Ruling the Board: SSHS January Board Game Bonanza!: #3: Small World

"The Stale Marshmallow"

After our success with Castle Panic, Bill, Nate, and Steve got ready to start a game of Dominion with a new expansion that Bill or Steve had purchased.  However, it took a long time to unwrap, separate, and look at, so when a new group of players arrived and pulled out Small World, I decided to hop tables and Bill the 2nd joined in that game, so all was well in the world.

Small World took a bit of time to setup and explain from Trish, however, having her and Allia, who had played before, to pull information from was a major bonus as we began.  The World Rulers were as follows:

Trish
Allia
Brian
Stanley

Trish began by purchasing the Dragon Master Ghouls.  She quickly shambled across her portion of the board with the undead.  Next was Allia who went with the Mounted Ratmen who swarmed the board for a substantial early lead.  Brian swung out with the Commando dwarves to take over a few spaces.  On my turn, I lumbered out with the Hill Giants.

For the next few turns, Trish expanded while taking out a few Hill Giants, Allia continued to expand with her Ratmen, Brian struggled with his small party of dwarves, and I ran away from the Ghouls while expanding with my Giants.

In around the 4th turn, Allia started the declining races by putting her Ratmen in decline and the next turn taking the Merchant Elves.  Brian continued the trend by putting his Dwarves in decline and then starting back up with the Bivouacking Halflings.  Scared of the expanding ghouls, I put the Hill Giants into decline and spend the max amount to take the Flying Sorcerers.  Trish was the last to go into decline a turn after the rest, taking the Berserk Trolls.

In the second section of the game, Allia struggled to get a foothold with her elves as they were shoulder to shoulder with the fortified Trolls and she couldn't get a marshmallow roll to go in her favor.

::Break::

I want to break for a moment to talk about the funniest thing that happened in any of my games on Saturday. After some early positive reinforcement rolls, the dice came up blank for quite a while.  At one point, Allia started calling it "The Marshmallow" as she stated that it looked like a stale mini-marshmallow.  This led to much fun requesting "The Marshmallow" as the game continued.

::Continuing::

Brian took over a fer sectors with the Halflings, however, everyone was worried about leaving solo tiles with my flying sorcerers, so the game slowed in it's expansion quite a bit.  My major fodder for the second half of the game was in the trolls, who while fortified were very safe from normal attack, but not from my sorcerer swapping special ability.

Many of my declining Hill Giant tokens remained through the end of the game and my Sorcerer's were sweeping the board.  I also held off Ghouls and Trolls from Trish for three turns on one space before she was finally able to overcome the singular Sorcerer.

As the game wound down, Allia made a last ditch effort by declining the Elves and purchasing the Tritons.  The rest of us finished the game with our second races.

In the end, everyone thought that Allia had the game, however, I had been trading in small tokens for 10's throughout the game and when we added up our points, everyone was surprised to find out that Allia and I were tied and had to go to the first tie-breaker, which is the number of squares occupied by active or declining tokens of yours.

Allia came up to a total of 12, while I counted up to a total of 13 and won the tie-breaker by 1 point.  By some Small Wonder, I won!

Final Scores:
Stanley (Small MASTER OF THE WORLD!) - 94+
Allia - 94
Brian - 76
Trish - 75

Final Thoughts:

This game probably took the longest of all to setup, but most of this was due to two of us having never played and being useless and the other two trying to sort through a mixed up collection of the demo box.

Once we were a turn in, things started making allot more sense and the combinations of Races and Special Powers made much more sense.  I enjoyed that it just so happened that most of the combinations not only made sense, but were actually some of the more powerful combinations in the game.

I was shocked that with Trish's early stomping with the Ghouls that she didn't do better, but she really had a tough go with the Trolls and lost allot of dice rolls that cost her time and lost coins.

Allia started of with a bang with the Ratmen, but lost a couple of turns with the Elves, and turning to the Tritons late only scored her a few points.

Brian had the worst luck of the group.  With both the Dwarves and the Halflings, he ended up with a small number of forces and got pinched by both the Giants and the Elves.

My Giants scored the third most of the first groups, but I was able to stay close enough so that when I exploded with the Flying Sorcerer's, it was just enough to put me over the top.

***
I enjoyed the fun combinations and expanding forces of the game from the beginning and started to enjoy it more and more as we continued through the game.  This is a game that I am really enterested in purchasing in one of it's forms to play with friends as I think it is one that can be extremely fun on a first play and hold up really well with multiple plays.  Also, with the extensive expansions that it has, things can stay fresh for quite a while.

I was really glad that I decided to jump over and give this one a play.  It allowed me to play with another group that was very fun and to experience a game I was looking forward to trying.  It was probably the most fun of all of the games I played on Saturday.