Stone Age
| Stone Age | |
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| Game data | |
| author | Michael Tummelhofer |
| graphic | Michael Menzel |
| publishing company |
Hans im Glück , Rio Grande Games , 999 Games , Filosofia Editions |
| Publishing year | 2008 |
| Art | Board game |
| Teammates | 2-4 |
| Duration | 60-90 minutes |
| Age | from 10 years on
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| Awards | |
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Stone Age is a board game developed by game designer Michael Tummelhofer (pseudonym of Bernd Brunnhofer ) and published by Hans im Glück in 2008, in which luck of the dice, strategy and tactics are in balance. In the worker placement game, the players try to build up their own tribe of Stone Age people and to provide them with food and resources and thus to achieve as many victory points as possible.
The illustration of the game board and the cards was done by Michael Menzel . The game was nominated for the game of the year 2008 and was one of the four games at the German board game championship in the same year . For 2010 it was selected as a family game for qualifying for the German Championship.
Theme and game material
The game is set in the Stone Age. Two to four families secure their survival through food procurement, reproduction and tool making. Whoever succeeds in this most effectively wins the game.
In addition to the game board and the four player boards, there are also accessories in the game:
- 58 Raw materials made from wood
- 40 people in 4 colors
- 8 wooden markers in 2 sizes
- 53 food tokens
- 28 building tiles
- 18 tool tokens
- 1 starting player figure
- 36 civilization cards
- 7 dice with cup
regulate
At the beginning each player has five pawns . He is required to look for food (steppe) and collect raw materials (cutting wood in the forest, extracting clay in the clay pit, knocking stones in the mountains and panning for gold in the river). He can also plant fields, make tools and produce offspring. You provide your tribe with food, with the collected raw materials you can build huts or buy civilization cards. For all of these activities you have to place one or more pawns on the corresponding place on the board. Buildable huts and buyable civilization cards are displayed on the game board. In the huts there is a stack of 7 huts per player; the civilization cards are on 4 spaces.
At the edge of the board there is a Kramer track with the values from 0 to 99 to count the achieved victory points.
- The round begins by placing pieces on the possible places on the playing field. In order for this to be fair, there is a "chief" card that is passed on after each round; whoever has the chief begins to sit. It is placed in turn, each time as many pieces as possible or desired on one of the possible places. Any number of characters can look for food. There can be up to 7 figures on resource fields and there are always 2 figures in the love hut. In all other places only one figure can stand. If fewer than 4 players play, there are additional restrictions. When all players have placed their pieces, the evaluation begins.
- To purchase food and raw materials, you roll as many dice as you have placed Stone Age people on the corresponding place. You can add the tools that you have made to the points achieved. You divide the value by the raw material price (from 2 for food to 6 for gold), the quotient is the amount you get.
- Whoever has occupied one of the huts in the middle of the playing field (field, tools or 2 figures in the love hut) receives a point on the agriculture scoring track, a tool chip or a new playing figure. A maximum of ten family members (characters) are possible.
- If you have collected enough raw materials and placed a pawn on one of the huts or civilization cards on display, you can build this hut or buy this card. For huts you are immediately credited with the value of the raw materials used as victory points, civilization cards can have different effects (raw materials, victory points, food), here you have to choose wisely.
- The order in which a player evaluates his playing pieces is up to him. Since you can use the tools or raw materials you have received immediately, the order of the evaluation is sometimes decisive.
- At the end of a round you have to give one unit of food per family member (also for a newborn of this round). If you have laid out fields, you need one less unit of food per field. If the food supply is insufficient, you can get the missing food by swapping raw materials 1: 1 or you let your family starve and pay ten victory points as a penalty.
- Finally, the civilization cards on display are refilled, the chief figure is passed on and the next round begins.
- The game ends when one of the hut piles is empty or the 4 civilization card fields can no longer be refilled from the supply of 36 cards. There is a final scoring in which there are victory points depending on the civilization cards collected, as well as one point for each resource in the supply.
Each player has his own little game board on which he collects the food and treasures he has acquired , his tools and the huts he has built.
Editions and extensions
The game was published in 2008 by the publisher Hans im Glück and internationally by several other game publishers. An anniversary version of the game was released in 2018, which includes a winter version in addition to the standard version on the double-sided game board.
In addition, several expansions for the game appeared:
- New huts
- The mini-expansion Neue Hütten and the mini-expansion Die Kultstätte for the Carcassonne game were included in the Hans-im-Glück-Almanach published at the end of August 2008. These six cards are also part of the official expansion Stone Age - Aiming in Style .
- Stone Age - With style to the goal
- In 2011 the expansion Stone Age - With style to the goal was released . It expands the well-known gameplay to include its dealer. You can get jewelry from these and exchange raw materials for better ones. The expansion adds a new place in the village, new maps and new huts to the game and now also allows five people to play.
- The casino
- The second mini-expansion The casino includes two new cabins. It is included with the first expansion for the game Russian Railroads ; however, it can also be purchased separately.
In 2016, Stone Age Junior, a children's version of the game, was also released. In the same year, the game developed by Marco Teubner received the Children's Game of the Year award and the Essen spring .
criticism
The journalist Edwin Ruschitzka wrote about the game:
"The [...] proximity to" The Pillars of the Earth "is striking, but the author was already working on" Stone Age "when" The Pillars of the Earth "was not yet published [...]. What I particularly like about Stone Age is the material [...] because all raw material pieces have different shapes. And the detailed game plan is also a success. "
The so-called hunger strategy (the player consciously accepts penalty points for malnutrition and tries to collect points in some other way) has critical comments and possible rule supplements.
Web links
- Stone Age in the Luding games database
- Exact overview of the values of the civilization cards at Westpark Gamers
- Stone Age in the games database BoardGameGeek (English)
- Play Stone Age online at Yucata.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Stone Age - With style to the goal. (No longer available online.) Hans im Glück Verlag, archived from the original on July 23, 2016 ; accessed on July 23, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Spielbox , issue 2/2008, p. 5.
- ↑ The Hunger Strategy ( Memento of the original from June 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Hans im Glück Verlag ; Rule addition ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) from Hans im Glück Verlag .
