How to Survive the Stone Age: A look at Stone Age, the board game

Michael Tummelhofer’s Stone Age is a great worker placement/resource management game which comes with the twist of historical significance — one can actually learn by playing this game!

I would say this is great for kids. It’s an easy enough game to learn and play (the rule book is only 8 pages with many pictures and examples), plus it’s a good simulation about how peoples from this time period would actually have lived. Also it shows clearly how farming, rather than nomadic living, would have led to creating civilizations.

However, finding the best strategy to winning this game is not always the way to have the most fun with this game. I prefer to try something new every time I play.

For example: while agricultural farming is probably the best way to keep your people from dying, it makes the food tokens in this game virtually worthless, and also tends to make the game less exciting when all of your food needs are met without making an effort every turn.

Unlike many popular cooperative games, there are actually MANY ways to win in this game.

You could go for …

Civilization cards: just make certain that you watch the symbols on the bottom of the card. You should always go for the easily purchased card if you can nab it from the other players. Otherwise, match the cards to whatever end goal your striving for, be it tribesmen, huts, agriculture, etc. OR, attempt to get complete sets of 8 of the different icons (with the green backgrounds).

Tools: These are very helpful to increase the effectiveness of poor dice rolls.

People: If you can, place a couple of tribesmen in a hut. The more mature among us know what happens next (hint: at the end of your turn you’ll need to pay another food — wink wink).

Huts: While this ticks away towards the end (clearing out one of the piles of huts ends the game), this is a major way to add victory points during the game.

Summary: while this game can either be long or short (it’s possible for a single player to actually extend the game as long as they want by placing a worker on the last hut card, and “deciding” NOT to purchase it when resolving their turn, it’s a very easy, breezy quick-moving game that makes you very glad you’re not actually living during the STONE AGE.