My First Stone Age

RRP: £39.99
Now £19.95(SAVE 50%)
RRP £39.99
[yith_wcwl_add_to_wishlist]
Nexy Day Delivery

Order within the next

4 Hours & 14 Minutes

for Next Day Delivery

Nexy Day Delivery

You could earn

1995 Victory Points

with this purchase

My First Stone Age is a delightful children’s board game with elements of memory and set collection. It might really appeal to young kids who have seen ‘The Adults’ playing a grown-up’ game like Stone Age by Bernd Brunnhofer and want to join in… This is, of course, a much more diluted variant. It’s designed by Marco Teubner, takes about 15 minutes to play and is child-fr…
Read More
Category Tags , , , , , , SKU ZBG-ZMG71265 Availability 3+ in stock
Share
Share this

Awards

Fun for Kids

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You Might Like

  • Beautiful components
  • Educational value
  • Easy to learn, set-up, and play
  • Level playing field between adults and kids

Might Not Like

  • Lack of replayability
Find out more about our blog & how to become a member of the blogging team by clicking here

Related Products

Description

My First Stone Age is a delightful children’s board game with elements of memory and set collection. It might really appeal to young kids who have seen ‘The Adults’ playing a  grown-up’ game like Stone Age by Bernd Brunnhofer and want to join in… This is, of course, a much more diluted variant. It’s designed by Marco Teubner, takes about 15 minutes to play and is child-friendly for those aged five and up.

The winner of My First Stone Age is the first player to build three huts. They cost a variety of specific resources (so that much is similar to Stone Age). The board also has a familiar look to Stone Age, with both of these titles being inked by artist Michael Menzel.

The board has eight locations situated in a circular route. A series of tiles surround the board: shuffled, spread out and face-down. All of them have an action on their reverse side. On your turn, you flip one of them over, move your cave-meeple to that location and then do that area’s action.

Some allow you to visit an area and take one of the limited resources associated with that area, such as a tusk or a fish. Some allow you to swap a resource from your pile with one on the board. One allows you to take a dog token, which counts as a ‘wild’ resource. Lastly, there’s an action that lets you go to the hut-building space and build a hut. There's always three huts available, but you must have the exact resources shown on the hut (or a dog token acting as a wild) to build it.

Other tiles include ones featuring various dice faces. If you flip one of these over, you move your cave-meeple that many spaces clockwise around the circle, doing that area’s action, as a result.

The memory aspect of My First Stone Age is that once a tile has been flipped, the next player has to flip over a different tile. This continues until someone eventually flips over the ‘Build a Hut’ token. After their turn they then turn all of the tiles facing down again… And then they swap two tiles of their choice. This means that all players need to pay attention if they want to do the ideal move on their next turn!

My First Stone Age also comes with fantastic player shields for players to hide their claimed resources. As well as a further element to remembering who has taken what, they also act as a cool stand to prop up the huts you’ve built so far! All in all this is an excellent memory challenge by Z-MAN Games, whose lovable components will only heighten the enjoyment children will get out of building a stone age village.

Player Count: 2-4
Time: 15 Minutes
Age: 5+

 

My first stone age feature image

As the prefix implies, My First Stone Age is a child-friendly (5+) version of the popular adult game, Stone Age. However, those expecting Stone AgeLite’ will be in for a surprise.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of similarities. For example, the aim of the game is to collect resources to build huts in your prehistoric village. However, Stone Age is primarily a worker placement game and My First Stone Age most definitely isn’t. No, this is a memory game.

Now, that ‘m’ word will strike fear into your heart if for you (like me) a functioning memory was something you used to have before the kids came along. But kids LOVE memory games and it’s a mechanic that’s a great leveller. No need to ‘go easy on them’ here. In fact, you’ll be hoping they go easy on you!

On top of that, there’s some light strategy to keep you interested (and them, as they grow older.) And there’s plenty of educational value – especially if your kids are doing the Stone Age at school (Year 3 usually.)

OK, lets open up the box and find out what’s inside…

What’s in the Box?

Peeking under the My First Stone Age box lid is like clapping eyes on Stonehenge for the first time. The components are a sight to behold! Artist Michael Menzel has created artwork which is reflective of the adult game yet lovingly tailored for this younger market.  And all the games pieces – both wooden and cardboard – are beautifully designed and monolithically chunky.

The resources (berries, fish, clay pots, flint arrowheads and mammoth teeth) and the meeples are made from weighty, coloured wood. The remaining components – hut tokens, settlement stands, forest tokens, player markers and the game board itself– are made from thick, laminated cardboard.  This game is definitely built to weather most things your children will be able throw at it.

A word of warning – those wooden berries look sooooo good they could very easily disappear into a little one’s mouth. For that reason, it’s recommended you keep any under 3s well away.

Getting Started

Learning the rules and setting up should take considerably less time than your average mammoth hunt. From first box opening to play should take less than 20 minutes.

Simply deposit the required number of resources (depending on the number of players) on the requisite resource spaces – berries in the forest, pots in the clay pit etc. Place one of each resource at the trading post and the two dog tokens on the dog space.  Shuffle up the hut tokens and place them in 3 piles of 5 on the designated places on the board. Turn the top hut token on each pile face up. Then, shuffle up the forest tokens and place them, face down, around the board. Finally, grab a settlement stand, a player token and a meeple, placing the latter on the building site space. Now, you’re ready to go.

On the first play, it’s worth reading your kids the story of Jono and Yada, the Stone Age Children from the rulebook. It’s a nice little introduction to the Stone Age and to the game itself.  It also taught me a few things. For example, who knew mammoths munched their way through 6 sets of teeth during their lifetimes?

My First Stone Age - How to Play

How to Play My First Stone Age

To win the game, you need to complete your settlement by building 3 huts.  To build a hut, you need to land on the building site space and exchange the relevant resources from your supply for one of the face-up hut tokens.  Each hut token requires a different combination of resources, 2-3 per hut. Once you’ve built a hut and placed it in your settlement stand, you’ll turn the hut token below it face up to make it available to build. Return the resources used to pay for the hut to the relevant spaces on the board.

So how do you collect resources and get to the building site space?  That’s where the forest tokens come in.

At the beginning of your turn, you’ll flip over one of the forest tokens placed around the board. If that token has a number on the flipside, you’ll move that many spaces around the board. If it has a symbol on it (berry, fish, hut etc), you’ll move to the relevant space (forest, river, building site etc). Once you’ve moved, you can take an action – which is usually to take one of the resources there, if there are any left.

There are three special spaces. If you land on the dog space, you can take one of the dog tokens. You can use dogs in place of any resource when building huts so they’re rather handy. If there are no dogs left when you arrive (there are only 2), you can steal one from another player. At the trading post, you can swap one of your resources with one of the resources on this space. The building site space allows you to build one of the face up huts as described above. And whoever lands on that space must turn all the face up forest tokens face down again and – to add to the confusion – swap two of them around.

This is where the memory bit comes in.  To move to where you want to go, you need to remember what’s on the flipside of those face down forest tokens. And as all players will use the building site space frequently throughout the game, those forest tokens are going to be flipped frequently!

What’s it Like to Play?

The first few turns are pretty random, as nobody knows what’s on the flipside of any forest token. You’ll bumble around the board picking up various resources with no real plan. But as the game progresses and players flip the forest tokens over and back again, your powers of recollection will be rewarded. The better your memory, the more efficiently you’ll move around the board gathering resources and building huts.  If you can’t remember what’s where, you’ll sink without trace like a mammoth tooth disappearing into the swamp.

But there’s more to My First Stone Age than this basic memory element. There’s some light strategy to get you and your kids thinking too.

Which hut should you go for based on the resources you have and the forest tokens you know? What huts are the other players going for and how do you slow them down (especially if they’re going for the same hut as you!)? How do you get the resource you need when the relevant resource space is empty? Pick up something you don’t need right now and then swap it at the trading post? Or pick up a dog token knowing someone might steal it from you before you get to the building site?

The other great thing about this game is that nobody’s ever really out of the running. It’s easy for slow starters to come surging back, especially if the new huts revealed match the resources they’ve stockpiled. And if you are in a hopeless position, the game’s over in 15 minutes so the pain is bearable.

The only very minor gripe is with the building site space, which has too much power in this game.  Not only do you need it to build huts but you’ll also use it to flip the forest tokens face down and initiate the two forest token swap to confuse your opponents. As a result, most players will follow the location of its token with the precision of a flint-tipped arrow fired by a master bowman. Even when a player swaps it with another forest token, the rules stipulate this should happen in full view of the other players. Instead, we make the other players close their eyes when this swap happens, just to add a little uncertainty.

Final Thoughts

Designer Marco Teubner’s experience in creating children’s games comes shining through in this beautifully executed design. It’s little surprise My First Stone Age picked up the prestigious Kinderspiel des Jahre (Children’s Game of the Year) in 2016.

The balance between adults and kids is proven by the fact that my 8-year-old, my wife and I are pretty even when it comes to wins. My son has even beaten his ex-headteacher grandmother, who believes that children need to earn their victories at board games.

My only negative comment is that replayability isn’t the greatest. Although every game is slightly different, dependent on which huts top the 3 stacks, there are no variants on offer.  That being said, children are fonder of repetition than adults i.e. you’ll probably get bored with it before them! My son will play 2-3 times in a row before placing it back on the game shelf for a few months. But it always comes back out again – even though he has plenty of other, more complex games to choose from.

My First Stone Age looks great and plays great. It’s a fantastic family game in itself, and an excellent stepping stone for kids into more complex ‘euro’ games. In short, it’s well worth your investment.

Zatu Score

Rating

  • Artwork
  • Complexity
  • Replayability
  • Player Interaction
  • Component Quality

You might like

  • Beautiful components
  • Educational value
  • Easy to learn, set-up, and play
  • Level playing field between adults and kids

Might not like

  • Lack of replayability