Small World – fun lands to conquer
Our now 16 year son, Trevor, loves to edit our video reviews. But he doesn’t like to get in front of the camera to review the board games very often. So when he’s excited to do a review, we know it’s a game that he loves. And he was very excited to talk about Small World.
In fact, Trevor’s highest board game rating has landed on Small World – 5 out of 5!
Why?
Well, we highly recommend you watch his video review to see. Trevor’s review of Small World may be our longest video review yet, but there’s just a lot that Trevor wants to show you about the game and why he loves it.
Can the whole family enjoy Small World?
We don’t think every family member will enjoy playing Small World. Yes, the boys love it. However, Brooke has no interest in playing it. It’s not that Small World can’t be enjoyed by girls because we’ve seen a lot of positive reviews from females that enjoy the game. But for Brooke, battling for regions on a board just doesn’t strike her fancy as she doesn’t like that much confrontation.
Since the game is very confrontational (conquering each other’s territories is what it’s all about), youngsters in your family may not enjoy the game very much. And while the game play may not be very difficult, there are a lot of pieces moving around and the game last more than an hour – which isn’t a recipe for a game that young kids enjoy.
But if you’ve got teens and pre-teens in your family that love to go after each other in a game, Small World is a blast. Small World is all about taking regions away from others on the board with your super cool combos of races and special powers. So if you know family members that love that kind of game, then Small World is one that you should definitely add to your board game wish list.
Or if you’ve got some friends that you’d love to take on in a fun game of control of the world, then add it to your list as well.
Expand the fun with more Small World
Small World also has a bunch of expansions that you can add for additional races and special powers. Although the expansions can add a lot of cool stuff (and we have a couple), we’ve still haven’t grown tired of just playing the base game. The random combinations for the races mean that we still have plenty of fresh games to play before we feel like we need to throw in more.
How does Small World score on the “Let’s Play Again” meter?
With Trevor’s highest board game review rating ever, you can imagine how Small World scores on his “Let’s play again” game meter. Even with that though, we don’t usually play games of Small World back-to-back. Because of the fun intensity and length of the game, once a game ends, we’re satisfied to take a deep breath and just soak in the enjoyment we had.
We think your family will also enjoy this board game hit from Days of Wonder.
P.S. Trevor’s other top rated games
When Trevor game Small World a 5 out of 5 in his video review I thought that was the first time he handed out a 5. However, upon further investigation, Trevor has rated one game a 5 before – Mystery of the Abbey – which also happens to be a Days of Wonder game. He’s also rated 15 games a 4.5. To see which games are at the top of his list, check out our Game Reviews page and click on “Trevor” to sort the reviews by his ratings and see what rises to the top.
Interested in what others think of Smallworld?
Check out these other opinions:
* iSlaytheDragon Smallworld review
My kids (ages 8, 9, 9, and 10) really enjoy Small World. I actually recommend it as a “gateway game” for direct interation – as silly as that might sound. But it is light, humorous, scales wonderfully, and is very simple with excellent replayability and it is relatively short (for a “war” game). And the fact that you often go after certain areas on the map based on your power/race combo instead of just attacking particular players reduces the personal factor in the confrontation.
We’ve played it twice, and it is such a kick! My wife gets a little annoyed that she has to throw her happy little races into decline so fast and that she can’t _hold_ territory “just a little longer”, but that’s the fun of it, isn’t it!
I really like the simplicity of the mechanic and the subtle detail/complexity added by the combinations of race/special abilities. Makes for some rather *interesting* (shall we say) results sometimes …
Pillaging Wizards?! lol Wacky stuff! ;o)
We completely agree with Trevor. This is a fantastic little romp. Thanks for posting the review and nudging us along. We’re already considering expansions. :o)
Finally a game I can win at … my lady is brutal at Risk. :shudder:
Thanks for the 2nd opinion!
Great game.
Funny you should mention Risk – since Trevor likes to play Star Wars Risk but always curses his dice rolling luck in battle.
Great review. I think you hit the nail on the head about the audience. It does seem to be one that really appeals to the younger crowd (provided they don’t mind confrontation). The strategy is light enough that a 6-9 year old can compete as well as a teen or adult. Because of that I think it’s a superb family game where the parents can play with kids and have a great time.
That said I will say also that it’s no fun with 2 players. It’s gotten to the point where I can tell who’s going to win based on the starting races in a 2 player game. I wish they had done the 4 boards as 3-6 players, but either way that’s a minor complaint. It’s a great addition to the collection.