-
Max Jamelli
United States
Chambersburg
Pennsylvania
-
#3 on my countdown - Stone Age
Stone Age is a game I picked up in 2009 as a part of my birthday present. My first comment was after a 2P game with my dad. I said I was really looking forward to trying it as a 4P game. After 245+ plays, I find it interesting that I much prefer it as a 2P game and will only play 4P if I have to. The main reason for that is, I like the strategies in a 2P more. I like that I can block someone out of wood with one cavemeeple, where in a 3 or 4 player game, all 7 spots need to be filled - so early on, two people have to share a block. I also think seating order has a big factor on what strategies a player may have to use. Unless there is a valuable card in the 1 or 2 resource spot, the player in seat 4 is likely to be left out of a bonus (either a farm, tool, or extra guy) during the first round. The player who is sitting in the 1 hole, gets first pick, but in round two immediately becomes the odd one out. I think the players in seat 2 and 3 have built in advantages for that reason. Like I said, good cards showing up may mitigate that a little bit, but for the couple 3 and 4P games I've played, my experience has been that seats 2 and 3 are better than seats 1 and 4. That's not the case in a 2P game. A 2P game becomes a little more cut-throat, but imho it's a good thing for this game.
I've logged 245 plays of Stone Age here since I've bought it. That's tops among those who log plays here. Woohoo for me I guess.  A vast majority of those have been online at Yucata. I know BSW has a version which I have tried and Boardgame Arena has a version (I have not tried it). I really like Yucata's statistical section where it shows you your record and where you rank on the site for each game. With as many plays as I have, you'd think I'd be really awesome at the game. That's not quite the case. I like to think I'm pretty good, but my overall record in rated games is 39-34, 5 games over .500. I rank 210 out of 1,025. I used to play mainly non-rated games because I didn't care about the whole ratings thing. I don't know what made me change my mind, but it's cool to see my overall record in games.
Stone Age is one of those games that are complimented on artwork. Who am I to disagree? Michael Menzel did an awesome job with this one. I never really looked at his BGG Artist page until now and his game art credits are very impressive. Many of my favorite games in terms of art are his. Another game that features his art is coming up on my countdown. Back to the Stone Age art - Stone Age is one of those games that would be suitable for framing. Both sides of the board have amazing artwork. If my boardgame collection had it's own room I would seriously think about buying extra copies of certain games JUST to hang the boards on the wall. (currently the games are stored in my "man room" which has New York Yankees pictures on the wall)
For the last two years I've GM'ed an online Stone Age tournament for members of the Boardgame Players Association. I've run my event as a 2P event, while the Stone Age event run at WBC is a 4P event. I think both work, but I like the fact that the game has both options. The second event is currently running and I'm happy with our turnout. I got some good comments from the participants from last year and hopefully I can keep up the event for a long time.
I remember the Saturday of WBC 2010 - I was walking around waiting for the 1960 Making of the President event to start. I was wondering around the open gaming area, just browsing through the BPA library. I saw a mom with two children getting ready to try to learn Stone Age. They were going to play and learn while they went. I tried not to spy, but when I saw the little boy's first move of the game was to put 1 meeple in the gold section, I thought I'd intervene. I asked if they were just learning and wanted some friendly teaching help. The mom seemed really happy that someone offered to teach them, so I took about 10 minutes and showed them how the game worked. Call it my good gaming deed for the year. I hope they enjoyed the game as much as I do.
Stone Age is a game Jen likes a lot. In Our combined rankings geeklist, Stone Age comes in at an impressive #4. Jen likes resource building games and is one of the few people in the world that actually likes the smell of the cup! I think the one thing that pushes The Pillars of the Earth up on that list for her is the fact that it's tied to a book. If Stone Age were based on a novel, it would be a 10 for her.
I've been able to teach my in-laws as well and they seems to enjoy it also. Matter of fact, I think my mother in law won the last game we played. 
Final Thoughts
It's not a surprise to see Stone Age ranked as highly as it is here. It's currently behind 7 Wonders and Crokinole as the #3 rated Family Game. Stone Age has a little more than 3,000 more votes than 7 Wonders and almost 4 times as many as Crokinole, so it's rating is pretty solid. It had been on the front page of LordT's Top 50 Statistics Geeklist, but it looks like it's page 2 as Stone Age has dropped to #26.
|
|
