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Dwarf Stones is an abstract American wargame by Jeff Walker, published by Three Sages Games.
Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 1 hour
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)
The Game Components
 Dwarf Stones comes with:
- 1 map
- 60 war bands
- 16 gems
- 2 dice
- 1 rulebook
Map: A light green cloth map printed in dark green. It shows a very geometric arrangement of fortresses, mines, and mountains, as well as paths between them.
War Bands: 60 glass stones in four different colors. Two of the colors are large-sized stones and two are small. Though the colors are very similar (two blues and two pinks) it was easy to make them out in play, and the choice of different sized but similarly colored stones allows for their combination in two-player games.
Gems: Funky looking, angular acrylic stones. They're entirely unique, and very cool looking.
Dice: Two plastic white dice, inked in black.
Rulebook: A black and white rulesheet which does a decent job of explaining the rules.
Packaging: The entire game comes in a plastic tube, which is pretty compact, but also pretty annoying when you're trying to get everything back in.
A few additional notes:
First, this game is entirely beautiful when you play it. The various glass stones, spread out over a very geometric board, create an a very attractive and artful gaming space.
Second, the utility of the game is a bit low. There are a number of special rules regarding various ways gems can be used, the results of mining rolls, the bonuses for combats, and what can and can't be done without a supply line that really should have been printed on either the board or reference sheets. Some are pretty easy to remember, while some required reference during the game.
On the whole I've given Dwarf Stones a high "4" out of "5" for Style. The components are nice and the beauty is high; the only issue is utility which will dissolve after a couple of games.
The Gameplay
The object of Dwarf Stones is to eliminate all your opponents by taking over their fortresses.
Setup: Each player chooses an initial fortress, one of the four on the board, and places his first warband in that fortress.
The Map. As noted, the map is very geometric. The fortresses are roughly in the center of the board. There's a mine a few spaces from each fortress, and notably there's a fifth mine in the center of the board, which will probably be a source of conflict. The mines on the edges of the board are each connected by tunnels, making it easy to jump from one to another, and creating more conflict in the game.
Order of Play: Each turn a player engages in four actions:
- Build
- Move
- Mine
- Combat
Build: A player may build 1 new warband for free, and additional war bands for 2 collected gems each. A warband must be built on a space with an existing warband and a supply line (an unbroken line of warbands to the player's fort).
There is a stacking limit of 3 at a fort and 2 everywhere else, so that also limits new unit placement.
Move: Each war band with a supply line that is also in a space with at least one other war band may move one space, to a space not occupied by an enemy.
Each gem may likewise be moved one space. Players will be moving these back towards their forts so that they can use them. Generally, gems may only be used when they've been moved to a fort and collected.
Mine. Each unit in a mine rolls a d6. On a 1-3 they find a gem, which is placed on a board. On a 4-5 nothing happens. On a 6 a monster attacks. This is fought as a combat with a few special rules, but it occurs immediately.
Opponents may give a +2 to your mining die roll by spending a collected gem.
Combat: A unit adjacent to an enemy, and with a supply line may attack that enemy. Each player rolls a d6, with +1 per warband involved and +1 for the defender if he's in the mountains.
Collected gems may be spent be spent at the ratio of one for a +1, or three for a +2, before the dice are rolled.
The loser of the die roll loses a number of troops equal to the difference in rolls. In case of a tie, no one loses.
If the defenders were utterly destroyed, the attacker may immediately advance a unit into the space following the normal rules of movement (meaning he has to have at least 2 units in an adjacent space, so that he can move one out).
Winning the Game: You eliminate an opponent by entering his fort (also capturing his collected gems when you do).
You win the game by eliminating all of your opponents.
Relationships to Other Games
Dwarf Stones is an abstract wargame.
A lot of abstracts have symmetrical boards, symmetrical starting positions, and light theming. Dwarf Stones generally meets these criteria.
Wargames cover a pretty wide range of gameplay, and this is on the super-light side of things. It reminded some of our players of Risk because of the lightness and the heavy influence of the dice in the game. It's, however, a lot lighter and shorter than Risk.
There's also a very small amount of resource management, via the gems.
The Game Design
For a wargame, Dwarf Stones has a lot of fairly interesting elements. The need for supply lines and the resource management of the gems both are interesting mechanisms that give an extra aspect to the gameplay. The board has also been well-designed to encourage conflict thanks to the uneven allocation of the mines.
However, unfortunately, all of this interesting game design becomes entirely irrelevent in the face of the die rolls. The game is, not to put it too lightly, entirely random. A single six-sided die roll determines the outcome of each battle, which means that even with good defenses and maximum gem expenditure (for a total of +3), the die roll means loss or victory. The variance is just too high, and it pretty much ruins the game.
Now, American games do tend to be a lot more random than German games, and I tried to account for that when playing, but in this game the victor is almost entirely determined by who rolls better. Period.
One of our players suggested two changes to improve the gameplay: using a d4 for combat (to lower variance) and allowing units to retreat along their lines (because as it stands, when a player gets spread out he can't consolidate due to the movement restrictions). Those might help, or they might just make the game drag on.
As is, what could have been a light, if simplistic, wargame instead is entirely an exercise in die-rolling. I've given it a "2" out of "5" for Substance as a result.
Conclusion
Dwarf Stones is a light, abstract wargame with nice systems for simple resource allocation and management. However, the die rolls entirely overpower the game, making it entirely an exercise in randomness--even more so than most games in this style.
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