When comparing Stone Age @ Board Game Arena vs Stratego, the Slant community recommends Stratego for most people. In the question“What are the best free online versions of board games?” Stratego is ranked 2nd while Stone Age @ Board Game Arena is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Stratego is:
Stratego's rules are pretty easy to learn but the beauty is there is so much strategy involved that each game can have wildly different outcomes. Being that there is so much choice in how to strategize every game there is truly a limitless amount of fun to be had.
Specs
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Pros
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 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.
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 Simple to learn but utilizes much strategy
Stratego's rules are pretty easy to learn but the beauty is there is so much strategy involved that each game can have wildly different outcomes. Being that there is so much choice in how to strategize every game there is truly a limitless amount of fun to be had.
Pro Creative thinking and playing the other player take a large role
Players can arrange their troops however they like which begins a game of strategy but also a game of playing your opponent. By trying to trick or manipulate the other player the game becomes more in depth as a match of will.
Cons
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 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 Character pictures have to be manually placed
The character pictures have to be manually placed on each individual plastic board piece, which is time consuming and really should have just been done at the factory.