#82: Steinbeisser

Steinbeisser

• designer: Hajo Bucken
• publisher: Schmidt Spiele
• date: 1999
• BoardGameGeek rank/rating: not ranked/5.5
• age: 7+
• # of players: 2-6
• print status: OOP
• cost: EUR 12,50 (Amazon.de, approx. $16.00)

Have you ever seen The Never-Ending Story? (I haven't - but I know about the movie.) The great stone creatures from the film are the featured players in this very odd game of moving rocks (represented by wooden discs) around the woods.

Players take turns rolling a die & moving one of their rocks (discs) around the board - then one of the StoneBiters (that's the literal translation of the name of the game) moves one space on the stone track, eating up any rocks adjacent to their position.

But the StoneBiter not only eats those rocks - he also lumbers into the grass pathway of the players and waits for other rocks to drop into his jaws. (A new StoneBiter is placed on the stone pathway to replace him.) Of course, there's more to the game than that - there's a color die (that determines which StoneBiter will move) that sometimes allows you to shift a StoneBiter on the grass pathway & enables you to free the rocks that he's eaten.

The game ends when one player runs out of rocks or when all of the StoneBiters are on the grass pathway. You win by having the most stones left - in other words, not in the StoneBiters' bellies.

It's really an abstract game of risk management - but it's hard to see that when the nifty plastic sculpted StoneBiters sit in the center of the board. (BTW, this is one of the few games on the Kid Games 100 that the suggested age really is pretty darn appropriate.)