Tell me about Smallworld (board game)

[Yora]

A week or two ago, someone mentioned a Smallworld marathon game, and I actually never heard of it before.

Not long ago, I was imagining with a friend to play Risk on Settlers tiles and buying units with resources from occupied tiles. Smallworld looks a little bit like that, is that right?

But even if not, it looks interesting and might be a good gateway game to get a new PnP group when I get back to university in Winter. But looking on google, I didn't learn too much about how it actually works.
What can you tell me about it?

[Brumski]

I usually check out the reviews on Amazon when I'm curious about a new board game I just heard about. I just checked out some of them for Smallworld, and they seem to do a pretty good job of explaining things.

I quite enjoy the game myself, I have Smallworld, it's (I think 3) mini-expansions, the deck of "objective/rule change cards" and Smallworld Underground, to give you an idea.

[Castaras]

I think the best way to see what Smallworld is is to watch it.

Here's Wil Wheaton playing it with 3 other people (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9QtdiRJYro).

Gives a very good view of it being played, and is vaguely amusing as well. :smallsmile:

[Chen]

Some combinations are not conducive to balanced gaming. We had a problem one game with someone getting Spirit Trolls. This let them go into decline and just hold up on their special troll mountains. The problem was it would take someone to sacrifice THEIR turn to get rid of a few trolls and thus it was in no one's interest to do so (because basically it would be a move to set them and the troll player behind). But if left alone the troll player was accumulating far too many points. Frankly the game is pretty shallow I find.

[Corlindale]

It's a fun game, and most people tend to "get it" pretty quickly - even usual non-gamers.

It seems pretty well-balanced to me. Usually when an overpowered combination comes up it is balanced out by the other players swarming that player to prevent him from racking up too many points.

Of course there is some game-theory quirks here, because by attacking the powerful player you are leaving yourself in a worse position - so sometimes the situation arises where no one really wants to stop him. Better hope you can get ahold of a powerful race yourself, then.

[Edenbeast]

I love this game. I actually have two versions: the original Smallworld and Smallworld Underground. It's very easy to learn, and because you combine race with a random special power, every game is different. Games tend to be fast (around 1 hour, and 2 hours at the most).

Timing your decline plays a crucial role in the game. Decline is not necessary though, I've won the game without going in decline, I think with skeleton dragon masters. Some combinations are more powerful than others, but that makes part of the fun. Imo, the game is supposed to be imbalanced. After every decline you can select a new race/power combo, there are always 5 available, on default you select the uppermost (free), but you can pay coins to select a different combo. Due to imbalance, some are more interesting than others, so are you willing to spend coins to get that better combo? Or will you just take the first options to not waste coins. (coins are counted at the end of the game to decide who's the winner). And believe me, paying 3 coins for a different combo can make the difference (for good or bad).

After I got the Underground version, I ended up playing this one mostly. There are several reasons for that, I like both the atmosphere and art more than in the original. Even more important: Underground adds some interesting options like artifacts you can dig up during the course of the game that add another special power to your race. I also like the idea that you have to cross a river to get to the other side instead of some lakes on the gameboard. Mechanically both games are similar, so you only need one of the games to have all the fun in the world.

For more information and good reviews, I suggest you have a look on boardgamegeek:
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/40692/small-world
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/97786/small-world-underground

Cheers

[Fri]

Smallworld is actually one of boardgames my RL group play.

It's a very simple game, easy to learn even for completely new player, and very fast to play. Yes, maybe one or two hours is enough to complete the game. So this depends, whether you want this simplicity or not. There are not even resource uses. You just use the coin you get to either buy a new race when you're into decline, and to find out who's the winner at the end.

Basically it's a game where you occupy areas by putting your unit into it, and everytime you occupy an area for a turn you'll get a coin. Whoever got the most coin at the end win. That's it. Combat is simply, whoever got the most unit in an area win. So you can stack units in an area to make it more expensive for your opponent to occupy, or spread your unit to get more area. When you think you've enough with your current race, you put the race into decline and take another race to play. There are some complication, like some races can get more coins in special areas, or some races have special units, or some races can build fortifications, but that's basically it.

My friends and me agree that the most amusing part of the game is the randomized races. Basically there are races and adjectives which you randomize, with each races and adjective giving different bonuses. So for example you can get forest+ratmen, dragonmaster+halfling, merchant+troll, seafaring+dwarves, and so on.