Cavemen no play Angry Birds, Cavemen make birdies angry!!

I'm back from spring break! Today I feel like transporting you to ancient times where business meetings took place in huts, people chopped their own firewood, and people made babies - LOTS of babies! Welcome to the Stone Age!


Stone Age is a 1.5-2 hour board game for 2-4 players. Players control their own Stone Age tribe, who collect resources and food while building their civilization. The person who can construct the best buildings and develop the most glorious civilization will win!


Here's how the each player board looks. Everyone starts the game with 5 workers and 12 food. There are also slots for buildings and tools, and information about the civilization cards. Every round you'll be sending off your workers to different places to collect resources and build your civilization. At the end of each turn, you'll have to feed each of your cavemen 1 food. If you don't have enough food, you lose 10 points, so be careful!

All the action is on the main game board you see above. Here you can send your workers to work the fields, collect resources, develop civilization, and construct buildings.

Players have three different options at the board's center. The first is putting one worker on the fields, which grants players 1 food production per turn. Normally you'll have to hunt to gain more food to keep your cavemen McHappy, but if you have lots of food production (it goes up to 10), you might not even have to worry about hunting anymore!

You can also put a worker on the tool hut, allowing you to gain a tool which you can use to augment a dice roll by the number listed on the tool. This can really help out when you roll poorly, or make good dice rolls even better! You can have up to three tools, and each tool can be improved up to a value of 4.

Finally, you can make more workers by sending two of your workers to the "Love Shack". You must use two workers to produce one extra worker. If you're not sure why you need two workers to make a baby, Marvin Gaye described it perfectly in this song. An extra worker can help you do more things during your turn, but also needs to be fed an extra food.


There are five different resources (food/wood/bricks/stones/gold) all represented by easy-to-identify tokens. Players will roll a number of dice equal to the workers they sent off. There are a limited number of spots available for each resource (with the exception of the hunting grounds, where an unlimited number of workers can hunt for food). For example, the forests only have 7 spots, and if they're all full, a player will have to choose something else. Going from wood-brick-stone-gold, resources become harder to acquire.



Each worker sent to the forest counts as one die, so in this example I would roll 4 dice. Let's say I rolled a total 15. Wood has a value of 3, so I would divide 15 by 3 and come out with 5 wood. In this case, I would take 5 wood tokens and add them to my board.


Gold, on the other hand, has a value of six. So if I put four workers on gold and rolled a 15, I would divide 15 by 6, rounding down. In that case, I would receive only two gold.

But what's the point of all these resources? They're all used to construct buildings which are a primary (but not the only) source of points in the game.

Just like the resources, each building has a spot where a worker can be placed. Each building has a unique cost in resources, and you can only add the building to your player board if you pay the exact resource cost.

The first building on the right tells you that it costs 1 wood and 2 stones, and will give you 13 points. Some buildings (such as the second) have special costs. The second building says you can pay using any of the four resources (food is never used to build), but you must use two and only two different resources. The point value depends on the value of the resources you use. For example, if I used 2 wood and 2 stones, I would add up their value (3 +3 +5 +5) and get 16 points. I could also use 2 bricks and 2 gold, which would get me 20 points instead (4 +4 + 6 + 6).

The game ends when any one of the building tile stacks are depleted.

Another option for the workers lies in the civilization cards: an alternate way of getting points at the end of the game, and a source of food, resources and other goodies.


Each civilization card has its own slot for a worker, and depending on the card's position, each can cost 1-4 of any combination of resources. The top symbol on the card tells you a bonus that you immediately get upon buying the card, while the bottom symbol mentions a bonus that players get at the end of the game.

For example, the first card on the left costs a combination of 4 resources. A player buying the card will immediately get 3 points, and it also has a culture symbol on the bottom. Describing it is a little challenging, but all you need to know is that the more unique culture symbols you have, the more points they're worth at the end of the game.

The game also ends if there are no more civilization cards left in the deck.

At the end of the game, players count up points from their buildings and civilization cards. Extra resources are also worth a point. The player with the most wins!

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THOUGHTS

Style/Theme: In my opinion, this is one of the most beautiful games in my collection. The game will catch your friends' eyes, and the resource tokens are fun to hold and collect. The leather dice cup is also a nice touch (however, it's a bit stinky out of the box). The Stone Age theme is well implemented, and several people in my game group make it better by declaring their moves in "caveman speak"

Ease of Learning/Play: Distributing workers and rolling for resources is pretty straight-forward. A source of confusion may come from the symbols, and most players undervalue the civilization cards the first time they play. That being said, once players figure everything out, they'll be rolling dice and collecting buildings like a pro.

Some Luck: Like most dice games, unlucky rolls can hurt sometimes. However, tools and civilization cards can mitigate unlucky rolls, and most of the time, a player who makes judicious choices about where to place their cavemen is going to win 99% of the time.

Indirect Conflict: This is not Risk, and this is certainly not Monopoly. Although it's possible (and often in players' best interest) to block others out of resources, there's no direct conflict between players such as stealing buildings or fighting with other tribes. Because of this, Stone Age is a light family game, although there are many interesting strategy decisions you can make and its possible to interrupt what other players are trying to do.


If you're looking for a relatively short game with slightly less luck than your average dice game, and one of the prettiest board games ever released, Stone Age is the perfect game to add to your collection!

Let me know what you think about my overview and your thoughts about the game. You can read more about Stone Age at Boardgamegeek.com, and as always, if you're a Fordham student, message me and I'd be happy to introduce the game to you personally.

Until next time, "Uggh Uggh Board Games Uggh Uggh Are Fun Uggh Uggh"