SiegeStones
Published by: Live Oak Games
For more information or to order: www.liveoakgames.com

SiegeStones is a strategy game created by Live Oak Games.  When we opened the box we immediately noticed the quality of the contents.  There is no plastic or cardboard; the board and the towers are wooden and the playing pieces are polished stones.  One stone in our game was broken, but since plenty of stones were supplied, we were still able to play the game without any problems. 

The rules of the game are very simple.  Each player chooses a set of colored stones.  On his turn, a player can place a stone or a tower on one of the 37 circles on the board.  Each stone starts with a "threat rating" of 6.  If the stone is next to a tower, its threat rating is reduced to 5.  Each adjacent tower reduces the stone's rating by 1.  Each player adds up the threat ratings of his colored stones around each tower to see who controls the tower.  A tower must have a rating of at least 5 by one color in order to be controlled by that color.  The player who controls the tower puts his colored stone on top of the tower.  In order to win SiegeStones, you need to control 4 towers.

The box says that this game is for 2 to 4 players.  When we played with 2 people and 8 towers, it was easy for each person to work on getting control of 4 towers.  Playing with 3 players was much more challenging because there are only 9 towers.  Usually each player will place 3 towers, and then the only way for someone to get control of a 4th tower is to take a tower controlled by another player.  We didn't play the game with 4 people, but we think it would be hard for one person to control 4 towers.  So even though the rules are very simple, winning the game is much more challenging!

The age recommendation on the back of the box says 7+.  Since there is so much strategy involved we think the lower age limit should be 9.  Adding threat values and taking towers from others got confusing for our 8-year-old sister.  One of the nice things about SiegeStones is that adults can enjoy it just as much as children.

The box also says that a game usually takes 10 to 30 minutes, but most of our games were closer to 10 or 15 minutes.  Two players can sometimes finish in 5 minutes.

We really enjoyed playing SiegeStones!  We had to play it a few times before we began to figure out some good strategies.  We thought 3-player games were more complex than playing with just 2 people.  We would recommend this game because the rules are simple to learn, the game is short, and the strategy made it challenging.

Making the Grade: A+
Cost: $24.95
Value for your homeschool dollar: 10
Reviewed by Celest (mom), Jared, and Nathan Puls