Small worlds game card

About my reviews. I try to judge the game as it is designed. No house rules, variants and expansions are reviewed separately. While I may apply a numeric rating, it would be my desire you ignore that number while reading my reviews. What I want to do is highlight notable aspects of the game and critique the game to help you decide if you think it may be something that interests you. Thanks for your time.

Basic Idea: You control a series of fantasy inspired races with special powers as you quickly gain power, spread yourself too thin, go into decline and take up a new race. Game Play: Powers are randomly matched with races at the beginning of the game. Players take turn making their first choices for the species they plan on sponsoring first.

Meanwhile some of the powers you might get include flying, seafaring, berserk and dragon tamers. Each player gets a handy cheat sheet that explains each race and power as well as the turn set up and types of land available.

The sheet is a little too large to sit in front of you, but very in depth. You collect a victory point for each piece of land you occupy plus bonuses for your race and power. When your turn comes around again you can pick up all your pieces but one for each piece of land and start expanding again. Sometimes you can even go into decline times in a game.

The amount of rounds changes based on the number of players, but once you reach the last round, the game is over and players count up their victory points. The one with the most points wins!

I was definitely my gateway game. I loved the fantasy theme and the different boards for the number of players. And the expansions were great as well. I also play most of my games with only a single other person, whether my wife or a friend over for the evening. Small World fills my constraints wonderfully. There are multiple boards for rebalancing from two to five players. First, attacking is a simple comparison, with at most one die roll. As in Diplomacy, whoever has the most units wins, but Small World also allows you to roll a die to add a random number of units to your attack.

This means that each turn moves fast, as most of the time is spent deciding where to send your units, and not resolving a dozen die rolls over a single attack. Second, your army has a race and a class, which you get to choose. Some combinations are downright broken Commando Amazons? Good night! The queue of upcoming pairs is visible on the side of the board, in order. You can choose the next pair in the queue for free, but must pay one VP for each pair you choose to skip. This balances the more powerful pairs, and also provides compensation you get all coins paid for skipping your pair for the person who eventually chooses the underpowered pair.

When you get your army initially, you have a limited number of units to use for attacking. You need at least one unit occupying an area to control it, and you get VPs based on the number of areas you control, which creates a difficult decision.

However, once an army has gone into decline, they only maintain a single unit in each area, you can no longer attack with them, and you lose your next turn. This means that the choice as to when you go into decline has a huge effect on the game.

The final major difference is two-fold: semi-hidden victory points and a turn limit. This means that quite a few games end with loads of tension while people count Dominion does this very well. You can play it quick-and-dirty, just attacking where you feel, but the choice of when to drop into decline makes skill and thought a major factor in victory.

First off, the objective. The person who has the most victory points at the end of the game wins, so its relatively simple. You gain victory points by having your race control spots on the map, each spot giving you at least 1 victory point. As the game goes on and you gain more territory, you will be running out of units because you must keep 1 unit on your territory at all times and through your opponents invading your territories, so you will be able to put your race on decline.

When you do this, you get to choose another race and continue. The gameplay is super easy to understand and explain, but with lots of depth that makes it interesting. There is a bit of luck in this randomness, but it offers a lot of strategy. The art in the game from the race design to the map design is really good.

Its has a light-hearted fantasy feel to it, with some bright and cartoony colors that would appeal to some people. I can see that the art stylings may not appeal to everybody, especially for a fantasy genre, but I found it to be quite terrific to my own tastes.

My verdict? I love the game more than I thought I would actually. My first few play throughs we are a bit difficult I got my rear end handed to me my first game playing through it shows that it has a real intuitive play style.

Its definitely a keeper game, I think. Who would I recommend it to? People who are new to the hobby would like to check it out because its not very intimidating in the least. Overall, being an avid gamer that I am, its definitely a keeper and one I would love to introduce to my friends and family down the line. Small World is a military strategy game in its core, but outside of that grizzled interior contains a whimsical fantasy gooey shell which will have you falling in love with races like Flying Trolls, Swamp Dwarves, Dragon Master Halflings, or Seafaring Skeletons, only to abandon them halfway through the game for a completely new race.

It is completely up to you as to how you play this game, just make sure that after 9 rounds you have the most Victory points! To earn Victory points all you have to do is conquer and hold territories. When you initially choose your starting race you will be given character tokens according to the corresponding numbers on your special ability and race cards.

With these tokens you will then begin your conquest. It will cost you two tokens to conquer an empty region. For every other unit on top of a region, whether it be a mountain, Lost Tribesman, or another player, it will cost you one extra token per unit. At the end of your turn you get 1 Victory point for every piece of land you own. From here on out it is a mad dash to conquer as much as you can and rake in the points.

Eventually players will begin to bash heads and will inevitably start to attack each other. This makes it so players will start to lose more and more units, thus making it harder to conquer new regions. Lose too many units and your ability to hold your regions will grow harder as well. When you think your race has over-exhausted itself you can put it into decline. What this does is flips over all your tokens leaving one token in every region you control. You still earn points for holding these regions and on your next turn you get to start out with a whole new race and begin your bloody conquest all over again.

The best part about Small World is that every time you play it, the game changes. The races and special powers are completely random so one game you can play as the Hill Elves, then in the next game you can play as the Fortified Elves. This is the reason I keep coming back to Small World. With 14 races and 20 special powers the combinations are limitless. Currently there are 4 expansions for Small World, including a stand-alone game titled, Small World: Underground, which takes the action below the surface with Gnomes, Cultists, Drow, Mummies, and many more.

Small World comes with two reversible game boards that change depending on the number of players. Never has murdering Elves and Giants felt so good. Game on! Bottom line up front: You owe it to yourself to check out a game so immensely popular and highly recommended. I thought this would be perfect for my family when I discovered it.

Creatures are nicely stylized so they can be appreciated by older players and not too heavy for younger players. The best thing about this game is that the designers give you 2 double-sided gameboards. We get an optimized board for each interval of 2 through 5 players. The head scratcher of the package is the inclusion of 2-D mountain tokens. You place those on the areas already clearly depicted as mountains on the gameboard artwork.

They are to remind you that they are mountains game implications for defensive value. They are easy to set up because the appropriate areas already look like mountains.

There are no tokens to remind you that water areas are water as that would be unnecessary. No negative bearing on the game, however. You could leave them in the box. I believe there have been multiple designs for the packaging and insert. I think I have the newer version. The truth is that there is a lot less luck involved than risk. Attack results are often predictable. This is nice. A little luck can be available, but not at all required.

You will be rewarded for managing your armies well. Randomizing creature race and class gives many options ?? The trade off completely acceptable here is that you never get excited about a particular group and personally connect with them. The game never goes too long. Usually minutes. I often play with kids and reduce rounds rather than go long to give them the time they need to manage their turns.

You always know how many rounds are left. You earn VPs each round for occupying territory and applying modifiers based on race and class being used. These get tallied at the end to determine winner. The totals are hidden so you have an idea of how each player is doing, but there is no official score until the end.

In 3 or 4 player games, prepare for the attempts to convince you to attack the other player. Everyone likes to let you know they are not doing well. Actually, for a number of reasons I think Small World works best as a two player game.

Personal Observation: I do wish it was more satisfying to conquer an area on the map. This is personal and hard to express, but I think the lack of either of two things makes it a less significant event. Secondly, the terrain areas are very anonymous. With Risk, I could feel satisfied that I just conquered the Australian west, for example. Zero impact on gameplay, but while the types of terrain may have gaming characteristics, there is no real theme carried over to the individual pieces within that type.

This is very subtle nitpicking. Great theme and art. My family will play it. Game time hits the sweet spot. Good value. I should love this game. It seems on paper that it was made for me. Maybe it tries too hard for me. Their only flaw was having that much interest in you unforgivable, really. It is good enough for me to play through once in a while. Maybe one day it will completely click for me, too.

Small World appealed to me because I had read some reviews detailing how the fighting occurs. It sounded like it could be tactical like risk but without the luck of the dice roll.

Interesting , right? I opened it up with my league buddies and we all OOhed and AAhed at the colourful art design and beautiful boards. We read the rules, quick and easy to understand.

We also watched a video of it being played just to make sure any minor quibbles were addressed. Each time it ended we wanted to go again and see what type of armies would become available, every game was different and we enjoy that immensely.

There are 14 races in the game with 20 possible powers. These are both shuffled and then joined to create the races available for the game. You could have flying zombies, that could attack… anywhere on the map!

There are 4 boards available, one each for whether you are playing with 2, 3, 4 or 5 players. This, coupled with the fact that the number of turns changed depending on how many players are involved, creates balance. Play style generally boils down to taking your army tokens, the amount varies depending on race and power combinations, and placing them in a territory at the edge of the map.

You can then attack or spread from this one zone to any that are linked in zones you occupy. You want to take an enemies territory? You place the same number of tokens in there zone plus two and its yours. This has to be a smart move as you miss a turn but collect a new race to do it all again on the next go. We have found that no matter how well you think you are doing it is always a close game for first.

Go out and get it. Replay Value: Easy to learn in a bright and colourful rulebook. Components: Lovely artwork and presentation, as is the days of Wonder way. My only grumble is no miniatures. Easy to Learn: Yep. Highly recommended. At first glance smallworld seems a lot like risk with a silly fantasy themed twist. I feel that this is a good candidate for a gateway game for those that like lots of interaction between players.

It can seem somewhat overwhelming to newer players the first time through, but most will have a good sense of the rules by the time they are finished their first game. Depending on the number of players you will start by selecting one of the several maps included in the game. The various sized boards does a good job of keeping a sense of urgency and interaction depending on the player pool. Besides setting up the board the players randomly shuffle the race boards each with their own ability and separately shuffle the power boards with a separate game changing ability.

These are randomly put together to make new and interesting combinations each and every game. Although it may not be great for players that like deep strategy it will be good for those that like quick fast paced action. They then use those race tokens to capture and control regions on the game board. Each space starts by needing two to capture but this goes up with the number of opponents, special abilities or the presence of mountains.

Players will continue to do this until the number of rounds indicated on the map is over. I will not take the time to go into reviewing the various races and powers but I feel days of wonder did a good job of balancing this by adding or subtracting units depending on the combination. One issue we found was that after multiple plays their are some standout races and powers that seem to be more effective than others.

Although the game works fairly well with two players it really shines with multiple players as each and every turn you can see your small progressed crushed under your opponents feet.

This constant back and forth and ability to start again with a new race keeps the game fresh round over round and prevents one person from dominating the board even if they do dominate points. I find the artwork and theme to be strong which really helps add the the value of this game. The combination of races and powers does make it harder to have any deep strategy going in but keeps each game feeling slightly different.

In the long term I find the games does lose some life as your group learns which powers and races are better. I like that Days of Wonder also has some smaller expansions that add a few races each similar to the carcassonne mini expansions.

This helps add some life to the game without breaking the bank. Our group has found Smallworld to be a fun and light skirmish game that adds a lot of excitement without a long time investment. This is an excellent gateway game but may not be suited for those that are looking for a deeper strategy or a more involved war game. A new land awaits, ripe for colonization. It has everything a people looking for a new land could possibly want; prime farmland, rolling hills, lush forests, mountains that touch the sky, even a native population to eradicate.

Yes, a great new land to explore and exploit. So great, others have found it and want a piece for themselves as well. Welcome to Small World, a game for players. The ultimate goal of the game is to be the player with the most victory coins at the end of the game. To accomplish this, you will lead your chosen race to take as much territory as possible in the Small World, and hold it as long as you can. That is, at least, until your chosen people just are not making you rich enough, so you abandon them for a new people to lead.

Everything seems made well enough, as in my house the components have all stood up to many plays with minimal wear.

I am not a fan of the plastic cartridge that the game comes with. It is sturdy enough, and keeps all those race tokens in place, but it is a pain to get the suckers out. Some small Ziplocks or coin envelopes would possibly be a better fit. I remove the plastic mold that holds the rest of the bits and put them in Ziplocks to get things in and out easier.

OK, so, as outlined above, there is a bunch of stuff in the box. What are we going to do with all of it? The first thing to do is determine how many players you have. Pull out the proper board and turn to the proper side, and begin by giving 5 victory coins, all ones, to each player. Mix up the race banners and lay out six of them on the side of the board, and determine which one will be first.

Then mix up the power badges and put one with each race banner. Each race has its own unique ability. Humans, for instance get extra victory coins for each piece of farmland under their control. Tritons need less troops to take territory adjacent to a lake or sea.

Trolls get a lair placed in every territory they take, making it harder for other players to take that territory away. The power badges grant similar boons. Some add victory coins either right away or each turn based upon certain conditions, some make it easier to take territory, some make it harder to let others take it away. Put the Lost Tribe tokens on the board where marked, and mountain tokens on the mountains if you want and put the game turn marker on one.

Determine who goes first the game recommends whoever has the pointiest ears, but whatever and get ready to play! If they want the first one, they just take it. If the want the second, they need to put a victory coin on the first and take the second. If they want the third, put a coin on the first and second… I think you get the idea. Move down the rest of the combinations to fill in the hole and put a new combination in the sixth slot.

The first player then takes the appropriate number of race tokens, determined by the number on the race card added to the number on the special power badge. These will be the available units you control while using this race. There are a couple of races who can add to the number as you play, but, for the most part, this is what you get.

Unless you are flying, you choose a spot on the edge of the map or shoreline and take over that spot. Essentially, the way it works is a completely empty piece of territory will take two units to conquer.

Mountains take three. If there is anything or anyone occupying a territory, it takes one more unit than two for each thing occupying it. If the territory is occupied by a lost tribe, it takes three. If there are two units belonging to another player in a territory, it will take four. Two Amazons and a fortification? That will be 5. You continue conquering land until you do not have enough units to continue.

Should you have one left in hand, you can roll the reinforcement die. If the roll shows enough pips, added to the units in hand, to take a territory, you get to take it. If not, then those units are just used as reinforcements. Now, you count up how much territory you own, and claim one victory coin for each piece.

Then you add any bonuses. You can now reinforce your territory. You can put as many tokens as you like on each piece of land, just so long as you leave at least one on each one. If you have a piece of territory that gives you a bonus, you would want to move more units there if it is in jeopardy of being attacked by another player. This will now end your turn. Play continues as it did for the first player. The second player could either take a different side of the map, or jump right in slaughtering the first player.

The choice is theirs. If a player successfully attacks another player, then the attacked player will permanently lose one unit. If there were units beyond the one they lose in the territory, they may hold on to those units until the reinforcement phase and put them where they like in territory they still hold. As the game progresses, and players begin to engage one another in battle, the number of units you have available will begin to dwindle. There comes a point where you are losing territory with no way to reclaim it.

What do you do? Abandon those useless creatures you once found favor with! At the beginning of your turn, you may declare that you are going into decline. When going into decline, you turn over your race banner and power badge. You will take all but one unit from each territory you still control, and turn over the remaining unit in each to show the race is in decline. You will still get victory coins for each piece of territory your race in decline holds, but they cannot take any more well, unless they are ghouls.

Then you enter the land as your predecessors did and claim as much as you can. Each time the first player begins their turn, they move the game turn marker to the next turn number. Once turn 10 is complete, the game is over, and whomever has the most victory coins wins. So, that is Small World in a nutshell. Strategy comes into play when presented with a combo that may get additional victory coins for holding certain types of territory.

You will have to look at the map and see how hard it would be to get a hold of the most of that type. How tough a nut is your opponent to crack right now? Do they have a race in decline just waiting to be annihilated, or does every territory they hold have 3 units in it? All in all, while it may indeed be a Small World, there is room in it for me, and if you like what you see, there is room in it for you too.

As the player, you control different fantasy races one at a time with their randomly assigned special abilities and attempt to expand your empire across the map before they fall out of power, only to be replaced by your next race of creatures.

In the beginning of the game, you determine which board you will be using to ensure that the world is indeed quite small for the number of players you have.

Every player starts the game with a small handful of coins which are then used to purchase races throughout the game those leftover at the end become your victory points! Once each player has picked up the race tokens from their chosen race, the game is ready to begin!

The act of putting a race into decline is what really gives Small World its unique flair. One of my small, but personally significant grievances with Small World comes from how underwhelming it feels to conquer Lost Tribes in the base game.

Overall, however, Small World is a great for what it is—a gateway game into modern boardgaming—but, the randomness of the game might take a bit away from its longevity.

That change would allow for brainstorming out of the game and thus more cravings to play the game. Picking the right combination of fantasy races and unique special powers, players must rush to expand their empires — often at the expense of weaker neighbors.

Luck: In Small World there is only so much room to expand, hence the title, so the game requires careful planning and a bit of luck. Strategy: As we mentioned the game uses a board that only just fits the players onto it and for a purpose.

The idea behind Small World is that there is only enough room for a handful of races so the game is a constant game of King of the Hill. You might think you are doing well until you realize your Commando Giant neighbours are knocking on your door and taking you out easily with carefully placed tiles.

The game comes with helper sheets for each player and they are awarded for studying it and knowing what any combination can do and which have more value.

Complexity: At first glance the game can come across as more difficult than it really is. The most complex aspect of the game tends to be explaining how conquest and redeployment works, I have found some players struggle to understand the difference between the two actions and when to do them. Players may also find the combination of all the different races and powers overwhelming in there first play through.

Replay Value: The key feature to Small World that makes it so replayable is the randomization of the roles. No one game will be the same with so many possible combinations. Components: As is expected from Days of Wonder, the game components are fantastic.

The art is adorable and really gives off a Disney-esque theme which is fitting for the name while probably not the intention.

As the game scales in player count, as does the board and while they could of gone the Blood Rage route requiring you to simply ignore part of the game board , it is admirable that they included multiple boards to accommodate this. Everything in the box is well crafted and beautifully detailed. Learning Curve: Learning the game is pretty easy, once players have a grasp on the goal of the game and begin to understand how Decline and all the powers work the game actually becomes easy to understand.

Scaling: The game was designed to scale and it does so with gusto, that being said the game becomes considerably longer when a fifth player.

We ALL love it! Our other two kids, 17 and 20, my wife and I, and my mother- and father-in-law 87 can easily get playing and laughing long past bedtime. We love the board game, too, but the app makes it super easy to keep track and to go fast enough that no one is ever bored. The extensions are a MUST. Once you get the hang of it, definitely add them in one at a time to keep the fun going. Updated review: With the July updates, I have to drop my rating.

The game crashes 1 out of 10 times. The game lags a lot too, which is sad because it used to run seamlessly. Other games by the developer are awesome and run very well. Please make the needed changes so the game returns to its former glory! I've played most of the Euro games available for the iPad. While many are good, I get bored of them too easily. Not with Small World. I can play it anytime and still enjoy it. Plus, the new update is amazing! Keep it up, Days of Wonder!

I never played the actual board game but if you want a polished board game that is entertaining and contains just enough strategy then this is highly recommended. The amount of sheer combos of and ever present ability to switch combo characters on the fly adds endless possibilities.

Presentation is awesome and user friendly. A great gem of an app. With the fast forward button, games are a mere min and if you exit it's saved. I picked up Be not Afraid and can't wait to play it. I have not tried online multiplayer though so I can't speak to that. The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:. Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More. With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.

App Store Preview. Screenshots iPad iPhone. Mar 3, Version 3.