When comparing Hanabi vs Stone Age, the Slant community recommends Stone Age for most people. In the question“What are the best board games for beginners?” Stone Age is ranked 3rd while Hanabi is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Stone Age is:
Each game of Stone Age will turn out differently. Obviously, your dice rolls are going to lead to different results, and the buildings and civilization cards you draw are going to be in a new order. There are many paths to victory, you can always try a different strategy. Best part is, no strategy is superior, you get points from many things, so don’t be afraid to experiment.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro A wonderful exercise in teamwork as you have to rely entirely on clues from other players
Why did the other player give that specific clue? Should you play, discard, or give a clue in return? If you give them a clue, how will they interpret it? It is these meaningful and occasionally tense decisions that make Hanabi an absolutely excellent game for couples who like to work together to solve problems.
Pro Easy to learn
Hanabi is a truly simple and very accessible game to people of all ages. Players stack cards of one color to finish five firework displays consisting of five cards each. Players are dealt five cards that they hold outwards to other players. On your turn you can perform one of three actions – give a clue, discard a card, or play a card.
By flipping one of the eight clue tokens you can point out something about another player’s hand, for example, “these cards are yellow”, “these are twos”, etc.
Discarding a card restores a clue token, but you must be careful with what you discard because there is a limited number of cards of each type, you might discard a card that doesn’t let you complete the firework.
If you play a card that doesn’t fit any of the current piles, then that is an illegal play, the card is discarded and one of the lightning tokens is turned over. As soon as all three lightning tokens are turned, the game is over. The game can also end when the draw pile is empty or if you successfully stack all the fireworks.
Pro Hanabi's small size makes it easy to transport and/or play anywhere
Consisting of just 60 cards, 8 clue tokens, and 4 fuse tokens, the entire game can fit in a box about the size of a deck of cards, making it easy to throw in a pocket or purse and have on hand anytime.
Pro No quarterbacking issues
The game successfully evades the popular issue of many cooperative games where a player ends up taking over the game and telling others what to do. In Hanabi this is pretty much impossible because there is no way to see your own cards, so everyone is forced to work together.
Pro Replayable
The game encourages replayability because it’s one of those games that you get better at the more you play. Players will always be trying to beat their high-scores. To make the game harder or easier you can easily remove or add clue tokens or lightning tokens (extra lives).
The game also has an included “expansion” – the rainbow-colored cards. These add two more possible variations to the gameplay. You can play them as the sixth color and just add 5 more points to the maximum, or you can make the game a bit more difficult by having players give clues about the rainbow card as if it was one of the five default colors.
Pro Highly replayable
Each game of Stone Age will turn out differently. Obviously, your dice rolls are going to lead to different results, and the buildings and civilization cards you draw are going to be in a new order.
There are many paths to victory, you can always try a different strategy. Best part is, no strategy is superior, you get points from many things, so don’t be afraid to experiment.
Pro Easy and accessible
Stone Age is a game suited for people of all ages and gaming backgrounds because it’s easy to learn and it provides quite a bit of strategic depth. The basic gist of Stone Age is easy – there are three phases in a round: placing workers, resolving actions, and feeding the tribe.
Players take turns placing their workers on empty spaces on the gameboard, signified by circles. There are resource areas, special areas, civilization cards, and hut tiles. There can’t be more workers than circles in an area.
After all the workers are distributed, players resolve actions in any order they choose. Depending on where you placed your workers, you either roll dice for resources or receive other bonuses in from special areas – tools, civilization cards, buildings, food generation, etc.
When all actions are complete, players must feed their tribes. This is done by returning the food resource to the pile. You pay one food per worker. If you generate food from the agriculture area, then you subtract that amount from the total.
Pro Beautiful aesthetics and theme
The visual design of Stone Age is very detailed and thematic. Both the artwork and the components look great and highly compliment the gameplay.
The gameboard and the player sheets feature stunning artwork of prehistoric scenery, the first player token is a silly drawing of a sitting chieftain, and the cards have some thematic nuances – stone tablets, figurines, prehistoric boats, etc. The resource tokens resemble what they’re supposed to be – food, wood, gold, bricks, and stone. The player tokens are colorful and patterned meeples.
Since dice rolling is a big part of the game, the components surrounding this have been made to look amazing – the dice are wood, and the pips are engraved. There’s a leather dice cup, which is a really nice thematic touch.
Cons
Con Similar looking colors on cards
The game has five possible colors, but since they aren't very bright and the background is the same, it might be difficult to tell them apart in poor lighting. There are only a few cards of each type and a limited number of clues you can receive, so misinterpreting what other players tell you can lead to huge misplays.
Con Requires commitment
Hanabi could be considered an exercise in memory, teamwork, and communication, so this isn’t the game to play if you’re in a distraction full environment or if you want to casually socialize with your buddies.
Furthermore, it’s important to limit your table talk because someone might accidentally say too much in a clue or pass off some important information in a remark here or there. Showing frustration or excitement about a play that someone’s about to do is also bad because it might impact the player’s action.
Con Luck dependant
At its core Stone Age is a dice rolling game. You choose what you’re rolling for and how many dice you’re going to use when sending workers to a resource gathering space, and your roll will impact what you get. Some civilization cards also include dice rolling to decide which players get what resource.
The number is always rounded down, for example, if you sent two workers to gather wood, you’d roll two dice. One piece of wood costs 3. If you rolled 8 in total, then you’d get only two pieces of wood and you’d be missing one more pip.
Con Can be quite long
Depending on the number of players, the game can take 1 to 2 hours to play through, which is alright for more experienced board gamers, but it can be a big turn-off for new players or children who might lose their enthusiasm as the game progresses.
Con Pricey
The game has been out of stock for a few years. Wherever the copies of the game are available, they cost quite a lot. The price varies from $40 to $70, depending on the seller.