Board game analysis; Small World Underworld
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General Small world underground is a strategy war game much like the previous game my group analyzed, called Dust. This game is however much less complex and more focused on straight forward conquering using the power of number of units combined with abilities. Small world underword is a game for 2-5 players where the game board’s size is adjustable to the number of players in the game.
Game system Setup phase The appropriate sized game board is chosen according to the number of players playing, and a stack of different races of units for the players to choose from is placed. The system of races is constructed to work in a combination of one tile that determines the special characteristics or abilities that the race has for that roster, and one tile that represents the race itself. The tiles are shuffled randomly and then placed in a stack of 6, so that the different combinations of races and their default abilities are randomly combined with the perks of the ability tile. The player who starts the game begins by choosing a race from the stack, now he/she is supposed to pick the race at the top of the stack but the player can choose to go around that. The way that it is done is by paying one victory coin for every race you skip in order to get to the one you want. When the player has completed this choice of race he receives units from that race, those units can now be used to conquer new territories in the attack phase. In a normal round the player can choose between carrying on to attack and conquer with the race he has chosen or to “go into decline” which is a mode where all the players units are deactivated until the players next turn, when a new race is chosen. Attack phase The combat system in small world differs from games like dust and risk in that the outcome is primarily based on the number of units the player attacks with. The lowest requirement to take a territory is that you attack with two units. So for example if a player wants to capture a territory controlled by one unit he will need three units to win the attack, provided that that territory or unit does not have a natural defense bonus. In case there is such a bonus the player will need to match that in the number of units attacking. The player can also attack with one unit in combination with a dice roll where the dice have values 1-3 representing extra units, this attack is more of a gamble considering that if the attack fails the unit flees and must be put back into the box.
Movement phase After the player has emptied his abilities to attack further or simply is satisfied with his amount of spoils of war, the player can distribute his remaining units as he pleases across friendly territories. This gives the player an opportunity to strengthen his position and secure borders etc. Decline During or rather instead of the attack phase the player can also as previously mentioned choose to go into “decline”, choosing this will forsake the possibility to attack during that turn and all units you control will be reduced to a maximum of one in each territory. The declining units still controls the territories and collects coins for them and the player may purchase a new race during his next turn. Players are not allowed to have more than one race in decline at any given time. Counting points phase At the end of a players turn the spoils are counted and given points for, the points are in the form of “victory coins”. These coins are the measurement for winning the game in the last round. You are given one coin per captured territory as a standard, there are exceptions where certain combinations of races and local effects from the region will give a larger revenue of coins. As mentioned before a player can circumvent the picking-order of races when choosing from the stack by buying his way past the unwanted ones, the fact that the currency used to performed that action is also the measurement used to win in the end makes that a possible huge investment. I creates a very interesting tension in the view of long term strategy of the gameplay. Core system The core system of the game must in my opinion be the action of attack and movement in other words moving tiles from one territory to the next, because that is simply the action that the entire game is based on. It is by far the action that is performed most frequently by the players during a game session. Most interesting system The most interesting system is for me without a doubt the system of different races and combinations of abilities, there are soo many different combinations! With fifteen different races and twenty one abilities that can all be matched in every possible combination it makes for a whole new dimension of board game play in my experience, it really boosts the replay value of this game far more than that of ordinary strategy war games. The system also enables the spending of victory coins to get to the desired race in the stack, which is a very interesting occurrence as well because of the long term investment focus it creates in the game in view of risk and reward. The fact that a player can change to different races during actual gameplay also provides a constant uncertainty for the players who tries to read the behavior of each other’s play styles, because it can change at any time according to the change in properties that come with the new combo of power and race cards.
Best parts The best parts of the game are the race + power cards and the variations that they provide, I might start to sound like a broken record but that system is brilliant! It opens up so many different possible outcomes and makes every session unique for a lot of coming play troughs. The game as a whole feels very tight and well balanced and while analyzing the game, you get a feeling that the designers were very good at feature freezing. They have grabbed on to a winning few features and kept on polishing those until everything was completely shiny, and this gives the gameplay that cohesive feel that it has. Worst parts One thing that could act as a limit to the replay value that the race and power system adds is the victory conditions, if that condition would be more diverse than just “most coins in the end wins”, the replay value could have been positively endless. There is no doubt that I had a lot more to say on the bad side of the previous game we analyzed “Dust”, when I compare the two it strikes me that this game is a very positive opposite to many of the issues I had with that game. Target audience On the box the target audience is set at 8 years old and up, which I find to be quite fitting considering the slimmed down game features and that the game is compact and comprehensible. The difficulty level is probably set mostly by the skill level of the opponents you meet in the game. So even if the minimum age is set as low as 8, the many dimensions of the game will come out more to the more experienced strategy game player as well. Summery The game has a nice complete feeling about it and I enjoyed playing it, and I was very impressed with the system of combinations between races and ability cards. That was the true novelty for me as a board gamer and what I think is the game’s main selling point, that the replay value through variation of gameplay is very high. I would like to mention that the graphic or illustrations of the cards and board really adds in a big way to the positive impression that I have of the game, it could be that I’m just a sucker for well-made fantasy graphics. Although I think that the illustrations do have a very real effect on the player’s judgment when choosing which race to play with, depending on the players conception of perceived strength. If something looks cool and strong it might be picked despite others having a better numeric merit. One thing that this game does very well is to manage the paradox of offering simple gameplay combined with a lot of variation, something that I think is much appreciated among the board gamers that have played one too many Risk like games that had bit off more than it could chew. As a huge fan of strategy games I at least found that this game came as a fresh wind in the forest of complicated strategy games, even though I still love Risk and real complicated strategy games as well. So thank you for reading! Hopefully it has not been too boring to read about my views of the game!
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