Small World Tales and Legends – fun expansion

Small World Tales and Legends is a great expansion to the Small World board game.

Earlier this year, we did a whole series of reviews on board game expansions. However, we didn’t cover any of the expansions for Small World. It’s time to change that.

Expansions are a great way to extend the play of board games you love. And one of our favorite board games is Small World. So of course, we’re going to be interested in checking out the Small World expansions.

Small World Tales & Legends is a small (and inexpensive) expansion that introduces 54 new Event cards that change the game each round.

At the start of each turn (except the first) a new Event card is drawn and put into play. Some events may have small consequences, while others are nearly cataclysmic in their impact.

In Small World, the number of rounds is determined by the number of players. In 2 and 3 player games, there are 10 rounds. With 4 players, there are 9. And with 5 players, there are only 8 rounds. So the most Event cards you’ll experience in a game is 9. With 54 cards in the deck, that means at least 6 games before you’ve tried them all.

And since the cards come up randomly, that means a lot of replay-ability for such a fun game.

All of the Event cards also have different symbols on them so you can play with a certain theme of events or certain level of effect.

For example, there are “Little Lore” cards that have only minor effects such as conquering a region 1 away from his own. “Tall Tales” cards have worldly consequences such as races arriving on the board that turn receiving an additional 3 tokens for conquests. And “Lordly Legends” that “turn the world upside down” such as just before a final conquest dice roll, players may take back in hand all active race tokens and use them to conquer new regions. Powerful stuff.

These cards definitely change up the game play and we love the new twists!

The next Upcoming Event is also visible, so players know what changes will happen during the next round as well. This is great because it gives players a chance to adjust their strategy along the way and plan for what’s coming next.

Of course, if you really want to throw a wrench in things and see what happens, don’t reveal the Upcoming Event in advance.

The short and sweet is that we love mixing in the Event cards and foresee always playing with Tales and Legends when we play Small World from now on.

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* iSlaytheDragon Smallworld review