The Settlers of the Stone Age
Come join in the adventure that is the dawn of Humankind! Will your tribe journey far and fast ? Will they surmount the pain dangers of this world ? Will they bring you victory and survival ? Are you ready to play in this newest creation of Master game designer Klaus Teuber Based on the award-winning Settlers of Catan game system, but presenting players with all-new challenges unique to the dangers and opportunities of the Stone Age. The first branches of this family began a journey that spanned thousands of years, eventually leading them to Australia and America.
In this exciting game, you will guide the journey of one of these branches. You must struggle to spread your people over the whole world. In order to expand your branch humanity you must develop certain talents: advances in the preparation of food will allow your people to spread faster and wider, while new hunting techniques can protect them from dangers.
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This variation on The Settlers of Catan takes us back to the a time 100,000 years in the past when our species, Homo Sapiens, started leaving its cradle, Africa, and colonized the world. First Europe and Asia, but later even America and Australia and the many Pacific islands. In Settlers of the Stone Age you get to recreate this journey!
The familiar resources are replaced by more contemporary ones (food, ivory, flint and skins) produced in hills, steppes, mountains and woods respectively. At the start of the game each player receives three villages in Africa (you can choose either to place them Settlers-style [advanced rule] or in the configuration shown in the rulebook [starter rule]). These villages border pretty good numbers, so resources will pour in at the start.
Now the migration starts. Every player can build nomads which can move across the map and are able to create villages at a spot a player fancies. Moving a nomad takes food (obviously) and the amount of steps is tied to the advances in food development. There are four types of development (clothing and building, food, hunting & fighting and culture) in which a player may invest resources. Some advances in development are needed to pass certain obstacles in the game. America and Australia cannot be entered without the required advances in development, for instance.
At the edge of the continents players can ‘discover’ new tribes, move around the Neanderthal or saber tooth tiger (the robbers in this version, also moved when a 7 comes up) and may trigger the desertification of Africa. That last event is a major incentive to move your villages from Africa to other, more fertile places in the world.
All in all this is a nice and enjoyable variation on The Settlers of Catan. Perhaps the only drawback is that the numbers are fixed (printed on the game board), which may hamper the replay value. However, as a occasional break from the normal Settlers game this is a good choice. The theme is woven into the game very well and it teaches us something about our species in a very playful way.
This is a game that I was supposed to teach at a local games store about a month ago. I watch the video on how to play it and fell in love with this game. Unfortunately only 1 other person showed up that night and I didn’t get to play. I then got another chance to teach it and the day before I was to teach I bought the game with some gift certificates I won so that is a long way of saying I love this game. It’s simple to play and with no 2 people having the same way of playing you’ll not get bored with this one. The set up is simple just follow how to set up the game in the rules. The rules are quite similar to SoC so if you know the basic rules there is only a little you need to add to enjoy this game. The 4 outside tracks all do different things. The red track is like rolling playing a knight card. The green track is to let you move your explorer farther. The white and black is to allow you to go to certain spots on the board that require you to be at a certain lvl on those tracks. VPs are gotten by building on certain spots or achieving certain criteria. Again if you like Settlers of Catan then you won’t be disappointed playing this game except that it takes a little longer to play this that SoC.