Small World - How To Play

oh and welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith and in this video we're going to learn the two to five player game small world designed by Philippe key arts and published by Days of Wonder Guelph sponsor this video commando dwarves flying trolls diplomatic skeletons and a host of other races crowd the world a world that is much much much too small for all of them and that means a fight is brewing so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up find the two double sided boards and place the one face-up in the center of the play area that shows your number of players here we'll be setting up a three player game in this video so this board we can return to the box this here is the round track and on this very first space you'll set the round marker and beside the board also place the included tray which contains the tokens for the games 14 races these are the race banners which you'll shuffle into a face-up pile placing them beside the board then deal the top 5 into a column above it so it looks something like this then do the same thing with these special power badges stacking and dealing 5 face-up paired with each of the revealed race banners looking at the board you'll find several bordered spaces known as regions in each region that shows this symbol you'll place one of these Lost Tribe tokens several of the regions also show mountains like these and in each of these spaces place one of these mountain tokens like I've done here beside the board place the game's die and these troll layer fortress encampment hole in the ground hero and dragon tokens each in their own stacks along with the victory coins which you can just set in a pile from the victory coins give each player 5 1 value coins which they should then place facedown in front of themself and that's the setup in small world players will take on the roles of various races each with their own special powers and then you try and conquer and hold as many as possible to earn victory points now try as you might your civilization will fall but don't worry because then you'll take on a new race and continue your conquests all in an effort to have the most points by the end the game is played over a series of rounds and during around starting with a randomly chosen first player you'll go around the table and clockwise order and each person will get one turn now during that first round when each player is taking their very first turn of the game they must begin by picking a race and special power combo this is also something you'll be able to do later in the game and it works the same way in both cases so let's go to the table and I'll show you how this works first select any one race and power combo within this column which could include the ones at the top of the stacks here now taking the combo in this first top position is always free but if you'd like to take any of the ones further down then you must place one of your value 1 victory points face-up on each race that you skip over for example if I wanted this combo of swamp dwarves then I would place tokens on these previous two I then take the race banner and power badge and put them together placing them in front of myself on the table then you fill in this gap by moving the combos upward placing the top ones from these stacks onto the bottom most position which will then reveal a new combination here let's skip ahead and say it's a future players first turn and they want to take this race of forest halflings they would then drop one of their coins here and then collect this from the column now any time you take a race with victory points on them you add those to your personal collection placing them facedown either way after taking a new race total the two values here so in this case 7 and collect that number of matching race tokens from the storage tray putting them face-up in front of yourself this is known as your active race and this will also provide you with special powers as indicated by these symbols but we'll talk about those later after gaining an active race you immediately use it to conquer one of the border regions that is one that's adjacent to the edge the board or one that is touching a sea region that is adjacent to the edge so in this case that would include any one of these regions around the outside here though I should point out unless you're allowed to buy your races special abilities you can never enter into a water space to conquer a region you must move two of your race tokens from in front of you into that space now as soon as you have your pieces in a space you control that region after entering the board you can then continue to conquer locations with more of your race tokens but each new location must be adjacent to at least one other region that you already control this means that we can now conquer any one of these regions and we'll choose this one however this space has a mountain as we said it always costs two tokens to enter a new space but it costs one more token for each other token already there so this would require two plus one more for the mountain as the game goes on other tokens may be added to the board and if so you must add another of your tokens for each encampment troll there or fortress in the region that you're conquering if for example a fortress had been here that it would require another one of our tokens to conquer this location this rule is also true for each Lost Tribe token in the space so to go into this region next that means it would cost two tokens plus one extra now I would like to keep conquering and go into this space but I only have two tokens left however that's okay because during your final conquest of a turn as long as you have at least one token left to invade with you can attempt a last conquest by selecting your target region first and then rolling this die the only other requirement is that the target region must need no more than three additional tokens to be properly conquered if so roll the die and add the value shown to the number of tokens you have left if the total is equal to or greater than the number of tokens you would normally need to conquer that region you succeed and place your remaining tokens there now I should point out that anytime there is a single lost tribe or raised token of an opponent in a space that you have conquered it is removed and returned to the tray now if you fail a role let's say instead I have rolled this in that case you don't take the target region and instead deploy the tokens you have remaining into any other one region that your race already occupies so for example I might put them both here also keep in mind no matter what special powers or abilities you may have or whether or not you were rolling the die you must always have at least one race token available in order to initiate a new conquest now I had mentioned that if the space you are conquering only has one enemy race token then you return it to the tray after conquering it but as a final example let's pretend it's later in the game and another player has control of this location with two of their tokens I'm adjacent to this region so I can target it and it will require two of my tokens as usual plus one more for each of the enemy tokens there so another two tokens after conquering if there are two or more races opens there that opponent discards one of them back to the tray and puts the rest into their hand holding onto them until the end of the current players turn where it will then be redeployed as we'll see later going back to our original example showing the conquests of the swamp dwarves I'll point out that once the active player has finished performing all the conquests that they can or wish to they may then redeploy any of the active race tokens they already have on the board as long as they leave at least one behind in every region that they currently control in other words I could pick up all these tokens and then place them into any of these spaces in any way I want perhaps I'll place two here and two here I left this position a little weaker but don't forget there's a mountain token here so if someone wants to conquer this space they'll have to spend two of their tokens plus one two more also I should mention when you're putting your tokens back onto the board they can go onto any of the spaces you control even if those regions aren't adjacent to each other now you may remember I said that during the active players turn when they're conquering spaces on the board they might not just go after empty spaces or spaces with Lost Tribe tokens sometimes they're gonna go after their opponent's spaces and when that happens their opponent will take back all the tokens from that space returning one of them back to the tray and the others they must keep in their hand and this is important because once the current player has finished redeploying their tokens after all of their conquests they'll then take a little break in their turn and starting with the next player in clockwise order and going once around the table each person holding race tokens in their hand that came from regions the current player just conquered well now they put them back onto the board into any regions they still control now again this would only happen in later turns after other players have also entered the board so that they could be targets of a player's attacks also if a player no longer has control of any regions maybe the current player kicked them out of all the spaces that they had well then at the start of that player's next turn they'll just enter the board from any edge and continue conquering as normal with the tokens that they have now either way after all those players have finished redeploying their conquered tokens going back to the active player they will now score victory points to do this they collect one victory point from the supply for each region with one of their raised tokens or in other words for each region that they control so in this case one two three points any points you collect are kept facedown but during the game you can always make change if necessary from the supply now some race and power combinations will earn you additional points during this step and we'll talk more about those abilities later but as an example this ability means that the swamp dwarves will gain one additional victory point for free swamp region they control in this case they have the one here so that would give them one additional point well their race banner says they get one additional point for free mine symbol in regions they control they have one of those here so they would gain another point after scoring your turn ends and the next player in clockwise order goes again remember that if it's a player's first turn of the game they must begin by choosing any race and power combination and then invading from the edge of the board once everyone has taken a turn the round ends and you advance this marker one space now assuming it hadn't already been on this final space a new round will be in with the previous star player once you have a race already on the board you will begin new turns by expanding through new conquests taking all but one token from each region that you occupy into your hand and then using them to conquer new spaces adjacent to regions that you already control following all the rules we saw from before now I should point out you may choose to completely empty a region when first collecting tokens at the start of your turn but you will not score points for that region at the end of your turn unless you re conquer it you can even choose at the start of your turn to take all of your tokens back from the board but if you do this you must then enter the board from an edge as previously described eventually you may feel like your race has overextended or has become too weak don't forget other players will be attacking you and sending your tokens back to the tray so if you want at the start of a turn instead of conquering new regions you may spend your entire turn putting your current race into decline now that might sound bad because this means you will not be conquering new regions in fact you'll even be taking more of your tokens off of the board so why do this well although you'll be sacrificing a turn to go into decline it means at the start of your next turn you'll come back stronger than ever as we'll see so a very important part of the game is determining when to go into decline and when to hang on for just a few more rounds to go into decline flip your active race Banner upside down and discard its special power then remove all but one of its tokens from each region of the board that it currently occupies returning them to the tray and then flip the remaining tokens facedown this changes it from your active race to your race in decline it's time in this world is fading you will not make any new conquests on the turn you set your active race into decline instead you'll skip straight to scoring and although in decline you are still considered to control the regions with your old race tokens as long as they remain on the board so they will each score you a point however they no longer score you any bonus points from their power badge which you discard it or from their race banner unless their race banner has an ability on its decline side as you can see here dwarves and decline still love to mine so if they were on any mined spaces you'd still get extra points for those they aren't on any currently though so in this case I'd gain two points on your next turn after going into decline you'll select a new race and power combination just as you did at the start of the game and then you'll immediately invade the board with them choosing any edge space to enter from at the end of all future turns you'll then gain points for any regions you control with your new active race and from tokens that you have in decline I should point out that you can conquer spaces that contain your declined race just as you would an opponent but you may do just be able to increase the number of tokens in that region making it harder for your opponents to attack it this can be valuable because you will not be able to make your declined regions stronger otherwise at the end of a turn when your redeploying your active race you will not be able to add them to spaces with your declined race they'll have to go into their own regions as usual I should also point out a player can only have one race in decline at a time so if you ever retire your active race and you already have another declined race first remove all of its tokens from the board along with your old declined race banner putting it on the bottom of the race stack and then decline your current active race I'll also mention that in the unlikely event that there are not enough special power badges to combine with all of the raised banners because players are going through them so quickly you should just shuffle any discarded ones into a new stack to place here with most of the rules explained I just want to point out that the game comes with one of these sheets for each of the players and the Sun rises many of the rules we've discussed in case you just need a little bit of help remembering the first few times you play otherwise once the round marker reaches the final space of the round track each player takes a final turn and then the game ends each player now reveals and totals their victory point tokens and the player with the most points wins in the case of a tie the tied player with the most race tokens on the board including their active and inactive tokens will win and if there's still a tie the tied players share the victory one of the most dynamic elements of the game is that there are 14 races and 20 special powers included in the box each with their own special abilities which will provide you with all kinds of unique combinations every time you play some will let you build fortresses for extra defence others will let you enter see spaces and so on and we're not going to go through each of these powers in this video instead players should refer to the appropriate sections in the rulebook or in the back of that helping guide sheet that I showed you earlier which is what we're looking at right here additionally this game has a number of expansion products that you can pick up separately to add new races powers and special rules to the game as you play but those I'll leave you to discover on your own otherwise that's everything you need to know to play small world if you have any questions but anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the game's page at BoardGameGeek and I'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little Bell icon so you give notification any time we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 143,369

Keywords: Tutorial, Learn To Play, Card Games, How To Play, Learn, Instructional, Watch It Played, Miniatures, Board Games, Game Rules, Small World, Tabletop, Instructionals, Learn How To Play, Instructions, Tutorials, Play Throughs, Rules, Days Of Wonder, Board Game

Id: BMxt7OVj_lI

Length: 17min 12sec (1032 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019