Small World: Royal Bonus

Small World expansions have always excited me, as I love getting new races to add to the variety of the gameplay. It seems limitlessly expandable, so long as you can find new ways to create different abilities within the rules. So when Days of Winder ran a kickstarter for the Small World ipad app, I joined up only because three new expansion races were being given away as a goal. (Of course, now they are available even without the kickstarter). How do they stack up? Are they more great additions, or are they starting to stretch the elasticity of Small World expansions?

Additions

Fauns – One of the new races are the fauns. Thematically this race works and fits into the rest of the fantasy creatures, and its f[power is mean yet conciliatory. When you conquer a region, you get a new token, but so does your victims. Its pretty neat.

Shrubmen – Shrubmen are simple yet neat as they are immune to everything while in the forest. I like this because I always like map-based powers, and I think the idea of being immune in certain places Is neat, just so long as they don’t end up having races like this for each terrain.

Igors – Igors seem very similar to the necromancer from the bonus Necromancer Island scenario, except without all the other game alterations. Its certainly the most complicated of the new powers but can be fun to play.

Aquatic – This is a new power you can add to your race, and it’s a good one. All your coastal regions are +1 and non-coasts are -1. Sometimes simple is better. But you will realize there are a lot more coastal regions than you may think.

Fireball – At the end of each turn you collect a fireball, which allows you to use later for +2 on attack only. Its pretty good, and the visual of a hobbit shooting fireballs from their hands Super Mario style is fun.

Behemoth – This is certainly a power which feels like ideas are beginning to stretch a little thin. Your race includes two behemoths which grow in tokens every turn. Its sort of annoying to manage, and the extra race tokens are annoying as well. Plus the artwork is horrible: they were going for some sort of giant hippo idea to be cute, including a bow on the head of the female, but it just clashes and doesn’t look good.

Critique

Best Feature: The Aquatic power and the Shrubmen race: sometimes simple is best.

When to use: There’s no need not to just throw them into every game, like most of these small world new race expansions. They just get mixed up with the rest and add more variety.

Does it fit?: If you have the Spider’s Web expansion that as released after this, then you can fit it all in that storage tray. Granted the storage tray will not fit in the base game box. But otherwise, you can sort of squish it all into the previous tray, but its tight and the tiles have to get mixed up quite a bit.

What type: It’s a “more of the same” expansion, which is just fine for something like Small World.

Overall: Its nice having new races, and these ones are pretty good. Could do without behemoth, and Igors are take it or leave it, but I like the other ones. Still it does feel as though Small World’s idea bank is running low.