Are you looking for a complex game that allows you to build up your own society? Fire and Stone might be the game for you. Published by Pegasus Spiele, designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede with art by Hendrik Noack, Fire and Stone has players lead their tribes through the stone age as they explore the world and gather resources. As your tribe grows and evolves, more exploration becomes possible, and by the end of the game the player with the most expansive society gets to claim the win.
What’s in the Box?
- 1 Game Board
- 24 Animal Tiles
- 24 Bag Tiles
- 63 Discovery Tiles
- 30 Food Tokens
- 17 Invention Cards
- 24 Cave Cards
- 4 Player Aid Cards
- 1 End-Of-Game Card
- 5 Task Cards
- 14 Victory Point Cards
- 4 Starting Invention Cards
- 4 Tribe Mats
- 4 Placement Cards
- 12 Scouts (3 each Red, Blue, Yellow, and Black)
- 80 Huts (20 each Red, Blue, Yellow, and Black)
- 8 Start Gathering Tiles (2 each Red, Blue, Yellow, and Black)
- 4 Marking Stones (1 each Red, Blue, Yellow, and Black)
- Plastic Baggies for Storing Game Pieces
- Rule Booklet and Game Appendix
How to Play Fire and Stone
After setting up the Discovery Tiles on the board, each player picks a scout color, and the first player is chosen at random by the group. Players will also get a Tribe Mat, a placement card, huts, and marking stones that all correspond to their chosen scout color (In a 4-player game, players will also place the Start Gathering tiles that match their color on their tribe mat).
During their turn, players are able to move their scouts up to two areas away from where they started as long as the areas are adjacent to each other. The game starts in Region One, and players cannot move on to Region Two or Three until a certain amount of hut Discovery tiles are revealed. If a player moves to a space where the discovery tile is not yet revealed, the player must perform the effect the tile calls for and can choose whether or not to perform the action it calls for.
The end of the game is triggered when the final Hut Discovery Tile is revealed or when a player builds their final hut, though the latter only happens in rare cases. The player who finds the hut card gets one more turn, and the other players will get two before the game is officially over.
Players will then calculate their scores by tallying up their victory points, the person with the most being the winner. The total is the combined sum of a player’s victory cards, one point per hut on the board, their task card, and one point for each settlement where they have the majority of the huts.
What Do We Think?
While Fire and Stone is good fun once you get into the game, it takes a lot of brain power to get everything going. The sheer number of pieces you have to sort out to start the game means it takes a bit of time for first-time players to learn how things work, which made playing it for this review a bit of a challenge.
Fire and Stone isn’t a game where you can do a quick rundown of the instructions either. The rulebook is helpful (if not a bit wordy), and if you’re someone who takes a bit of time to grasp onto lots of different factors like this game has, you’ll want to keep it close to you while you play.
That said, if these kinds of games are your thing, this will probably be a really great experience for you and your friends. Not only is there a lot of complexity to them, something that means it can go on for a significant amount of time, but the art is also amazing and really ties the whole game together.
You can grab a copy of Fire & Stone direct from Pegasus Spiele or at your FLGS!
Images and review copy courtesy of Pegasus Spiele
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