Small World - Game Review
The market is flooded with games that just come and go. I can’t tell you how many games I have owned that see but a single play before they are set aside never to be played again. Sometimes though - and this is very rare in the Drunk Dwarves group - a game continues to grace the table over and over again. Some how, almost magically, it scratches the itch of every player in the group. And amazingly, where many games are picked apart after a few plays when players begin to see how its found wanting, some still stand strong as the first choice on game night. Small World, by Days of Wonder is one of those games, and has been my number one pick for a few months now.
At it’s core, Small World is a light-hearted empire building game with a fantasy theme. Players choose from a variety of races and struggle over limited resources in a relatively small area. After a number of turns, the winner is the player who manages to accumulate the most victory coins (points).
The races presented are pretty common fantasy races - many classic races are represented: Orcs, Giants, Wizards, etc. and each race has their own special ability. In addition, there are also “special power” prefixes that are attached to these races that add additional abilities. This aspect makes for an incredible amount of combinations, which really adds to the games replay value. For example - if you were to draw the two cards pictured below, you would control a race of dragon riding wizards, who possess the unique abilities of both wizards and dragon riders.
Once you select a race as your own, you take a number of race tokens into your hand to represent your new civilization. How many is determined by your race and special power cards - see the numbers in the orange circles? Add those together, and that’s how many tokens you get. Now it’s time to introduce your civilization into Small World.
Small World is represented by an incredibly illustrated and colorful board. There’s multiple boards included in the game, each for a different number of players - this allows the game to scale very well. The board is divided up into different types of terrain. When you first place your race onto the board, you select a region on the edge of the map, or coastal region, and pop down 2 of your tokens to claim the region as your own. You have to place an additional token for every other token in there before you arrive. This includes enemy race tokens, mountain tokens, fortress tokens, etc. From there, you spread out to adjacent regions until all of your tokens are used up. Once you’re done, you get a victory point for each region you control, and play passes to the next player. After you play a number of turns, the player with the most wins. Its that easy.
The flavour of Small World lies in the races and their special powers. Some races may allow you to fly to any region on the map. Others may gain you extra victory points for controlling plains or fields. Still others may award you extra tokens for killing enemy tokens - the variety is huge, and makes each game unique and incredibly entertaining.
As you get attacked by other players, and spread your race thin across the landscape, they become less powerful - and eventually, you’ll want to put them in “decline”. Putting a race into decline allows you to choose another race, while the old one slowly fades out of existence. Any race you have in decline still earns you money for the regions they control, but they can no longer expand, and usually loose any special power they may have had. Knowing when to put your races into decline, and when to hold onto them for one more turn is what Small World is all about.
If I were to recommend a game to anyone out there in the interwebs, Small World would be it. Its fun, unique, has an incredible replay value - so you get your moneys worth, and is quick - you’ll usually play multiple games in any given session. Not only that, but it’s incredibly easy to pick up and play, with all of the subtle strategy hidden just below the surface for you to discover as the game progresses. If you haven’t tried this one - give it a shot. You won’t be disappointed.
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DEACON
