Time to go back in history to the Stone Age, to fight terrifying animals and the relentless elements of nature. This time a cooperative Paleo boardgame, in which we will struggle to survive and develop. I invite you to read.
📜 Game flow / rules
We place 3 boards in the middle of the table (base camp, wilderness and night board), above the boards we place the 3D workbench and the cementary to which some cards will go. We add torch, flint and spear tokens to the workbench, these are our basic items that we can make. Put 5 food markers on the base camp board. Now choose the appropriate scenario and then prepare several shuffled decks. Place decks of people, dreams and ideas on the camp board. Each player starts with 2 people cards, this is our starting tribe, and we also select tool tokens shown on the people cards.
We win the game when we collect 5 victory tokens with a mammoth painting. How to get them? It will come out during the game, depending on the scenario you chosed, I won't spoil the fun. We lose the game when we get 5 skull tokens. What if we get 5 skulls and 5 victory tokens at the same time? We win the game :)
Each scenario is divided into modules containing 1 mission card (with the moon on the back) and several mystery cards (with a number on the back). These cards are placed on the night board. Additionally, some modules may contain idea cards, these cards with the corresponding tokens are placed on the workbench. Modules can also provide us with cards placed in the wilderness. They are considered when we complete the mission that is on them. At the end, we shuffle all the remaining cards along with the set of basic cards, give the cards to the players evenly and then proceed to the game.
Day phase:
It’s time to start our struggle! In every turn we select 3 cards from top of our deck (we do not turn them over!). And by looking only at the picture on the back of the card, we choose one of them. A river, a forest, a mountain, a shelter, a human, a dream, an idea, a danger and many others can be depicted there. Each of the pictures is to tell us what we can expect in a given event. For example, we have a better chance of getting wood tokens in the forest than in the mountains. 😊
All players reveal their cards simultaneously and resolve one of the options. It can be getting food, wood, stone, but also additional tokens that can help us in future turns. It can also be a danger that can injure or kill our fellow tribe. Each card has specific requirements that must be met in order to obtain something from it or protect yourself from dangers. This can be, for example, requiring a certain skill or discarding the X cards in your deck. When we perform the action of discarding cards, we also have to be careful that we do not discard a card with danger, if so, then one of our people will suffer a wound.
After resolving all cards and their effects, discard them to the wilderness board. On the right field we put the cards that were resolved, on the left we put the cards that we "sacrificed". When we receive a wound, we place a cracked stone heart in the empty space on the character card of our choice. When we have no other option than placing the heart on the field with the skull, a given tribe member dies and we add a skull token to the night board. The day phase lasts until all players have discarded / revealed all cards in their deck. Then we move on to the night phase.
Night phase:
During the night phase, tribesmen will rest, eat, and perform missions. During this phase, we must discard one food token from the common resource pool for each tribe member. If we cannot discard enough food, unfortunately we get a skull for every hungry tribe member. Then, each mission card is resolved. If we cannot meet one of the conditions, we get another skull. Once we have completed all actions from the night phase, we go back to the day phase. We take all the cards from the wilderness board, shuffle them and deal them again equally to each player.🤔 Impressions
The game components are of good quality. Cardboard boards and tokens should not stratify, they are pleasant to touch. The same for resource tokens. The graphics on the cards are great, they add nice impressions to the gameplay experience. When we see a few red cards in our deck, we immediately feel fear of what may lie ahead. However, I have a little problem with keeping everything spick and span. To keep the cards from getting mixed up, we can put them in string bags and that's it. It spoils the pulling and arrangement of the game a lot, it gives the impression of a mess which I do not like very much. It is a pity that this has not been solved with hiding the cards in the appropriate compartments, it would make everything much easier and encourage to play more often.
The gameplay itself is intuitive and nobody should have any problems with understanding the rules. The game is easy to play and you can learn it just by going through some turns. However I would say that the game is difficult becouse of randomness (of course it also depends on the chosen scenario). We can get a game where everything goes our way or a game where we are completely destroyed after one day. This may not suit everyone. I still can't handle a few scenarios. The game also allows you to create your own scenarios by mixing modules, which definitely increases the replayability of the game.
☺️ Summary
It is a very simple game in which we can play even with people who have not played too many games before, but we must be prepared for the fact that some scenarios can give us a hard time and we must be focused on common priorities from the very beginning. It's not my top 5, however I like to sit to it and try to overcome the hardships of life in the Stone Age.
General information:
- Number of players: 2-4 people
- Gameplay: 45-60 minutes
- Age: 10+
- Game Author: Peter Rustemeyer
- Illustrated: Dominik Mayer, Ingram Schell
- Polish Publisher: Lucky Duck Games
- Release date: 2020
If you have any suggestions / tips / advice, I will be happy to read them, please leave them in the comment or send them to the e-mail wozmil95@gmail.com. For more photos visit instagram "dice_dizziness" 🎲.
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