Build up your society in Stonesaga a cooperative legacy game from OOMM Games. Will you make friends with or fight off the behemoth that roams the lands? And how will you build up your society as you grow, find, and develop more in Stonesaga.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mccaskellgames/stonesaga

This game, I’ll say, caught my eye because of the artwork and because I know one of the designers. With that said, as I look at what might not work and what might, I’ll try and be fair and balanced. I do want people to know, when reading this, that I have more of a connection to the game than sometimes. On the flip side, I’ve played it as part of OOMM Games playtesting, so I have experience with it. You can checkout the campaign here.

How To Play Stonesaga

Stonesaga is a legacy game where the decision you make about how to build up your society will affect the game. I will talk more about legacy aspects later. But the game play is pretty simple, you have a limited number of action points to take actions with each round and players can take their action(s) in any order.

The actions are things like gather resources, craft, hunt, fish, explore new areas and more. All of these things, or most, are done through there little game. For fishing, you are trying to complete fishing tracks to get fish as a reward and any other bonus, like more water. For hunting or foraging, you explore a tableau trying to avoid the monster and collet resources. And then you can craft using resources that you’ve found to invent or build new things.

Each of these actions is going to help you find and build towards different goals that you have. Each goal is going to lead to another though some of them are going to lead to another and to the end of that game session. And as you find stuff, your story will progress.

Why You Don’t Need This Game

Firstly, it is a legacy game. I did say that I was going to talk about that. I understand the risks of a legacy game. However, it is a legacy game that you can reset and play again, finding the story you missed maybe 2-4 times, depending on player count. But it will limit how many times you can play the game.

Also the price point of this game. It is not a cheap game, again for a legacy game as well. If you go all in, it’s a fair amount and is that worth it for a limited number of plays. To OOMM’s defense on this one I have Stars of Akarios and the products they put out are high quality. But for a game that isn’t minis filled, it is expensive, though the other content is what makes the price go up. Shipping, on the other hand, is very reasonable.

Finally, and this ties into the first one, it is a legacy game and the best legacy games for me have good story to them. I say that, but I also enjoyed Risk Legacy which is light on the story. But Pandemic Legacy seasons 1 & 2 had a lot of story and I liked them the best. Or they stuck with me the best. Charterstone was some mechanics with pasted on story. Where will Stonesaga land. And maybe it isn’t an issue for me, but I think about it.

Why You Need This Game

Let’s start out with that it is very mechanically sound and interesting. The minis games are a lot of fun as you start to dig into all of your options. Delving deeper and deeper and then needing to get back out is interesting. Fishing is a dice placement puzzle of trying to catch what you can but also not fail the check and have bad things happen. Foraging/hunting in the forest might cause you to come across a monster. But it also gives you a grid to layout to create your most optimal gathering.

Also, since I have played it, there is some solid story to it. Is it the most story, is it like Pandemic with story between missions that tells you how the world is changing, or a paragraph in Aeon’s End Legacy, no, it is less. But it is more than Charterstone. And the decision you make, how you build up your settlement, will make a difference in what you explore next as the story branches out. And I like that story but I also like how it does the branching as well.

Finally, this one is based off my experience with OOMM Games games not doing the playtesting or the company itself. But their games are a lot of fun. They offer a ton of different and unique things in them. Stars of Akarios is very ambitious but works really well with a hodgepodge of mechanics and provides a fun story. So based off of my gaming history with OOMM Games, I don’t know if this is a game you’ll want to miss.

Back or Brick – Stonesaga

This is a Back for me. And I backed it at the highest level. Now, I will say that if it wasn’t OOMM Games and I didn’t know the designer, I might have backed it at the lower level. The value seems just a bit stronger there for what you are getting. Though as the campaign goes on, that might change.

But this is a game that will have limited retail availability. OOMM does seem to get some extra stock but they don’t have wide retail releases. And things like expansions will be harder to get. Yes, that is leaning into the FOMO, but I’m doing so based off of playing it.

Now, there are reasons it won’t be for everyone. If you like to get two games a year and delve into them 50+ times each, legacy won’t work. But you already know that. I do think mechanically, with snappy quick actions it is accessible. I found that it is very collaborative as you play, and that players stay engaged because of the mechanics.

How about for you, is it a back or brick?

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