Stone Age - Tips & Strategies

Beware the player who has not been gaining many points throughout the game, but owns the stack of cards. Sure, you can gain a lot of in game points collecting huts, but without a strong showing of cards in the end, you will not win.

Make your cards work with your in game strategy. Collecting lots of tools, then get the tool multiplyer cards. Collecting huts, get the hut multiplyers, etc. Green bottom cards add up, so look to build a complete set.

Have fun, Stone Age is a great game from the 1st time you make a baby, to the end of the game when the points are totalled.

Everyone in my circle has gotten a good feel for taking the card route in this game. Our focus has been to be flexible and play for cards in two different areas. It usually ends up being different every game. If an opponent snags some of the early tool multipliers, start grabbing the food and people multipliers instead. Just make sure your card grabs are focused and intentional.

The one exception to this rule (it comes up often for us) is the house multiplier. If you can find a way to be the only house card buyer, you’re in pretty good shape and don’t have to worry too much about your secondary scorer, because you can get a higher multiplier with houses than any other group.

I have tried this only on a 2 player game, don’t know how it will work in 3-4 player games.

I tried out this theory last night and it served me very well. My first objective was to build farms and raise my food production to 8. At this point I only went after wood and food resources. If a green civ card came out for 1 or 2 resource, I took it (careful to avoid duplicates).

After reaching my food production goal, I started to add people to my tribe, continued to go after wood and instead of food, went after brick. I started collecting other civ cards at this point that cost 1-2 resource.

After obtaining 8 meeples, I alternated food production and “baby making” until I had reached the max 10 of each. During this time I continued to go after brick, and went after stone. I also would buy building, as long as they were cheap (2 brick/1 stone, etc) making sure not to buy building with the resource multiplier effect. I also began to add tools if possible.

At this point, my meeples and food production were maxed out, and I longer had to worry about hunting. I went after stone and gold for 2 rounds, then back to wood (which I use to buy the civ cards I want). I suck as much gold as possible into buildings with the resource multiplier, and went after the rest of the civ cards, going after unique green civ cards first. I continued to add tools (a good place for me is around 7 tools).

I was careful about how many buildings I bought, because in a 2 player game, there are only 14 buildings available before the game ends. When I was happy with the number of points I had, I went after the rest of the buildings in a single pile, in an attempt to end the game.

This strategy resulted with a score of 379 in a 2 player game vs. a score of 184.

Remember, while it is fun to shoot off to an early lead, Stone Age is a game that requires long term planning. Use the early rounds to stockpile resources.

As other’s have said, you need to farm as much as you can early on. Obviously the field option in the village is the easiest way, but the cards can also result in farms. The quicker you get to 5+ on the food track, the quicker you can get to building your score.

So why not build a hut on a turn where you can not take the field spot in the village or through a card? Because it’s more valuable to build an early supply of resources and cards.

Odds are you will end up with 5+ meeples, farms, and huts. Picking up x2 or x3 specialist, farmer or shaman cards will result in 10-15 points during the end of game scoring. Repeated early investment in these cards will result in 20-30 points per group. Additionally, by avoiding the desire to build huts early you can avoid going after stone and gold. This will give you the ability to stockpile resources quicker, and in turn buy more cards quicker. As an added bonus you will also be able to spend 3-4 resources for a more attractive card without having to regroup the next turn. And by the time you do start to build huts you will be able to focus on the huts you want, maximizing your in game scoring.

quickly find a synergy to latch onto early on if you can (Tools plus large tool modifier, Building huts plus large Hut Modifier) and then you’ll have something to focus on for the rest of the game.

Wood is the easiest resource to obtain and once you have a stockpile of it you should have no problem getting cards, building cheap huts, or even substituting for food – it is extremely versatile. Also look for opportunities to block others, either filling up remaining placement spaces or maxing out the total player count. If you’re only down one food, don’t waste a meeple in the hunter & gathers space, go for wood and steal the spot from someone else.

There are some huts that allow you to use any resource you want to build them. If you use Gold to build this type of hut you’ll score a LOT of points. plus you get to live in a golden hut!

The cards give you a prize during the game, but at the end of the game it also helps boost your score. If you build many huts, try to get hold of as many as you can of the cards that give bonus per hut,if you work on the grain level, or perhaps the workers, get hold of those cards. But don`t forget to collect the culture cards (green background) The bigger sets of different culture images you get the more points you recieve. You get the gist of it. Let the cards be part of the strategy you lay for the game!

Sometimes we want to play a quick game because we have multiple games to get to during the night, or the kids had way to much homework but still want to get some gaming in. Sometimes we are introducing the game to new people and feel that a shorter game would keep them hungry for more.

An easy solution is to limit the amount of huts and cards that are used. Instead of 7 huts in each pile put only 5, or have one less pile to choose from. You can be selective in the huts that you use. Use more of the huts that have more options of resources instead of having to collect specific resources for huts.

It also works limiting the amount of cards in the deck. When the deck runs out the game is over.

Stone Age is an excellent light worker placement game. If you want to pay this with the under 8 crowd, here is a variant that you can use to scaffold up to the full game.
1. No cards. Eliminate them for now, and make these the last thing you introduce.
2. Half the tiles. Cater to and expect a shorter attention span.
3. No worker placement for tile buying. Just have a phase after collecting resources, starting with the player with the starting token. Buy one, then keep going around until nobody wants to buy more.
4. No tools.
5. No food income; all food from hunting.
6. Start with all 10 workers, and no worker acquisition.

Introduce one new thing each playthrough. I highly recommend making the cards last, due to the math of then symbols. Pretty soon, your little person will be playing the full game!