She’s a Prime Material girl
Miss B was looking over the games collection to see if there was something she fancied playing, until she finally said, “Daddy, what’s Mage Stones?”. So we pulled it down off the shelf to give it a go.
For a game that supposedly simulates the way mages manipulate the various planes of reality it seems remarkably like sticking glass stones on a grid.
So, Mage Stones is a strategy game supposedly played by the mages of the Dragonlance world. The theming goes about as far as the artwork on the box. It is actually a simple game where you try to place all your glass beads onto the board, with allowed moves constrained by dice rolls, and under certain circumstances you can remove opposing stones.
As abstract games go, this isn’t bad, but it doesn’t really do anything for me. The game went fairly well, but it ended up being decided almost entirely by whose dice rolls yielded the most additional turns. It was Miss B.
A win for herself often goes down well. After getting Miss B’s verdict I asked her if we should play it again. Yes, definitely, she thought. Should we play it again right away? Umm, no.
The verdict from Miss B (aged 6): “Rabbit hopping is really fun and so is this game.” No, don’t ask me, I have no idea what that is all about, but she seems happy.
The game: Mage Stones (TSR), 2 to 6 players.
