Small World Board Game - Fantasy Area Control & Strategy Game with Magical Creatures, Special Powers! Family Game for Kids & Adults, Ages 8+, 2-5 Players, 40-80 Min Playtime, Made by Days of Wonder

Just adding another positive review here. We play a LOT of Euro (mainly German) board games, and this is a fantastic addition to our gaming library. Smallworld seems a little silly looking, judging by the box, but I assure you, this is a smart and fun game for fans of Euro board games. I wouldn't recommend this as the first Euro game to try (Carcassonne and Samurai are worthy starter games in the Euro realm), but it's a great game that has multiple layers of complexity and strategy. Most of all, it's fun! And HIGHLY competitive.2-5 players30-80 minutes (not sure what the box says, but my partner and I can play a round in 1/2 hour)Ages 10+** I know the Amazon description says 10-14, but that is not what the manufacturer states on the box (which is 10+) **Some folks compare this to Risk, but I would say this is to Risk as a bicycle is to a Ducati. In a nutshell, you and your friends take turns conquering territory and reassigning your units. So it DOES sound like Risk! But wait! You don't have a singe army or race, instead you shuffle several races, and bonuses and place 5 on the board. Players pick from these 5, paying Victory points to select further down the five (first one is free). Once the player chooses, another is drawn and placed while the others move up to fill the gap. What this means is that each time playing, players will have different races with different stats, and different bonuses. So you might end up with Elves with the Berserk bonus, or Ghouls with Seafaring bonus (seafaring ghouls lol!). There are tons of combinations, and each has ups and downs.There are four maps on two sided heavy cardboard fold outs: one each for 2, 3, 4, and 5 player games. This makes it easier to get competitive and combative instead of trying to have two players duke it out on a huge 5 player board!Setting up the map is easy once players get the hang of it. On the first turn players start by invading the land from the edge of the board, unless they are seafaring, then they can invade water to start. Once you start invading, you end your turn (with an option to roll the reinforcement die on your last attack) and then redistribute your armies. You have to leave at least ONE unit on a territory during your attack phase or you can't redistribute on it. Each territory you have gives you Victory points. So you REALLY want to control more territory at the end of your turn. This also means you REALLY want your opponent to control less.The other twist comes from balancing your civilizations. You can elect to allow a civilization to go into decline, thereby gaining the chance to start a new civilization on your next turn. You gain points for your declining civilization, but unless stated otherwise (such as ghouls), these declining civs have no more actions and can only hold a spot on a territory until beaten off.Since you only have a finite number of units to use, once you start losing units (from being attacked), you find you are spread too thin and MUST start a new civilization to keep gaining VPs. So a KEY part of strategy is deciding when to lose a turn to allow your current civilization to go into decline.Each player keeps their VPs hidden, so at the end everyone tallies and it's always a bit of a surprise. I've found a few times I thought I was surely losing and that I won handily. Other times the opposite has been true. Regardless, this is a fantastic, fun, and innovative game. Highly recommended!!!!

As a person who's always enjoyed board games and is starting to get into "serious" games a lot more, I have great fondness for Small World. It is a game that possesses a beautiful mix of a fairly short and non-intimidating learning curve and yet has a huge amount of strategy built into it, particularly among player interaction. It is a game that gamers and non-gamers alike can find quite a bit to enjoy, and there is such a vastly different experience each time that I've played that it always is on the short list of which game I want to play in any particular session. Best of all, the game length is roughly an hour, and so multiple games can be fit into the time a single game of similar strategic intensity might take. The production values are stellar, far better than pretty much any other game I've played, and I understand that this is the standard of excellence Days of Wonder is known for. Unfortunately, there is a serious risk of losing pieces with this game. I have had a few playing experiences where a single race/power combination proved so powerful that it was nearly impossible to counter in that situation, but overall the game is very well balanced and extremely enjoyable. I look forward to purchasing a few of the expansions soon, and find their price tags to be well within the realm of reason. I particularly like the developers encouraging gamers to make up their own special races and powers with the blank tiles, although it'd be awesome to have full blank sets of tiles available for purchase for cheap to allow the players' imaginations to truly run wild.

Received the game earlier than expected.One time bad issues - You punch out a lot of thick cardboard characters and game items when new. Grab a family member or friend, it is nice to have the help. If you have no familiarity with this game it does take a few times reading the setup rules and first turn rules to get the game going.Bad - Again, this is a team cleanup effort. Once the game is over and you are done it is time to put the game away.... Keeping items sorted is key. Let me put it this way, there are instructions on how to put the game away properly. Forget about the losers put the game away deal that is made.Good - Board and game pieces are quality pieces (except for die). It comes with two boards, one for 2-3 players and a bigger board for 3-5 players, that was a nice surprise.Great - This game is more replayable than any game I have have tried in the last few years. Once you play a round or two the game just makes sense and it is easy to play and tough to master. Every game is different from the last.Overall, This is still a new game to me but I can see a long term return of investment playing this game over and over. I was worried that the game may be a bit inappropriate for younger players due to the artwork, but there should be no issues with the overall theme, it is fairly friendly.I also like games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to ride, but this Smallworld has more replayability and less predictability to it. It is a gamers game.