Stonehenge: Make Your Own Awesome

I'm a big fan of board games. A big fan. But one of my complaints is that there are so many copycat games out there, where the only real difference is the theme. So when I ran across Stonehenge (Amazon) in my local game store I was intrigued by the subtitle "an anthology game."

"What's that?" I said. I wanted to know badly enough to buy it. So I did. And I found out.

Apparently, and anthology game (as the name implies) is a game with one board and one set of pieces, but with multiple sets of rules. I'm not just talking about difficulty variations or little alternative options you can use to throw a wrench in the regular game play. I mean completely different sets of rules. Multiple games: one set of equipment. Like a deck of cards.

In fact, that was exactly the inspiration for Stonehenge, the creators say. They grew up being amazed by how many different games you could play with the same deck. They wanted to create a board game with which you could do the same thing.

Which is awesome, really. Stonehenge comes with five different rule sets included, and you can buy an expansion that has two more, plus extra pieces for more players (Amazon).

All the games you buy are created by professional game designers, which is cool. But here's the best part. There's a website holding scores of more rule sets created by Stonehenge users like me and you. You can print off any set you want for free. You can even make up your own game and post the rules there for others to enjoy. The available genres so far range from betting to bluffing, racing to high fantasy. There are political/economic games with complex systems of scoring and winning and simple get-around-the-board-first games. Games for any number of players, including only one. Stonehenge solitaire with sacred stones and druids - how awesome is that?

So the only question left is what game will you invent to go with this incredibly awesome concept? What kind of awesome will you be?