward and easy to understand way. The strategic depth comes in part from a "guns or butter" choice: opportunities are limited, your ability to capitalize on them is limited, and your competitors will also be scrambling to capitalize on those opportunities.

For better or worse, the game does involve luck. Each worker only has a certain probability of achieving his goal. However, luck does not dominate this game, and it's completely up to the player to determine how best to manage the risks and rewards of the game. For instance, you can send multiple workers and they can combine their efforts, plus you can augment your capacity with tools. So, do you send one worker and rely on a good roll, or do you send several to guarantee that you get at least as much of the resource as you require and thus miss out on other opportunities?

I plan to give this game as a gift to multiple people this year. The only problem is, Amazon's current price is close to full retail; I expect better pricing from Amazon.

My experience with Rio Grande Games has been a roller coaster ride of sorts these past few months. Beginning with games like Cape Horn and Caribbean, I had been convinced that theirs was a catalog of intermediate strategy-based games with detailed boards and quality components. Then I made the mistake of purchasing their Dragon Riders: a game so abysmal that it shook my confidence in the entire company. Still, a rash of positive reviews for Stone Age piqued my curiosity so I went ahead and tossed it into my virtual shopping cart in a recent massive order. Now that I've got a few sessions under my belt, I can report honestly that it exceeded expectations on its own while redeeming Rio Grande's reputation.

Written by Michael Tummelhofer and produced by the German company Hans Im Gluck, Stone Age is the latest in a long line of board games imported to North America from Europe by Rio Grande. The game boasts such stats as a 2-4 player limit, age 10+ learning curve, and an average game time of 60-90 minutes. The learning curve may actually appear a bit steeper than the average ten-year-old's faculties initially but once the mechanics and systematic nature of the game are understood, it's nothing that an 8-10 year old couldn't pick up on.

The rules span a full color 8-page rulebook with concise examples scattered throughout and while the information contained within can be a bit intimidating the first time through, the game really does a nice job of breaking up the player's options into simple, logical steps. About the most difficult section of the rules to grasp early on is the scoring system but since that doesn't come into the equation until the very end of the game, it's probably wise to simply ignore this section until the time comes to put it into action. After even a single time through, the method of determining the game's final winner becomes quite intuitive.

The game play, at its core, is resource management set in the realm of early civilization. Rounds are broken down so that each player gets a chance to place the figures in his group (ranging from 5 to 10) on the board then goes through and performs all of the resulting actions each location represents. In other words, one turn isn't complete until the player performs the tasks of all of his civilization (in this case represented by small wooden humanoids).

The tasks involve everything from hunting for food, visiting the shop for a new tool, gathering natural resources (wood, brick, stone, and gold), to purchasing buildings that count for points on the outer scoring ring.

One of the most useful features of the game is that as each player performs the task of his figure, the figure is taken from the board and set aside until the player's next turn. This is a very intuitive means of organizing what could potentially be an overload of decision-making. Better still is the fact that the player decides in which order he wants to tackle these tasks so it's possible to say, try and earn resources early in one's turn in the hopes of stocking up while waiting until last to spend.

Pacing is pretty steady once the players get the hang of the system. Each player takes their full turn then it comes time to feed the hungry mouths that are your human resources. This is where hunting or tending the field during the allocating of your workers suddenly comes into play as each person in your group requires one unit of sustenance. If you fall short, prepare to give away resources you've collected in exchange for chow. If you don't have any timber, bricks, stone, or gold to trade, it's backward you go on the outer score ring. Ouch!

I imagine it must pain Mr. Tummelhofer to hear of such comparisons, but the game is remarkably similar both physically and structurally to Fantasy Flight's Kingsburg game. Sure there are enough differences to make one worth purchasing even if the other is already in your collection, but the similarities are definitely too numerous to be sheer coincidence. Normally this might draw complaint from your grumpy reviewer except that, and even I am amazed to say it, Stone Age may succeed in one major area over Kingsburg and that is in the scoring. While both games use a numeric outer ring and wooden chit marker to determine the winner, Stone Age integrates an almost Reiner Knizia style mathematical calculation to determine the victor. This is a most welcomed dynamic as it keeps the player from simply performing those activities involved in advancing spaces on the outer ring (a tactic I've been guilty of in many a heated Kingsburg session). Stone Age brilliantly makes it so that participating in the rigors of daily life as it was some 200,000 years ago is an integral part of overall success.

In all, the game is pretty darn spectacular. My only complaint comes in the form of the included dice cup, which appears to have been authentically stitched from pigskin or some other organic material. While impressive to behold, the item may be a bit too authentic as in quite foul smelling. However, it really isn't even necessary for play so the solution is as simple as leaving it in the box. And speaking of the box, extra props go out to Rio Grande for including a nice cardboard divider and extra zip-lock storage bags for neat storage of all of the game's well-built pieces and bits. If only other companies realized how helpful this practice is!

I would recommend Stone Age highly to most any gamer from casual to hardcore. It's quite addicting, well developed, and just a rewarding experience through and through.

First, I have a question for the more seasoned eurogamers out there: how does this compare to Puerto Rico and Agricola? This is my 3rd eurogame and I am looking to acquire more, but want to branch out and although PR and AG are highly rated, I don't want to get a game that similar to this one that i already own. (I have not played PR or AG, but from reading descriptions, they seem similar to stone age)

Now for my review: I really like this game. I can't stand games that rely solely or mostly on luck, but if there is too much strategy my wife doesn't like it as much. This game appeases me with ample strategy, but is also simple enough to play that my wife enjoys it as well. The art and pieces really do make the game stand out. There are multiple strategies for trying to win, which I like. You could try to acquire tons of cards to win that way, or you could try to build lots of buildings, etc...many decisions to make which makes it fun for me.

Also, like others have said, it does a good job of being constantly engaging, turns are quick and rotate through so there is little downtime. Conflict is low so that is good for couples, but there are still opportunities to block someone else's play, or to feel that pit in your gut when you can't decide to go here or there not sure if you will successfully block your opponent or if they will in turn block you.

It took a good few hours to initially get through the instructions and set up the board/pieces, but once someone knows it well, it can be taught to others fairly easily.

Currently, I own Stone Age, Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne. This one is my 2nd favorite and Carcassonne is my 1st favorite overall, but for 2 player games specifically, I slightly prefer Stone Age. For my next purchases I'm leaning toward Puerto Rico and Thurn & Taxis but am hungry for other suggestions as well.