Rock Solid

What difference a week makes, eight last night saw us splitting up into two fours, Rachel, Adam, Chris and Jimmy played Taj mahal followed by Tichu. Ollie, Tom, Luke and Jack BS Shannon played Stone age and then Pandemic.

As usual the pandemic took control and despite a valiant attempt to cure diseases, the game kicked our arses. I don’t have a clue what happened on the other table though I got the impression Rachel may have won one of the games this could be entirely false? Maybe someone could comment with an accurate report.

The real revelation was Stone age which I enjoyed immensely. It is not an amazing game or a game full of interesting or new mechanics, it just does this style of game very well. In the beginning I was wondering if there was anything a player could do that wouldn’t give victory points, this list seemed to be endless. And as is typical the elegance of the game is only richly appreciated once you are playing.

Stone age is a game where strategy (or is it tactics – I forget) takes a back seat, there is very little long term planning (some…but little) on your turn you just choose the most rewarding thing on offer and hope that next turn you will be left with your second or third choice without someone else taking it. An ability to roll with the punches and change horses in midstream is a must, but there are enough rounds for you to do what you want, even in a bad situation there is always something worthwhile taking. Stone age takes many features from ‘pillars of the earth’ but is a completely different game, the placement of workers on features has a Caylus vibe but far less long term planning is needed and this game is a lot more far and evenly balanced between experienced and newbie gamers. This is completely my type of game (even with the dice rolling), rudimentary analysis, placement timing, resource management, brilliant. I need to play this again ASAP. I regularly enjoy games but this ranks highly for me. I look forward to playing it again, and with a bit of luck, on its second play it should play much faster.

Toodle pip