Sage Stones Review —Oooh, pretty rocks!

When our team first saw TNT Laser Works’ Sage Stones back at the media first look at Origins last year, it was immediately apparent that the boards are works of art, up there with a nice crokinole set. When we got a review copy of the still rather nice leather scroll travel edition, I had to answer if it was a good game or not. After some serious critical consideration, I've landed on the extremely erudite position of: eh, kinda?

Sage Stones plays as the lovechild of Go and Sorry!. On their turn, players roll 3d3, drop one of their stones in the column of the sum, and return an opponent’s stone they've flanked, with a final objective of dropping all your stones onto the board. Flanking lines work orthogonal, diagonal, and wraps around the edges of the board, which introduces a minor pain point since continuing a diagonal through a wrapped board isn't exactly a snap read. I understand that it was necessary from a design standpoint to prevent congestion at column endpoints, but it still merits mentioning. The real pain point is the gain/lose a turn mechanic, where players drop an extra stone if all their dice have the same result and don't drop any if they're all different. Readers who remember enough of high school statistics will be able to calculate this as a pretty sizable 2/9 chance of not having a turn. Since turns are really fast, it's not that big of a deal at lower player counts, but when there's five other people sitting around the table, you're pretty much guaranteed that someone else will have hit triples and you'll have lost a lot of your board position while you were sitting on your hands.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a huge fan of Sage Stones, the game. On the other hand, Sorry is my wife's favorite game, so having an alternative that I can play with her is nice enough. Thing is, I would be remiss if I didn't address the price point. $275 is nothing to sneeze at, and while the $55 leather scroll is much less of a dent in the old pocketbook, it is a smidge pricey for a game that appeals most to the Target market while still feeling clumsy.