Board Gaming - Stone Age

Stone Age

This is another worker placement game, this time with a hunter/gatherer theme to it, where you are sending your tribesmen (workers) out to collect resources, or to do some other tasks.

Around the majority of the board are the 5 resource gathering places, food, wood, clay, stone, and gold. There is only 7 spots for each of them, except food, which is unlimited, so you may not be able to go get the resource you want if others send too many workers to get it themselves.

In the lower half of the board there's 3 task placement locations, the farm, the tool shed, and the hut. They each improve your tribe a bit, either by reducing the food you need, providing a dice adjustment for your resource rolls, or by getting a new worker into your tribe. You start with 5 workers, but can expand up to a maximum of 10 if you find that helpful, but each one eats a food each turn, so you need more food supplies...

The last part of the board has the purchase placements, where you buy buildings or cards, both of which mostly provide points, as well as triggering the end of game. The buildings are a direct exchange of resources into points, and come in 4 stacks. Each turn only the top building of each stack is available, and when a stack is empty, the game ends.

The cards have 2 halves to them, the top half providing a benefit now, which is often resources, but can be tools or food track, or even points. The bottom half is for end of game scoring, and provide either a symbol or a multiplier for one of workers, food track, tools, or buildings. either of these can be exceptionally valuable, and letting any one player gather too many of them will see them run away with the game.

^{The board. It's early in the game, with red having just bought the first building of the game}

Being a fan of worker placement games, I've always liked this one. It has a good theme to it, and multiple options, as well as various strategies that can work. One of the few downfalls of it is that the farm is so much more powerful than other options, especially early in the game, that if you choose not to go there when you are first player, you're not only disadvantaging yourself in that you'll need more food to feed your meeples, but you're giving a boost to the player after you who will take it, and then get it again on their turn.

^{later in the game, I've built 3 buildings and still have some resources left. Visible card gives me a temporary +4 tools, as well as an end of game score of 1 for each tool I have}

With the randomness of dice for getting resources, there is times when things don't go to plan, but with the mitigation of placing more workers to roll more dice, and using tools to add to the total once you know what it is so you don't fall 1 or 2 short of another resource, it's a really a good and fun system. The value of the resources is simple too. they need 3/4/5/6 for each one when you roll them, and they provide 3/4/5/6 points when you purchase building with them, so spending a wood to buy a card that gives you 2 stone is like turning 3 points into 10. The only difference is at the end of the game all leftover resources are worth 1 each, regardless of what they are.

Stone Age is a really fun game, which requires some planning to execute your game plan, but without the overwhelming number of options some worker placement games have it feels fairly streamlined with turns moving pretty quickly. In this play I was teaching the other 3 players, and while the 2 adults got it pretty easily, I don't think the 8yo really worked out what she was doing, and was coached along a bit, as well as just pure random placements because why not. She did seem to have fun though, which is what matters, and I'm sure some of it sunk in, even if the why didn't.

Last 10 Board Gaming Posts

Tiny Epic Galaxies and Roll Player
Codenames, Star Fluxx and Coup
Ticket to Ride: Europe
Clank and Tiny Epic Quest
Dungeon Petz
Paperback and Alhambra
Concordia and Barenpark
Zombicide and Mall of Horror
DC Deck Builder and Machi Koro
Lords of Waterdeep and Once you go Blackmail