I pre-orded the 2018 reprint of Stone Age the minute I was able to. A medium-light worker placement classic that heavily involves dice? I was sold years before I ever played it. And I was still sold after I bought it. And still yet after I read the rules. But then I played it. Never before had a game fallen from my esteem so precipitously, and for so many reasons. Its pace is glacial, its structure shallow and repetitive, and one of its core mechanics is 3rd grade division. Yeah, I really don’t get praise for this one.
Production-wise, I have no complaints. The card and tile stocks are hefty and satisfying, and the game comes with a dope faux-leather dice rolling cup. Even the art is attractive (except for the character faces, but maybe that’s just what people looked like back then). Sure, its primitive human tribal theme isn’t the most creative, but it’s certainly not played out either. All in all, the first impression the game gives off is one of quality. Unfortunately, actually playing the game feels less like developing a tribe of primitive peoples and more like repeating half a dozen unrelated tasks over and over until 60-90 minutes have passed.
A game of Stone Age plays over a series of rounds in which players take turns selecting actions with their tribespeople, then take turns performing their selected actions all at once. And of course, in true worker placement fashion, you must feed your ravenous multitudes at the end of each round or face a strict penalty. The available actions can be split into three broad categories: resource gathering, resource spending, and player advancement. Resource gathering is a combination of dice-rolling and arithmetic. Roll some dice, add the pips, divide by the value of the resource you’re going after, bada-bing bada-boom you got yourself… one wood. At first rolling for resources has a bit of a thrill to it, but it grows rote rather quickly. Oh, well. On the other side of things, spending resources is mostly self-explanatory. Some building tiles require specific combinations of resources, but many of them (and all of the purchasable cards) allow a greater deal of flexibility. For example, the cost of something might be 3 goods each of a different type or something like that, which adds some value to the easier to acquire resources. The final category of actions are for player advancement… and they are startlingly sparse. Bump yourself up the agriculture track to automatically produce an additional food each round, gain or upgrade a tool which you can use to modify your dice rolls, or bang and get an additional tribes person (but also an additional mouth to feed). That’s it. An engine-builder this ain’t.
All it takes is a few rounds before the repetitive nature of Stone Age becomes all too apparent. With minimal ways to meaningfully develop your tribe, its narrative is completely inert. You might say, “Hey, give the game a break. It’s one of the first worker placement games, it’s bound to be a little dated.” Nonsense. Agricola came out the year prior and solved this issue by introducing new actions as the game progressed. Heck, Caylus came out in 2005 and gives its players a ton of narrative agency through a whole heap of board state manipulations. Contrastingly, nothing you can do in Stone Age makes a single dent in it. All you do is roll and roll and roll for the resources that you need to buy the cards and tiles you want so you can score the most points.
I wish I could at least say that is interesting, but it isn’t. Cards can be purchased with resources of any type for the same cost, so unless for some bizarre reason you are getting repeatedly blocked on wood (which is the easiest resource to gather), why would you use anything else to buy them? Otherwise, get some gold so you can rack up some points with the appropriate tiles. Stay diversified enough in the other resources to be able to pounce on opportunities as soon as they become available. Bump up your agriculture, tools, and population when you get the chance. Card bonuses are end-game multipliers for your other stats, so try to get ones that get you the most points, etc. It’s all so obvious. I’m sure you could derive some system to min-max the game and optimize your course of action, but if that’s your thing why are you playing a game this simple in the first place? I find it odd that there’s a children’s version of this game, when the game is already way too basic. “You mean, this isn’t the children’s version?” another player once quipped during a session. Funny dude. At least we came up with some pretty good nicknames for each other based on what resources we were going after. “Good luck, Stone-roll Jackson.” “I appreciate that, Wood-roll Wilson!”
Stone Age was a game I was excited to finally get my hands on. I’d missed several reprints and was stoked to finally be paying attention this time around. But after only a handful of plays, I’m done. The game is supposed to best at 4 — which is made exceedingly clear by how unintuitive and half-hearted the rules changes for 2 and 3 players are — but I don’t see how watching 3 other players roll dice and do math is supposed to be fun. It’s not; it’s boring. Exacerbating this is the game’s length, which is WAYYYY too long for what it offers. This game should be 45 minutes tops, but can easily end up being twice that. Not good. Overstaying your welcome is not the way to get invited back to my table.
It’s easy to see what Stone Age was going for. The Catan of worker placement games, or something of that nature. It even kept the dice around for the uninitiated who can’t conceive of a board game without dice. And conceptually, I do appreciate how the designer recognized that a simpler worker placement game than most should be set in a simpler time than most. That alone shows an understanding of mechanical and thematic relations. However, returning to Catan, there’s a reason why it is on the shelf of every book store in the world and Stone Age is relegated to brief print runs once a year or so. It’s because Catan creates memories between its players. People remember when they get screwed out of that trade they so desperately needed at the last minute or when everyone agrees to cut Tim out of every trade deal because he’s so far ahead. I’m not saying Catan is perfect or anything, but it’s hard to imagine Stone Age generating any excitement like that in what its target audience appears to be. Maybe things really were that different in 2008 and this game stood out as a creative gem, but here, 10 years later, there’s simply no place for it. That being said, it IS still selling out print runs. But are its buyers like me? Excited to finally get the chance to play an enthusiastically lauded hobby mainstay only to be as disappointed by it as I was? Or will Stone Age continue finding fresh new batches of fans who don’t mind (or even notice) its flaws and appreciate it all the same? I dunno. It doesn’t matter to me; I’ll be playing something else.
Stone Age gets a rating of TWO out of FIVE, indicating it is NOT RECOMMENDED.