My berserking skeletons weren't enough to conquer Small World.
Saturday evening, we decided to try Small World
The world is quite literally too small: you use different boards depending on the number of players, and they’re designed to have not enough room for everyone, so almost immediately you’ll be wiping each other off the board to claim territories. There are a number of different races (Elves, Dwarves, Amazons, Giants, Ratmen, and so on) paired with various special abilities (Berserking, Fortified, Bivouacing, Forest, Flying …). Since the combinations are random, it makes for a pretty interesting game with a lot of potential variations.
The actual conquest part is actually much simpler than Risk: there’s no die rolling except on your very last conquest, so the strategy is more about how to use your available armies to gain as much territory as possible, while still having enough to defend against the other players. The races and abilities all offer some sort of advantage, so at times it feels like a clash of superheroes—you know you can take a bunch of territory on your turn, but that you’ll lose a bunch to the next player as well.
Our game took about an hour and a half to play, but it went by quickly. Although I’d gotten a big head start with my Merchant Ratmen, Dave ended up with the most points at the end with his Sorcerors and Trolls.
Jonathan H. Liu
Jonathan H. Liu is a stay-at-home dad in Portland, Oregon, who loves to read, is always up for a board game, and has a bit of a Kickstarter habit. I can be reached at jonathan at geekdad dot com.
