Stone Age (board game)

Game of the Year 2008: nominated German Games Award 2008: 2nd place Game of the Year 2008: Games Hit with friends International Gamers Award 2008: Nominated Japan Boardgame Prize 2008: 2nd place

Stone Age is a game designer by Michael Tummelhofer (pseudonym of Bernd Brunnhofer ) thought up and published by Verlag Hans im Glück in 2008 board game in which dice luck, strategy and tactics are in balance.

The illustration on the board and the card comes from Michael Menzel. The game was nominated for Game of the Year in 2008 and was in the same year one of the four games in the German board game championship. For 2010, it was selected as a family game for the qualification for DM.

  • 2.1 criticism

Topic

The game is set in the Stone Age. Two to four families secure its survival by foraging, reproduction and tooling. If you find this most effectively manage wins the game.

Game material

In addition to the game plan and the four players tableaus are still in the game as an accessory:

  • 58 raw materials from wood
  • 40 people in 4 colors
  • 8 markers made ​​of wood in 2 sizes
  • 53 food flakes
  • 28 building tiles
  • 18 die chip
  • 1 start player figure
  • 36 civilization cards
  • 7 dice with cup

Regulate

At the start, each player has five pawns. He is kept in search of food ( steppe ), and raw materials to collect ( chopping wood in the forest, clay promote in the clay pit, break stones in the mountains and pan for gold in the river ). Furthermore, it can create fields, make tools and offspring. With the food you supplied his tribe, with the collected raw materials huts can be built or civilization cards are purchased. For all these activities have to provide one or more pawns on the corresponding space on the game board. Building huts and purchasable civilization cards are on the board. In the huts there are per player a stack of seven huts; the civilization cards are divided into 4 fields.

At the edge of the game board a Kramer bar runs with the values ​​from 0 to 99 to count the achieved victory points.

  • The round begins to put pieces on the possible locations of the playing field. In order for this to be fair, there is a " chief " card, which is passed after each round; who has the chief, begins the betting. It is set in turn, in each case as many pawns as possible or desired on one of the possible places. In search of food is any number of game characters possible. On resource fields up to 7 figures stand and love hut always keep 2 pieces on. At all other places can always be just a pawn. Playing less than 4 players, there are other restrictions. When all players have set their pieces, the evaluation starts.
  • For the acquisition of food and raw materials you roll as many dice as you have found Stone Age people on the proper place. The reached dots can still add the tools which have been prepared. The value is divided by the commodity price (from 2 to 6 for food for gold), the quotient is the amount you get.
  • Who has occupied one of the huts in the middle of the field ( Acker, tool or 2 characters in the love shack ) is rewarded with a spot on the agriculture - scoring track, a tool chip or a new character. Up to 10 family members are possible.
  • If you have collected enough resources and put a pawn on a to the provided huts or civilization cards, so you can build this hut and buy this card. For cabins, you immediately get credited the value of the raw materials used as victory points, civilization cards can have different effects (raw materials, victory points, food), here it is, choose wisely.
  • The order in which a player evaluates his game characters is left to him. Since you can instantly obtained using tools or raw materials, the order of evaluation is sometimes crucial.
  • At the end of a round you have one unit per family member leave food (even for a newborn this round ). After creating such fields, one a food unit required per farming point less. Are the food supply is not sufficient, one can obtain the missing food by a 1:1 exchange of raw materials or letting his family starve and paid 10 for the penalty victory points.
  • Finally, the being laid civilization cards are replenished, passed the chief figure and the next round begins.
  • The game ends when one of the cabin stack is empty or the 4 civilization card fields can not be filled from the stock of 36 cards. There is one final championship in which there is victory points depending on the collected civilization cards, and one point per raw material in stock.

Each player has its own little game plan on which he collects his acquired food and treasures, his tools and his makeshift huts.

Criticism

The journalist Edwin Ruschitzka writes about the game:

" The [ ... ] close to" The Pillars of the Earth " is striking, but the author has already " " been working as a " Stone Age The Pillars of the Earth " had not yet appeared [ ... ]. What really like about Stone Age, the material [ ... ] is because all commodity tokens have different shapes. And the lovingly detailed game plan has succeeded. "

For the so-called hunger strategy (the player consciously accepts penalty points for malnutrition in buying and trying elsewhere to earn points ) there are critical remarks and possible rule amendments.

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