One Million Years BC (before Caylus)

For the second week in a row, we had double games. And just like last thursday, we played Stone Age, the new old favourite. Sam, Andrew and Joe jumped straight in to a first game, while waiting for Adam. Andrew replicated the strategy that won him the game last week, namely collecting the civ cards. This time Sam and Joe were on the case though, both collecting multipliers like crazy. Actually I was collecting multipliers like crazy, Sam was equally focussed on getting points on the board in the form of huts. It was tense, in a good way. There's some evil satisfaction in whipping cards from under the other players noses, but it's not out and out confrontational. Who knew cavemen were so passive-aggressive? In the end though, my multipliers paid off — final scores were:

Joe 196

Sam 171

Andrew 148

Adam had joined us about halfway through the game, and absorbed the rules, so we reset the board and bits and jumped straight back in for a first go at four player.

This made for a shorter game, as we all four concentrated for the most part on two of the stacks of huts. Little Joe woke up as the game was drawing to a close, and needed settling, so we played Sam's last go for him, letting him take the last hut in a stack and so ending the game.

I had gone for multipliers again, with a 4 x people multiplier, but even with 9 people I couldn't get out of last place. Still, it was fairly close, only 16 points between first and fourth places.

Andrew 115

Adam 105

Sam 101

Joe 99

Stone Age is fast becoming a favourite for Sam, Andrew and me (Adam may be a little ambivalent, but he's only played once). I like the combination of points on the board and collected cards being hidden — and the dice rolling adds just enough luck to keep things interesting. There's a Poker-like satisfaction to plonking down a handful of cavemen on a particular spot — cue Andrew's Bond villain playing euro-games impression — and for all of us there were moments when we pushed our luck and it paid off, which is immensely satisfying.

It's a friendly game, it doesn't hate you; nowhere is this more apparent than on the civ cards that give something to everyone — and these in fact provide an interesting extra layer of strategy. It's possible to incorporate the surprise resource you'll get from these cards into your plans for a turn, but you'll have to calculate at what point the player of that card will action it, which makes for some tense moments. Again! Again!

The leaderboard...

	Played	Points	Ratio
Adam	14	71.5	5.1
Joe	17	66.5	3.91
Andrew	18	61	3.38
Sam	13	55	4.23
Quentin	9	36	4
Hannah	3	11.5	3.8
Jonny	1	2	2