Wow, fun game. Played last night in between games of Scripts & Scribes and Tribune. Fun and easy to learn, I think it'll make a great entry game, but lotsa strategy for the rest of us. It's a fantasy-style civilization game, where you push one civ as fas as it can go, put it in decline and start another one. There are different boards for 2, 3, 4 and 5 player games. Races you can play are randomly assigned abilities, which makes things interesting, as there can be some awesome combos (dragon hunter trolls) and some weak ones, too (fortifying dwarves), but it keeps the game fresh. Some combos look like they'd be strong at the start rather than the endgame, too.
A few things I noticed:
Mountains are nice to have when you decline your race, as they tend to not be targeted at the end of the game (people are trying to max out their point potential).
I mentioned that fortifying dwarves are a weak combo, but dwarves are the suck, period. I can't think of any ability that would really make them worth while. Edit: Flying. Flying dwarves I might pick if there were 3 or 4 VPs to go with it. But then flying is a really good ability, too.
Bivouacing ratmen are crazy. Bivouacing skeletons would be nuts, I'm thinking. Bivouacing Trolls would be nigh invulnerable. I guess what I'm saying is bivouacing is a good ability.
Of course, being a Days of Wonder game, we shall see expansions. And this game is nothing if not expandable.
I just ordered this at the local store... can't wait for it. Been looking forward to it for a while.
I'm jealous, I'm hoping that I can pick this up at gencon. I had achoice to buy it last month and decided on La harve instead. I think i'll like small world more, but la harve has been harder to get my hands on.
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Played it couple more times on Thursday, it's a hit at the local game club.
Dwarves aren't quite as bad as I originally thought, but they're still the worst race. Flying is probably the best ability in the game, it matches up very well with almost every race.
General consensus on the geek says that there should be a final round of scoring after the final turn, otherwise the first player gets too much of an advantage at endgame, just an fyi.
I just picked up Small World yesterday. Looks like a blast!
Anyone try it with kids? I was hoping my six your old would like it, but I don't think she's quite ready. It lists for 8 and up.
It's not like there's some magical bit of brain that turns on exactly 8 years after birth which allows the kid to play Small World. There will be 6 year olds who can handle it just fine and 10 year olds who can't. You know your kid better than anyone, if you think she's up for it give it a try. Worst case scenario is that it's too much for her and you go do something else instead.
I've thought of a house rule to help dwarves and other unloved races:
When the number of coins on an unchosen race equals the number of players in the game, remove those coins and draw the power on the bottom of the power stack. The race becomes a double power race. It gets all of the benefits of that second power except for added troops (the second power is treated as adding 0 troops), in addition to its first power.
I think the Dwarves are just getting unnecessary hate on. Their small number of initial pieces can easily be dealt with by just continually abandoning territories to get to your mining locations. And as mentioned, if at least 2 of those locations are on mountains, chances are people aren't going to hammer them.
Used them in a 3 player game as my second race - and for 3 turns I got a solid 7VPs (3 mining regions, 1 non) and 2 turns 8 (2 non before one got beaten) just from the Dwarves as a retired race. Pulled in a hefty 10 plus victory points for the last 5 or so turns.
And if you're wondering why no one attacked me, was a matter of timing, placement on board and an aggressive active race that had people trying to stem them.
I played my first game on the weekend (between DMing two D&D WWGD games and a Magic draft...)
Very enjoyable and fast-paced game. I played the Forest Trolls to begin with, and then changed to the Fortified Halflings later. I didn't have that many provinces, but they were really, really hard to take over and gave me a lot of points.
Pretty cool game. Easier to get into and enjoy casually than its precursor Vinci. Also has a fantasy theme which brings you pretty amusing combinations of races and powers. I like the hidden scoring - Vinci is one of those brutal "bash the leader" games where it is better to not be in first place going into the late game.
Probably the art (the dwarf on the cover does have a snot-bubble coming out of his nose). Don't let the art fool you though, it's not a kids game (though it's simple enough that kids could play it).
Stopped by the LGS today (note the lack of an "F" in that acronym), and apparently the game came in last week but the bastards forgot to call me! I'm glad there's not many gamers around who would have the wherewithal to snatch it up...
Also picked up Mall of Horror, but that's neither here nor there.
Sadly, it looks like it'll be a bit before I get to play it. :/ But I love the insert it comes with! Awesome removable storage tray for the counters, with a lid to keep them all snug and secure.
Last night, it occurred to me that you could create a lush background story for a campaign setting by playing this game... A huge variety of races and empires rising and falling, wars and allies (allies being races belonging to the same player).
Got to play a quick 2-player game of it... Took about 40 minutes, final score was me 123 to... uh, considerably less. I don't know what LJ's exact score was.
I started off paying a 3 coins for heroic trolls. He took the free merchant sorcerers (which I totally underestimated). When he was getting in excess of 14 points so close to the beginning of the game, I knew something had to change.
So I went in decline to pick up the forest skeletons, hoping their ability to regenerate would help me. It did-- he had a lot of stuff, but was spread thin. My skeletons started decimating his sorcerers, while my declined trolls sat pretty protected by their troll lairs.
He declined and opted for bivouacking halflings. In his first turn, he took over three areas, using his holes to protect the first two and a massive stack of halflings and tents to protect the last.
However, it was not to be. After finishing off his sorcerers, the skeletons and halflings fought for a few turns and I never lost a single troll region. I was getting 18 a turn by the time the end of the game rolled by, while he was getting 3 or 4 a turn.
Played it for the first time over the weekend... I was surprised about how easy it was to pick up and play.
I was almost confused that we had missed something (and we did the first time) but overall a very easy game to learn and play but has a lot of strategy.
Does the merchant power seem a bit weak to anyone? And, when would it not come into play? I cant see anyone not having a territory.
The only thing that might be overlooked if you dont read carefully is that you pretty much loose your turn when your race goes into decline. Which makes the Stout ability useful - so halfway through we were like Ohhh wait we did this wrong. Lucky that everyone got one race in decline before we fixed it.
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