Appreciation post: Watching new players discover the feeding phase in Stone Age

I used to roll my eyes whenever someone brought Stone Age to game night. Too simple, I thought. Then last Friday a friend who only plays party games got handed the food track and panicked when his hunters rolled nothing but blanks. He spent ten minutes trading resources just to feed his tribe. I realized I had been playing for 5 years and forgot how tense that moment is for a beginner. Am I the only one who forgets what makes a game click for first timers?

3 comments

3 Comments

aaron_mitchell16d agoMost Upvoted

You spent ten minutes trading resources just to feed his tribe" - that right there is the moment I think a lot of us forget. The panic of rolling blanks on food is basically a rite of passage (and honestly, it still makes me sweat a little even after dozens of plays). Did your friend end up figuring out the value of farming early on, or did he just barely squeak by with trades and then hate the game for it?

the_christopher16d agoMost Upvoted

Whoa, wait... he actually tanked the whole game and still hated it afterward? Man, that's brutal. I've seen new players panic-trade away their stone and wood just to scrape by on food, and then act like the game is broken because they can't feed their tribe. But hating the game for it? That's a different level. In my experience, the ones who barely squeak by and then blame the system just double down on the same bad strategy next time, refusing to touch farming even when it's staring them in the face. Your mileage may vary, but I've had a buddy literally burn through his entire ore supply for fish before finally admitting that a couple early farms would've saved his skin.

calebc4016d ago

Man my buddy Dave did this exact thing last month... he refused to build any farms, kept saying they were a waste of space. He spent the whole game trading his metal and stone for fish and berries, and by the end he had nothing left to build with. He was so mad at the game, said it was broken because "you can't survive without trading everything away." Anyway I watched him play again last week and he did the same thing... traded his ore for food right off the bat, then got stuck with no resources later. It took me walking him through a whole game where I forced him to make two farms before anything else for it to finally click. He still grumbles about it but at least he stops starving now.