Small World

It's a Small, Small World ...

2-5 Players. 2 hours approx.

On a brief glance, this Fantasy Risk-Variant looks a simple game. But the intricacies of it build to make something that scales well from beginners to veterans! Incorporating many of your favourite Races, and also a selection of Powers, no two games are ever the same! Will there be Marauding Elves? Alchemist Trolls? Cursed Amazons or Flying Dwarves? And where will each of them live? Will you build a stronghold to defend, or rage across the Land, pillaging as you go? Let's play!

There are different maps for differing numbers of players (2-5), but all are split into Regions of familiar types (Hills, Swamps, Mountains, etc), with coastlines in two corners and a lake at the centre. The water areas are off-limits (unless you are Sea-Faring!), forming a rough 'doughnut' of land to fight over. Some Regions begin with Ancient Race tokens on. Mountains also grant a defence bonus, making them harder to conquer but easier to defend once controlled!

In The Beginning

Once the board is set up, the Race and Power cards must be stacked. Shuffling these deks is not easy, as they are thick, sturdy cards, with odd, interlocking ends. Once done, two stacks are made - Races and Powers. The first 5 are turned up to form a list to choose from. Each Race gets a Power, and these will be different each game! Diplomatic Skeletons? Forest Tritons? Merchant Goblins? Peace-Loving Ghouls? All can appear! Each race comes with a number of tokens, and each power adds an amount more. On your first turn, you get to pick a race, and move onto the board. A nice touch here is that you can choose any of the Races in the List, but unless you choose the first one, you must place a Victory Coin (VC) on each one that you bypass. These VC are awarded to the player who does choose that Race! As each Race is taken from the List, a new Race and Power are added to the end. You must start at the edge of the board (except Halflings, who may start anywhere), and each Region must be Conquered. Unlike Risk (and more like Diplomacy), a Region has a set amount of tokens needed to conquer it: 2, plus 1 for each Token on it (These 'defending' Tokens may be other Race Tokens, Mountains, Bivouacs, Troll Lairs, etc. Each counts as 1 defence). At the start, most regions will be empty (2 Tokens needed), but some will have Mountains or Ancient Races (3 needed). Plan your attacks, and claim your Regions! At the end of yuor turn, if you have unused Tokens, you may try to summon Reinforcements to claim a Region you do not have enough Tokens to conquer! Roll the Reinforcement Die, and add that to your number of Tokens! (The Reinforcement Die is numbered 0,0,0,1,2,3, giving a 50% chance of No Reinforcements!) At the end of your Turn, claim 1 Victory Coin for each Region you control! (Some Races/Powers alter this! For example, 'Forest' Power means you gain an extra VC from each Forest Region you control.) The person with the most victory coins at the end is The Winner!

As Play Goes On

Play continues each turn, with players Conquering new Regions, including those held by other players. Your choice of Race (and Power) will affect what type of tactics you employ: Some races have lots of Tokens, others few. Some gain bonuses for attacking other players! And as Conquering is done at a set number of Tokens, you can plan your attacks and defences quite well. Do you spread out, claiming many Regions, but risk spreading too thin, and easily Conquered, or claim fewer Regions, and defend them? When your own Regions are conquered, you lose one Race Token from it, and any others can be redeployed at the end of the turn. While some Races have ways of gaining (or not losing) Tokens, most do not, so you will be working with fewer and fewer Tokens. This is where another innovative idea comes into play: Declining. You may use your turn to put your current Race into Decline. Each region it controls is reduced to 1 Race Token, which are flipped to show its new state. These Regions will still gain you a VC per turn, but you may no longer attack with them. On your next turn, you may choose a new Race from the list, and bring it onto the board, as per Turn 1. You may decline Races as many times as you wish, but you may only have one Declined Race at any time - Putting another Race into Decline removes your previous one from the board completely!

The Winning

The number of Turns is dependant upon how many players there are. More players means fewer Turns. This stops a multi-player game from dragging on and on, while making sure a 2-player game lasts for a fun length of time. At the end, everyone counts up their VCs, and the player with the most is The Winner. Whilst it is sometimes possible for one player to rush off into the lead, in a multi-player game it may become noticable that one player has scored more VC for several turns, and the other players are free to gang up on them! We have noticed a rough average that is needed to make a wining score, but it very much depends on which Races and Powers are in play, and what tactics people use. Orcs, Pillagers and Ransackers are rewarded for conquering Regions, whereas Peace-Loving gain extra VC on turns that they do not attack an Active race (they are free to attack Declined races, or Ancient Races!)

Other bits

This has only been a brief summary of Small World, and there is plenty more for you to find out! The many different Races and Powers, and combinations, lead to a varied game. There are several expansions, which add more Races and Powers. We found this very good, because in some games we were Declining often, and ran through the stack of Races and Powers! With the extended decks, this has never happened. One minor problem this raises is that you soon run ou tof room in the storage boxes to keep the Tokens! The latest set comes witha new, expanded storage tray - so keep buying those expansions!

The only other gripe is the Necromancer's Island expansion. One player takes the part of the Necromancer, who builds up his Race tokens from the other players' dead ones. He has slightly different victory conditions, and can call a victory at any point, rather than after the last turn. As other players can see how close they are to victory, we found that everyone just took it as a side-quest to kick the Necromancer every now and then, and then fight it out between themselves.