LogFAQs > #966259118

36. Stone Age

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34635/stone-age

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Worker placement, resource management, order fulfillment
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 45-90 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 1 play with 2 players

Stone Age is a worker placement game set in theoretically caveman days, where you try to maximize your victory points. You do so primarily by going to spaces where you collect resources (sometimes with the help of a die) and then going to other spaces where you can claim markers with victory points. Periodically, you will also need to feed your clan of workers or face starvation.

I'll just be honest with you - I remember very little of the details of Stone Age. I played it once at a meetup, and it was the last game of the night, after a brain-burner. It was a 2-player game and I think we might have managed the game in 30 minutes flat, we were blazing through the actions so fast.

And that right there perhaps shows one of the strengths of the game: in one of the strengths of the worker placement mechanic, it's incredibly fast to make any individual action. By reputation, Stone Age, along with Lords of Waterdeep, is considered perhaps the best gateway game in its genre. And the fact that it could be taught and played with such breeziness, while still maintaining those classic eurogame trappings, is why it's up here.

I'll probably have to relearn the game from scratch next time I play. But the teach will still only be five minutes, and I'll still be able to tear right through it. What's not to like?