Board Game Analysis 1# – Small World

Introduction: For the class Advanced Game Design we had an assignment to play a board game at least three times and then write an analysis for it.

This is my analysis for the board game Small World. It’s a rather long, but I felt that there were many things that needed to be explained about the game so that it would be easier for someone who hasn’t played the game to understand the analysis. (Since the rules that came with the game were rather confusing to read.)

I’ll try to write less the next time.

Short overview about the game: Small World is a strategy board game for 2-5 players.
The game’s story is that the world is too small for all the different fantasy Races that exist, and therefore they have to battle against each other and conquer as many areas that they can for their Race. Every conquest gives the player a certain amount of Victory Coins, and the player with the most Victory Coins at the end of the final turn wins the game.

The game is played in turns and a game session lasts for 9 turns if there are 5 players.
(The fewer players there are, the more turns.)

– – –

Core components of the game

-The Map is where the game is played. It’s divided into several different areas, and the amount of areas and the map’s size depends on how many players there are. Every area has different qualities, and the areas of the game are: Swamp, Mountain, Hill, Forest, Farmland and Ocean/Sea. The areas that have one of their borders next to an ocean or sea count as Coastal areas.

Some of the areas have a small icon that signifies that they’re either a mine, cavern or magic source. Depending on the Race or special power, the player may get extra victory points for conquering such areas.

-The Race Card describes one of the fantasy Races in the game. Every Race has a special Ability that makes them special, except for Rats that only have the benefit of being many. There’s also a number written on the card which affects the number of Race Token that the player will receive. There are 14 different Race Cards in the game.

Examples of Races and abilities:
– Dwarves = Obtains 1 Bonus Victory Coin at the end of each turn for every mine that they occupy.
– Tritons = All coastal areas can be conquered for one Token less than usual.
– Ghouls = All Ghouls stay on the map and can continue to conquer new areas even when in decline.

-The Special Power Card describes one of the Special Powers that a Race can have in the game. Like the Race Card there’s a number written on it which will affect the number of Race Tokens that the player will receive. There are 20 different Special Power Cards in the game.

Examples of Special Powers:
– “Commando” = Conquer any region for one Token less than usual.
– “Merchant” = Collect 1 bonus Victory Coin for any area that you occupy at the turn’s end.
– “Fortified” = Place a Fortress Token in one of your areas once every turn to increase its defence by 1 and obtain 1 Bonus Victory Coins for every fortress on the map. The fortresses stay on the map even when the Race is in decline, but no more Bonus Coins will be obtained.

– The Race + Special Power Combo is the combination of a Race Card and Special Power Card which creates a Race that the players can choose to play as. The strength and advantages of a combo depends on which Race and Special Power card that has been combined.

The Race + Special Power Combos available for the players to choose during the game
is randomised.

Examples of some Race + Special Power Combos:

• Swamp Skeletons = Gets to pick up a new Race Token from the tray for every two occupied areas that they conquer. (Skeleton Race Ability) + Gets an extra Victory Coin for every swamp area that is occupied. (Swamp Special Power)
• Spirit Rats = Their only Race advantage is their number on the card (which is “8” and results in more Race Tokens for the player) + They can have two Races in decline instead of just one.
• Wealthy Giants = Gets to conquer any area adjacent to a mountain area that you occupy for 1 Race Token less + Gets to collect 7 Victory Coins at the end of their first turn. (only once)

– The Race Tokens are the pieces that the player uses to conquer the areas on the map. The amount of Tokens that the player gets when starting out with a new Race depends on the numbers that’s written on the Race and Special Power Cards. Adding those two numbers together will show the player how many they can pick from the tray.
For example: Race (6) + Special Power (5) = 11 Race Tokens.

There are only a few Races in the game that can get more Race Tokens during gameplay,
otherwise the amount is constant or slowly decreasing due to conquests.

– Special Tokens are Tokens that are connected to a certain Race or Special Power, and often signfies that a player gets a different set of Tokens to place out once or more every turn to increase the defence in their conquered areas. (Most of them are about defence.)

Examples of those are:
– Fortress Tokens, which increases the defence in a “Fortified” player’s area by 1 and also gives the player 1 Victory Coin.
–Troll’s Lair Tokens, which increases the defence by 1 in a Troll player’s area.

– The Victory Coins is the score of the game and are only used by the player when picking a Race + Special Power combo in the beginning of the game, or after have gone into decline with their previous Race + Special Power.

Every player gains 5 Victory Coins at the start of the game, and after that they can only be gained by conquering areas on the map or if a player picks a Race which has the Special Power “Wealthy” that gives 7 Victory Coins on the first turn with that Race.

A player may also gain some Victory Coins when picking a Race, which is explained in the
“Selecting a Race + Special Power” section further down.

The player recieves Victory Coins after every turn of the game for every area that they occupy on the map, and the player can get more coins depending on what Race and Special Power they play as. A player will always get at least 1 Victory Coin for every area that they occupy.

The victory points are only collected by the players, and can’t be lost unless they’re used to pay for a certain Race+ Special power by a player.

– The Reinforcement Die is a die that’s used when a player doesn’t have enough Race Tokens to conquer an area (occupied or non-occupied).

The values on it are 1-3, with three of the six sides being blank. The numbers signify the “extra” Race Tokens that you may get when you roll the die. (You don’t get extra Tokens physically,
but the number on the die counts as Race Tokens.)

For example: If a player needs one Token more to conquer an area, they need to roll at least a “1” in order to conquer it. If they roll a blank it means that they can’t conquer the area and the Race Token can’t be used for conquering until the next turn. It can still be used for redeployment during that turn.

– – –

Game system
The game is played in turns, and the player with the “pointiest ears” gets to go first and then the turns go clockwise.

During a typical turn of the game, a player conquers areas with their Race Tokens,
redeploys the Race Tokens and collects Victory Coins at the end of it.

Then the other players repeats the same process or decide to go into decline.
A person that goes into the decline during one turn has to wait until the next turn to use their new Race Tokens.

During the very first turn of the game or after a player has gone into decline, the player
selects a Race + Special Power Combo and obtains Race Tokens and eventual Special Tokens.

– Selecting a Race + Special Power Combo: At the start of the game, the Race Card deck and Special Power Card deck are shuffled and one card from each deck is picked and laid down beside each other to create a Race + Special Power Combo. This is repeated five times and all Combos are placed after another in a vertical row with both card decks at the end of it.

This list of Combos features the Races + Special Powers that the players will get to choose from, including the Combo that’s on top of the deck that’s placed last in the list. This means that there are 6 different Race + Special Powers that the players can choose from.

The Combo that is first in the row is always free, but if a player wants to pick a Race + Special Power that’s further down the list, they have to put one Victory Coin on every Combo that they skip on the way. If any of the following players pick any of the Combos with Victory Coins on it, they’ll obtain all the Coins on that Combo.

When a Combo is picked, the list moves up to fill the hole. This creates a new Combo on the decks at the end of the row, since the Combo that was lying on top of the deck has moved up. When a Race that has been declined is removed from the game (either when a player declines a second time or all its Race Tokens are gone from the map), it’s put back in the deck and may come back later in the game, but with a new special power. (Since there are more Special Power cards in than Races cards.)

– Conquering: The player has to use their Race Tokens in order to conquer the areas on the map. It takes two Race Tokens to conquer an unoccupied area, and one extra for every Token that occupies an area. There exist two types of already “occupied” areas at the start of the game: Mountain areas that have a Mountain Token on them and Lost Tribe areas with a Lost Tribe Token on them.

The Lost Tribes are what’s left of old civilisations that have fallen into decline, and conquering this kind of area costs 3 Race Tokens and counts as conquering an occupied area. When they have been conquered by a player, they’re removed from the game and won’t appear again on the map. These are good targets in the beginning of the game for any player that has a Race or Special Power that gets extra Victory Points for conquering already occupied areas.

The Mountain areas aren’t occupied however, but has a Mountain Token to illustrate them being more difficult to conquer, so Special Powers or Race Abilities related to conquering unoccupied areas doesn’t count in mountains. The Mountain Tokens never disappear from the map and adds 1+ in defence for that area. Like Lost Tribe areas, these areas costs 3 Tokens to conquer.

During the first turn of the game, the players can only choose to conquer an area at the edge of the map, but his may differ depending on the Race and Special Power. Halflings can for example have their first conquest anywhere on the map, and a Race with the “Flying” Special Power can conquest anywhere they want throughout the whole game.

When conquering, the player can only conquer an area that is adjacent to an area that they already have conquered, unless they have a Special Power such as “Flying” which enables them to land anywhere on the map.

When a player gets conquered by another player, they retrieve all Tokens except one if there were more than one Token in that area. If there was only one Token in that area, it’s lost forever. The only Race that won’t suffer any loss in Tokens when conquered is Elves, since their Race Ability is that they always will regain their Tokens when conquered.

Depending on the Race + Special Power Combo, a player may get more Victory Coins depending on the areas that they conquer. (For example: A player with the Special Power “Forest” will get more Victory Coins if they conquer and occupy forest areas.)

There are also some abilities that enable the player to conquer certain areas for less Tokens than usual, which makes the conquering a lot easier. (For example: the Race Tritons which can conquer coastal areas for 1 token less.)

– Redeployment: When a player is done conquering during their turn, they get to move around all excess Race Tokens (they have to leave at least one Race Token in every conquered area) and place them out in their conquered areas in order to strengthen the defence.

If a player wants to protect a certain area from other players, they can choose to put all the excess Tokens in that area, making it less likely to be attacked since it would cost a lot of Tokens for an opponent to conquer it.

After they’re done redeploying, the player gets to collect their Victory Coins for that turn.

– The most interesting system – The Decline system:
The decline system is an interesting part of the game that makes it possible for the players to stop playing as their current Race and have to pick a new Race + Special Power for the next turn. When a player goes into decline, all their Race Tokens on the map are turned over, which shows the other players that they’re not active, and if there are more than one Token in any of these areas, everyone but one is removed. The player will continue to get Victory Coins for these areas during every following turn, until they’re conquered and removed by another player.

A player can only have one Race in decline though (unless they have the Special Power “Spirit” which enables the player to have two Races in decline), and if they decline with their new Race, the other Race in decline goes back into the deck. If there were any Tokens left on the map for the Race that went into the deck, they are removed and will not give the player anymore Victory Coins.

However, there are some exceptions when it comes to declining, such as the “Spirit” Special Power mentioned above.

– There’s also a Special Power called “Stout” which enables the player to play their turn and conquer as usual and then immediately go into decline afterwards, which otherwise would have taken a separate turn.

– And then there’s the Ghouls, which is the only Race that keeps all its Tokens on the map after going into decline, and is also the only Race that’s able to continue conquering even when in decline.

The decline feature plays an important part in the game, since a player can manage to collect a lot of Victory Coins every turn if they have managed to come up with a good strategy before changing Race. Because if you have a Race that has an Ability or Special Power that doesn’t go inactive when in decline, the conquered areas that you have with that Race will continue to generate a fair amount of Victory Coins even if you can’t use them to conquer anymore. The key to winning is when a player has managed that, but also creates a good strategy for their new active Race + Special Power.

When our group played the game, we realized after a while that it was often better to change Race every now and then than to stick to same for as long as possible. Because it was often a lot harder to try and defend yourself when you had conquered several areas and didn’t have any extra Tokens to redeploy and increase your defence with, than just go big (conquer as much as possible) and then decide to go home (go into decline). A player will sooner or later find themselves in a situation where their Race Token are slowly being cut down and removed by other players’ conquests, so knowing when to go into decline is important.

The worst things about Small World:
The rules were written in a very confusing way and NO ONE in the group understood how we would play the game during our first session. We managed to set up the board and the Tokens that would be on it, but we had no idea how to start or how to play the game. It was when we looked at a video tutorial that we finally got a grip of the game, and everybody agreed on that the game was a lot simpler than the rule book had made us believe.

When it comes to playing the game, the fact that the Races + Special Powers combinations that the player gets to choose from are picked at random affects the game a lot. Because it could be a really great session with lots of good and unusual Race + Special Powers combinations that will create a very interesting game situation, or it could be a bad session where there’s only half-good combinations or even bad combinations.

An example of a bad combination is Merchant Dwarves, which could have been a good combination if it weren’t for the fact that you only get 5 Race Tokens, since Dwarves has the number “3” on their card and Merchant has “2”. You won’t be able to conquer that much with that few Tokens, since you need 2 to conquer just one area, and the extra Victory Points that you would get for every conquered area because of the Merchant Special Power wouldn’t be worth it.

It’s mainly this combination system that causes a lot of trouble. Some combinations are a bit overpowered, such as:

– Spirit Ghouls (= The player can have two Races in decline but also continue and conquer areas with their Ghouls even when in decline.)

– Commando Skeletons (= They can conquer any area for 1 Token less and also obtain a new Race Token for every two occupied areas that they conquer.)

This is something that can get a bit annoying for the players that aren’t playing any of these strong Races during the session, and something that could have been balanced out a bit more…

Our group had also some more problems when it came to interpreting the rules, since there were some Special Powers and Race abilities that could be interpreted differently.

The Race that caused the most trouble and discussion when our group played was the
Sorcerer Race. It has the power to turn the other players’ active Race Tokens to one of their own from the tray every round, but can only change as many as the amount of opponent players in the game (four if there’s five players) and if they’re in an area adjacent to one that the Sorcerer player has conquered.

It was unclear if the Sorcerer could change one of each opponent player’s Tokens or if it could be four of the same player’s Tokens. We first played so that the Sorcerer player could change four Tokens from the same player, but it made the Race pretty overpowered. We decided for the other interpretation in a session later, and we saw that it was a lot less likely that the Sorcerer would have one of each player’s Tokens adjacent to one of their own, so during most of the turns, only one Token each from two different players were substituted. It was still a
powerful Race though, but a lot less overpowered than before.

The rules also said that the player with “the pointiest ears” would get to go first, but since we were going to play the game a few times in the same group and none of us had exceptionally pointy ears, we decided to use the reinforcement die to decide on who would get to start. Even though it was a pretty fun detail, it didn’t feel like a rule worth following, and it also felt like there was a potential risk that it would cause a lot of unnecessary pointy ear arguments.

The best things about Small World:
The best thing about the game is that there was room for comeback most of the time. Even though your forces were wiped out by one or more players during the last turn, you always have a second chance since you can start over with a new Race and special power.

Unlike in other games, where a mistake or bad strategy can lead to a player’s downfall, a bad decision in Small World doesn’t affect the player’s situation so drastically. The worst thing that could happen is that all your Race Tokens disappears from the map, but then you could just start over. And the Victory Coins that you have collected can never be lost unless you use a few of them to pick a new Race + Special Power, so it’s not like you have anything to lose! It’s really nice with a game that doesn’t punish the players for their mistakes, since it’s not that common in other strategy games.

The unpredictable and slightly chaotic game situation with all the different Races Abilities and Special Powers was actually really entertaining, and it was a nice challenge to try and come up with new strategies and to adjust yourself to the constantly changing environment.

The game’s artwork was also really well made and had a comical feel to it, and had a style that worked great with the game.

Interpreted target group:
It’s not easy to stick to a strategy in this game, which could be seen as something very negative for players who likes to have their own master plan of world domination, but in return it makes the game very challenging and there’s always something happening in the game. If a player would get into a situation where there’s nothing to do, they could always change the game by going into decline and pick a new Race + Special Power and try out the new possibilities that suddenly arise.

As long as there is someone who knows how to play and explain the game to a new player, or there’s videos explaining the rules, I think there are many players that would enjoy this game. I’m sure that there are some people that really dislike the fact that you can’t have an entirely solid strategy and that there is a distinct random element in the game, but instead you get to enjoy the challenge of coming up with new strategies in a constantly changing game environment.

When it comes to age range, the box said 8 years and up, which I think it’s a pretty good choice.
I think there’s a possibility that a 6-7 year old could play the game with some help, but an 8 year old should manage to play the game well on their own.

I do suspect that most people that play this game are in their teens or older teens and are board game fans, but since the rules aren’t that difficult if they’re explained well and it’s a very fun game, I think it would be a great game for parents to play with their children or 8-12 year olds playing with their friends.

For 4-5 players it takes about 1-2 hours to play so it’s not a game that takes that much time and is a good choice for anyone who wants to have a challenging strategy game, but doesn’t have a whole day to spend on it.

Summary:
The systems work really well together, and the only part of the game that can feel kind of
unbalanced at times is the Race + Special Powers Randomisation, since it may result in very bad or very strong combinations for the players to choose from, and make some players
significantly more powerful than the others. It’s what affects the gameplay the most and it’s what decides if it’s a good game session or not.

The whole “choosing a Race” and “going into decline” systems were really interesting and it
created a very nice dimension to the game. They made everything a lot less predictable and the tables could and did turn many times during the game, sometimes even during the same turn.

They also gave second chances for player’s who had gotten into bad situations, and the fact that the game didn’t punish the players for their mistakes was very welcome and something other strategy games and games in general should try and strive for. (Especially since it makes the game situation more thrilling, instead of having a situation where one player realizes that it’s impossible to win or that everybody already knows who is going to win halfway through the game.)

I think that there are many persons of all ages that would enjoy playing Small World, but I
suspect that fans of “serious” slow paced strategy games may find it a bit too unpredictable and fast for their tastes. This game requires a different kind of strategic thinking, since the game
situation changes a lot during a session because of the different Race Abilities and Special
Powers that the players can have. It’s a bit different from many other strategy games, but it doesn’t mean that it’s bad.

Personally, I think the worst thing about the game was mainly the vague and confusing rule book that came with the game, since the rules were a lot easier than they had written them.
A game has to have rules that are easy to understand for a player that hasn’t played the game before, and thinking about how the game is for age 8 and up and a group of university students couldn’t understand the rules or even how to start playing the game…well, you get the idea.

We had a lot of fun with the game though, so even though it took a while to get into it, it was worth the time.

About Rebecka Nyström

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