Stone Age is just my type of game. It is a blend, and it blends all the right games. It seems to me like it has grabbed all the best bits of a number of games I love and replaced their weaknesses with viable alternatives to produce a darn good result. After only a single play it is top of my play list . No wonder this is a hot favourite for the game of the year.

So what are the component pieces that I so adore. These are four fold. When I first laid my eyes on the board and saw the little meeples I said this is Pillars of the earth, I have only played it oce but I like it, alot. As it happens the artist is the same, and so one would expect the familiarity. Stone Age is meeple placement at its best. And then out of nowhere came some dice. Well all of a sudden I was thinking of Kingsburg. Meeple placement with dice. I was fond of Kingsburg at first but the novelty faded as I solved the game. This had me a little worried, but heck at least it would have 20 plays in it, and that would take me until at 2025 to wrack up. Then as we began to play the dice reminded me of Thebes. This was not helped by the comment “I just don’t like games with dice” coming from the other side of the table, and after a couple of poor roles I saw his point. Now I was worried this was going to be a game like Thebes that could be turned on a dime by good or ill fortune. And finally as we began to play I was reminded of Leonardo Di Vinci, not that the game really plays in the same way, but placing groups of meeples sparked of the association, and since I looooove Leonardo …. All these games I love for their strengths and dislike for their weaknesses.

Well my worries were all soon waylaid by the ebb and flow of the game. Stone Age has everything. At its core is the exploration element whereby each meeple earns you a dice to roll when placed on resources, with the sum of the pips rolled determining the number of resources you receive. This is where luck comes in, and you can suffer the whims of fortune on any particular role. But although disaster strikes on occasion and fortune sends you a windful on others I conclude that there is so much rolling that the luck balances out. Over the course of the game whatever happens I believe you get your due, or close to it. If you ride close to the wind, then you will eventually get burned by a bad roll, and it seems like in this game, more than ever, playing it safe in one round will leave you free to cut your strategy fine in the next. I found that giving yourself a buffer (in the collection of food for example) meant that should a dice roll go wrong, you weren’t relying on it, and could compensate in the next turn. Perhaps such buffers are expensive in the early game but I didn’t find the one off investment in a buffer anything to worry about. Call it insurance if you like.

Stone age also has the typical euro mechanics that I so enjoy. Bonus points, multipliers, set collection, and combinations. Collect cards for sets, or cards for multipiers. If you have multipliers for buildings, then be sure to get buildings. This is another return on investment game, so be sure to consider your every action in terms of cost. Purchasing a card with food saves you collecting it. Five food equals 10pips on the dice which is two to three meeples. So you must constantly evaluate the cost of your decisions, and then the return on investment. Points win games, how many points am I getting here. Where will I get the best value right now. It also has the reward capacity tradeoff. Do you take a tool now, which gives me no points, but is worth one pip every turn for the rest of the game …. or do I splash for a card which gives resources and points. It has all the complexiety you need.

Finally Stone Age is simple. The actions are simple, the cards, the play, everything. They are all pretty basic with the exception of the iconography on the building tiles. But that is grasped quickly and I can’t imagine anyone not getting Stone Age.

All in all this is a well constructed game. It is attractive, simple and has depth. It has the appeal of dice without the discouragement of feeling your game slip away as they roll. I won’t be surprised when it is named game of the year, I will also be quite contented because as my mate points out, game of the year means big print run which means a much more reasonable price tag. Stone Age is a winner in my books.