Beth Zhao, Richard Shay and Lyman Moquin play on Board #2 in a packed Maretta room.	At Board #11: Sean Vessey, Meghan Friedmann, Donna Harrington and Jeff Cierniak.

For Marvin Birnbaum alternately populating his Stone Age clan to the maximum and then starving it along with using his resources to the utmost was the strategy that worked for him. Some critics would say that starving your people is not ethical, but this is a game where the people are actually just pieces of wood on a board. Numerous players tried this strategy with varying degrees of success (eight winners, seven seconds, seven thirds, and four fourths). At least one player tried this in 19 of the 52 games played). At the end of the game Marvin was at 91 on the scoring track, and his closest competitor Rodney Bacigalupo was at 60. He then garnered 40 more points for four Shamans with his population of 10, while Rodney narrowed the gap somewhat with 57 points for his Hut Builders, Tool Makers, Farmers, Shamans, and number of unused resources.

The tournament remained very well attended in its second year. All games were 4-player primarily because potential players had to be turned away due to a lack of available games - keeping attendance in mutiples of four to match the available games on hand.

Now, for those who like statistics here are some interesting ones. In calculating where the winners got the most points vs. second, third and fourth place: the winners got the smallest percentage of their points from buildings (50% vs 56, 59, and 60% for second, third, and fourth place respectively) and they also earned the smallest percentage from the unused resources (1.5% vs 2.5, 3.0, and 5.5%). After the points from the huts, the winners got most points from green cards (11.72% vs 12.01, 12.29, and 8.68%), shamans (11.25% vs 8.36, 7.77 and 4.79%), tool makers (10.67% vs 6.44, 6.32, and 8.91%), hut builders (7.22% vs 8.61, 7.26, and 6.40%) and farmers (7.19% vs 5.99, 4.08, and 5.44%). The average total points of the winners was 165.67; second place: 143.58; third: 176.27; fourth: 103.65.

The highest winning score was 266, the lowest was 105. The largest point spread between first and fourth was 136, and the smallest was 22. We did tie-breakers by the percentage of your score against the table's total score. The highest percentage was 36%; the lowest was 14%; the biggest gap in percentages was 34% and the lowest was 4.28% (the scores in that game were: 163, 160, 147, 137).

Board #13 occupies Kathy Stroh, Eric Freeman and Alfred Smith.	GM Rodney Bacigliao oversees his finalists.

 On-Line Tournament

The first online Stone Age event featured 23 players broken down into five groups for two-player pool play. Each player had a minimum of three games logged to create a 12-player round robin tournament. Players were seeded based on pool records. There were five players who had perfect pool records. Eric Freeman led with a 4-0 slate, followed by Raphael Lehhrer, Kevin Wojtaszczyk, Greg Thatcher, and Max Jamelli each at 3-0. Tied records were seeded based on the average points scored. Eric's 4-0 record earned him the #1 seed even though Lehrer had the highest points average of 285.

The tournament was not decided by chalk though - only one higher seeded player won an opening round game, and only two of those with first round byes won their way into the semis. The best two-of-three Final match came down to top seed Eric Freeman and sixth seeded Stefan Mecay. Freeman suffered his first loss of the event as Mecay was able to secure cards and buildings late to turn a two-point advantage late into a convincing 253-195 win. Freeman bounced back in Game 2 with a 234-215 victory to force a decisive Game 3. There, Freeman was able to secure several multi-resource huts including a very fortuitous 1-7 hut to outscore Mecay late and earn a hard fought 214-201 victory to claim the title.