Rio Grande Games
2-4 Players
Around 45 Min
Resource Management

Stone Age

To start
- As the tittle implies Stone Age is a strategic resource management game set in (you guessed it!) the Stone Age.

Materials, Qualities and Stuff
- Open the box and you get little wooden unisex people and resource wedges in a variety of colors, standard light cards and a pretty good game board. The art is great quality, with a vivid board and clearly defined items. The art saves the quality of the game components and clearly aids game play with well defined positions, resources and spaces. You also get some wood dice and a neat leather dice cup, just stone aged theme.

The Basics
- In turn order each player places a number of their tribes-people on an activity, such as resources like lumber to agriculture or trade. Resources are resolved with dice rolls which are then later used to buy huts or conduct trade that all in some manner equate to game points for scoring. Unlike other resource management games where players can and are encourage to trade with others, Stone Age has none of that. In fact resources and activities have a finite availability of open space for your tribes-people to gather from making it possible to block rivals and spoil strategies. Over all there are a variety of conditions that can win a player points, leaving a number of strategies to be used, making the game something that will want to be played again and again.

A Side note on strategy is that if you can figure out your opponents strategy you can almost guarantee their moves for the rest of the game unless they change theirs due to some dramatic situation. However a mid-game strategy change can guarantee you a good finish, it will not win you the game. One might also want to remember if you can figure out your opponents strategy someone can figure out yours, and set to spoil it.

Recommended:
If you define your likes as "Euro-Gamer" this is for your, however I feel it works for all types of gamers due to the depth of strategy. Note, not a co-operative game. Possibly a good intro game for budding new gamers.

Not for:
This game is hard to say who wouldn't like it, I suppose really aggressive players might find the game "soft", but most should enjoy it. However, I will say this game may not work for non-gamers who think American Idol the Board Game was great and should be best kept towards Cranium....

In Addition:
Id like to make a note about family play. While the game does limit it self with only being four players it is a strong family game in a market that I feel is often ignored, the "15 to 16 year old teen with Mom or Dad board game". Though the game boasts the recommend age 10 and over it really does come to its full value at the older range due to its level of resource strategies. The simple rules allow for quick play and yes a kid can learn it, but the strategies of management is best left for older teens unlike the Catan series by Mayfair Games. Which is why I believe it is a great game for a starving demographic, when I was 16, I couldn't play Cosmic Encounter with my folks and Trivial Pursuit just bored the heck out of me. A game such as Stone Age would have fit perfect as it complimented my folks level of imagination with my want of strategy. Plus the little wooden Unisex tribes people are funny, mom approves.

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