The first game tonight was the new one from Days of Wonder: Small World, designed by Philippe Keyaerts and based on his earlier game, Vinci.

I started by taking some Wealthy Ratmen, which is a pretty weak race but gave me a nice start in terms of VPs. Then Nige acquired the Underworld Sorcerers which turned out to give a huge benefit, through gaining additional sorcerers on subsequent turns, and the use of caverns meant he was able to reach virtually any area of the map. Mark K’s Amazons seemed to turn invisible when they went into decline as many of them hung around for the rest of the game, while Mark G’s Fortified Halflings kept other races from trying to attack their regions for a few turns. Tom seemed to suffer from being last to play, which we felt was a bit of a problem particularly on the last turn when everyone was able to attack him to reduce his final scoring but he couldn’t then impact the other players’ scores. Nige, as predicted, won this reasonably comfortably but it was fairly close for second place.

Generally, we felt this to be quite good and I preferred it to Vinci. I also liked the multiple boards for different numbers of players and the mix and match aspect of pairing races with special powers.