Analysing a Boardgame #2

This week we chose to play and analyze the game Small World Underground, a strategy game that reminded us somewhat of last weeks game, Dust. The game is played with 2-5 players on a specific board for specific amounts of players, meaning that two players get one map and four will be playing on another map.

The goal of the game is to collect as many victory coins as possible through conquests and dominating important tiles on the map.

The gameboard consists of various different regions that have unique properties, some of them give bonus points for owning with a power (the Mining special power gives one more coin per Mine owned) and some give inherent bonuses, like the Black Mountains that give 1 additional defence along with a bonus coin.
The game starts with the players deciding who starts based on which one of them last was physically in a cave or basement and then clockwise after that. The players then choose a race and special power combo to begin with.
After this the players recieve so called race tokens that count as this players’ units that he can start conquering the world with, starting from an edge-tile. The number of units the players recieve is dictated by the numbers on the race/special power cards, as seen in the picture above, the Mining Mummies give 4 and 10 respectively, for a total of 14 units.

Conquests are done by having as many units invade as needed, based on what is currently in the attacked region. The base for an empty region is 2 units and one more is needed for every hostile unit and every black mountain.
After a conquest is done the units that were mandatory (2 units in an empty etc.) has to stay in that region until the end of the turn and cannot be used for further conquests. At the end of a players turn he can choose to move any units he wishes to any owned regions on the map, this is to prepare for the next round of conquests or to place defences around regions you do not want to lose.

If a player decides that he has done everything he could with the limited units at his disposal he can choose to, at the start of his turn, go In Decline. This meant that he loses all but one of his units per region and the remaining units become inactive in that they can’t be moved and sometimes “unpower” the region he is in. After going In Decline the player waits one turn and then chooses a new race and special power-combination along with recieving more units to place on the map in the same way as before, on an edge-tile of the map.

If a players wants to he can attempt to conguer a region with less than the needed amount. If this happens the player rolls a die that have half the sides blank and the other sides have one, two and three dots in them, indicating how much “bonus power” his conquest has. This means that if a player were to attack a region with 5 defence with only 3 units he wouls need to roll at least a 2 on the die to succeed in taking over the region.

If a player loses a battle, be it from being conquered or failing a conquest, one of the attacking units are permanently discarded and the rest are redistributed to his other regions at the end of the turn.

Some regions have monsters in them, indicated by an icon on the map, when a player clears these he recieves a Popular Place or Righteous Relic at random and places it in this region. These are various bonuses that can affect the power of this players’ attacks, let him move his units in unconventional ways and even release a balrog that destroys any region he is in.

The game continues for the number of round indicated by the map, using a turn-token that moves every turn, when the last turn is over the player that has the highest amount of coins is the winner, if two players are even then the one with the most regions owned is declared the winner.

At the end of every players turn he is given victory coins based on the following:

• 1 coin per region owned
• 1 coin per special power-region owned
• 1 coin per Black Mountain-region owned.
• Some special powers and races give more coins based on the number of region-clusters owned and if a region is adjacent to any enemy regions.
• Some Popular Places and Righetous Relics award bonus-coins, for example the Keep on the Motherland gives one bonus-coin per turn.

Core game system:

The core game system of Small World Underground I would say is the victory coin system, in that everything you do is in an attempt to either get coins for yourself or stop someone else from getting coins.
Taking over regions on the map awards one coin at the end of your turn per region, owning special tiles based on what power you have (ex. Muddy gets one more coin per mudpool owned) does the same.
Various other powers award coins, and almost all of them help in either acquiring more land (= more coins) or more units to use in later conquests, an example of this would be the mudmen that gets one more unit per mudpool owned.

The victory points are used to determine the winner of the game after the final round has been played, the player with the most coins wins the game.

So everything the player does feeds into the victory coin system which makes it the core of the game and everything that the player does is influenced by how many coins you will be getting from it.

Most interesting system:

the race and power-system is the system I find the most interesting. Every race in this game is paired with a random power to almost always give the players unique game sessions in that there are so many combinations of races and powers. The powers themselves are also very interesting, they give the player unique properties.

This also influences how you will be playing the game as you will want to cater to your race/special power when making your conquesting decisions. One example of this would be the second round we played when I started as the race Will-o´-wisps that can use the reinforcement-die before attacking a magic crystals-region or when attacking any adjacent region from a magic crystal region. So instead of having to decide to attack and risk losing my valuable units I could try rolling the die and if i didn’t get the result I wanted I did not have to attack, instead of rolling the die mid-attack and not being able to withdraw on a loss as the other races had to do. This led to me mainly focusing on the magic crystal-regions of the map as I was honestly insanely op in these regions.

In the same game I went In Decline and switched to the Flames class that have an inherent Volcano-object that they can choose to place on any abysmal chasm-region on the map (the black regions with a one-way sign and a volcano-symbol in the picture). The volcano made every adjacent tile be conquerable as if it was empty, requiring only two units no matter what was in the regions. This changed my strategy to trying to take over these regions as they would be very easily defendable with this passive effect from the volcano.

So, the races and powers in this game affect the gameplay in such a way that I don’t think that any two sessions will be the same as the players all seek different goals to get as many coins as they possibly can through utilizing their racial and special powers.

Best parts of the game:

One of the best parts of this game is the fact that there are different boards for different amounts of players, this gives new scenarios and strategies based on the number of players playing, with a strategy that might work well in the map for four players that doesn’t work at all in the five player map because the layout is so different. It also shows that the developer was dedicated in making balanced maps no matter how many players would be playing.

The extremely limited unitcounts of every player that limited the domination to strategical choices of which few land areas you really needed. This was strengthened by the going In Decline-system that allowed you to switch races and lose all but one unit per region of your old race while recieving all the units of your new race to start conquering more areas with, but with the limited turns of every game session and going in decline costing a full turn this wasn’t always a viable choice. That along with the fact that some regions get powered down and no longer give benefits acts to sway the players from going in decline.
Also, the fact that you can only ever have two “active” races on the board at the same time and that you lose all the units of your first race if you decide to go In Decline more than once makes it a very interesting mechanic that can both act as a way to get back into an active state after having spent all your units on spreading out and now have no more than one unit per region and as a way to replenish your stores while also giving you the opportunity to abandon your old regions and begin conquering on the other side of the map.
Another strategical point about the units is the fact that you have to discard one of your units permanently if you lose a fight, which makes the players wary about trying to conquer without having enough units. This is used as a way of making the players want to go In Decline, to get their much needed reinforcements.

Worst parts of the game:

The game ends too soon, there are only as many rounds as the map dictates, and after that the game is over. This led to a feeling of not being able to execute any major strategical plans and more of a rush to get every single coin possible. The competitive side also only started after a couple of rounds as the players first had to settle into their own parts of the map before even thinking about trying to take down the other players as well as not having enough troops to mount an assault on anything more than a single region. meaning that the players would have to go In Decline before attacking each other which costs an entire turn.
This also turned the game into more of a “who can farm more gold the fastest”-style of play instead of the strategy domination-game that we expected.

Target Audience

The age written on the box states “Ages 8 and up”. For this kind of game that requires the players to make strategical choices of which regions to claim and what is and isn’t worth going for as well as deciding when to go In Decline and get more troops I would say requires more attention and thinking that an average 8 year old should be able to muster. There is also the choice of which race/power combo to pick and then which regions to aim for when doing the conquests that all require some strategical thinking.

Summary

This game is well balanced and the mechanics with the races/powers make it a unique experience both as a board game and on a game sessions by game session basis in that the combinations that are available are always different which leads to different types of strategy for every new game played. The rules are pretty straight forward but with having alot of pieces and mechanics comes a hefty rulebook, so the game takes some time to get into and you have to consult the rulebook several times during the course of the game which makes for a slower game.