Small World Review

Small World is a game for 2 to 5 players based on its older brother Vinci, also designed by Philippe Keyaerts.

In Small World you’ll fight for control of a fantasy island that is just too small for everyone, but contrary to most civilization type games, you won’t lead your race to victory, various races will lead you to it.

Games usually last between 45 to 90 minutes and in that time players will cycle through 2 or 3 races.

You start with a race that has a special power attached to it (more on that later), enter the map through one of the border regions of the board, conquer some territories and at the end of the turn score 1 point for each territory. Eventually you’ll stretch out your race so much that you’ll have to put it into decline, you will still get points from the territories that race occupies but will have a chance to enter the board with a new race.

This ends up being one of the most important decisions in the game, knowing when to quit.

What is it all about?

You start the game with 5 Victory coins and the choice of 6 available race/special power combos. If you want the first race on the queue you take it for free, for any other race further up you pay 1 victory coin per step leaving the coin on the races you didn’t take(thus making them more appealing to other players). Whenever someone chooses a race another one enters through the last place of the queue.

You get the number of race tokens indicated on your race banner plus the number on the special power badge. Now it’s time to enter the board. Whenever you are entering you can only enter through one of the outside border regions of the map, or any outside region that is touching a border sea.

The map is initially set up with lost tribes tokens (neutral race tokens) on several predetermined regions and mountain tokens on every mountain region. To enter any region you must use 2 of your tokens plus 1 token for each token already in place there. So if you were entering from an empty region you’d place two tokens there, if you were entering through a mountain region you’d place 3 tokens there (2 for the region and 1 for the mountain token), if you entering through a region occupied by a lost tribe token you’d use 3 tokens and discard the opposing token.

Once you enter you can attack adjacent regions to yours and do this until you decide to stop or your tokens run out. If by any chance you have left over tokens but not enough to conquer a region you can make one final attack using the reinforcement die. The die has 6 faces, three of them are blank and the other 3 have values from 1 to 3. Just choose the region you wish to attack and if the tokens you have left plus the number on the die make it enough to conquer the region just put your tokens there, if not the excess tokens go to another region you already control.

Now you can rearrange your tokens to prepare for defense, take all your tokens except one and redistribute them through your territories. You score 1 point for each region you’re in control and keep the score hidden from other players.

On your next turns you’ll take as much tokens you want into your hand and keep conquering. When conquering enemy regions you attack with 2 plus the number of tokens your enemy has (plus any other tokens present of course), your opponent takes all his tokens into his hand except one which is discarded, the rest are distributed by his remaining regions at the end of your turn.

This goes on for several turns, but as your race becomes increasingly difficult to manage due to the lack of tokens you may start wondering if it isn’t better to start anew. In Small World you can. At the beginning of your turn instead of conquering regions you can choose to put your race into decline, you leave one token in each region you control and discard the rest, turn those tokens face down (to show a faded in decline race) and score for those regions, the next turn you will choose another race and enter the board just like in the first turn, except now you’re also scoring for your other in decline race. You can’t play with that race anymore but it still gives you valuable points.

The game has a fixed amount of turns at the end of those turns you tally the points and the person with more points wins.

What makes the game different every time is the race and special power pairings, every race has an ability, from getting one extra point on farmlands to having to use one less token for attack on coastal regions or even no ability (like the Ratmen whose main charm are their numbers) coupled with the special powers, which grant another ability, sometimes great combinations appear, it’s your task to choose the best of them in order to maximize your point income.

In the box

The box is completely filled with eye candy, from 2 double-sided colorful boards (one for each player number), various race tokens, race banners, 6 player aids (which I must admit are too large to use by each player in smaller tables), etc. All illustrated by Miguel Coimbra (who also illustrated Giants).

The insert is one of the most useful I’ve ever seen in a game, even bringing a little detachable box where to put and divide all the race tokens. All publishers should follow the example of what Days of Wonder accomplished here.

Is this game for me?

Some people are turned off by fantasy themes, if you’re one of these people you probably won’t enjoy the whole crazy fantasy theme with sprinkles of humor here and there (some combinations are kind of funny: Wealthy Ratmen, Merchant Ghouls, Diplomat Orcs, etc.)

If you look past the theme (or enjoy it like me) the game is really well designed. The rules are simple to explain, but allow for good strategic decisions. New players will be a bit overwhelmed by the various combinations of abilities, but it’s nothing an experienced player or a glance of the player aid can’t solve.

It’s a very very light civilization type game. Did I mention it was light? Because this is the main “flaw” that Vinci players point in the game. Vinci was a meatier game, it had some more rules that made it a different game stuff like bonus when attacking from mountains, not being able to be adjacent to your in decline race, having to maintain your troops together and open scoring.  I like Vinci a lot, but what makes it a great game also makes it a bit more convoluted and brain burning. Days of Wonder tried to present a simpler version, also very challenging and that played in half the time.

Disregard what Vinci players say about Vinci being more “thematic”, the only theme you find in Vinci is that it has a map of Europe, the rest are generic ability combinations. In Small World on the other hand the races and special powers make sense thematically and you’ll soon find that these help memorize the different abilities.

This game also scales very well from 2 to 5 players as there is a different board with different number of regions for each number of players. I have played it with every number of players and though the experiences are very different the game is always fun to play. Congratulations to Days of Wonder yet again for presenting a game that is actually playable with each of the numbers that says in the box.

Even though the game has just been released I’m eagerly awaiting a 6 player expansion and more races and special powers. Though the races and special powers are sufficient, in larger games there is a bit of lack of choice as there are times there are only 3 or 4 races in queue.

Final Score

8