Description
Small World is a fun, zany, light-hearted civilization game!
In Small World, players vie for conquest and control of a world that is simply too small to accommodate them all.
Designed by Philippe Keyaerts as a fantasy follow-up to his award- winning VinciTM, Small World is inhabited by a zany cast of characters such as dwarves, wizards, amazons, giants, orcs, humans, and more who all use their troops to occupy territory and conquer adjacent lands in order to push the other races off the face of the earth.
Picking the right combination from the 14 different fantasy races and 20 unique special powers, players rush to expand their empires—often at the expense of weaker neighbors. Yet they must also know when to push their own over-extended civilization into decline and ride a new one to victory!
samandandy –
Small World is an enjoyable, relatively easy fantasy “fighting” game. While I think it is a strategy game, I would consider it a light strategy game – you don’t need to like heavy war-style games to enjoy this.
Even though this is an “older” game (in board game terms), it is still popular for a reason. It is fairly easy to learn and understand, but nuanced enough that there isn’t a “correct” way to play (my pet peeve) and every game is going to go differently, which gives the game staying power. The art is fun and a bit cartoonish. And you get to kick your friends or loved ones out of territory, gaining you points and money – what’s more fun than that?
The mechanics of the game are that you have tiles with fantasy races that have certain traits and then you have puzzle-piece style matching tiles with powers. At any time, five races are “available” to draw and each race is paired with a random one of the powers. Players have a current race and power that has a limited number of population. At any time, they can put the current race and power “in decline” to choose a new race with its power. You get points for territories that your races (both the one in power and the one in decline) occupy at the end of your turn. The powers and races will help dictate strategy, like giving you extra creatures in certain situations or making you more powerful on different types of land.
The flexibility of the game and the dependence on the random aspect (the drawing of races and randomly-matched powers) means that this game is good for players who would be more unevenly matched in a pure strategy scenario. At the same time, you can’t rely only on luck. The length is also better for younger players and a more “casual” game night.