The Smallworld ride might be amongst the most famous of Disneyland rides. But you have come here today for me to answer one simple question “is it good?”. The ride opens with you entering a boat with som… wait, i’m not reviewing the ride Smallworld? I guess i’ll have to cancel the animatronic delivery then. SO then I guess that leaves me with another question “is Smallworld the game good?” Yes, I think it is very good.

So how do you play? Each player takes a turn to “conquest”. Conquesting means you pick up all your  units except for the one on each space you’re on and you get to use them to attack the other players. You need two more units then the amount of units on a territory to take it over (even if there are no units on that territory). None of this involves randomness, every attack you do you know exactly what will happen. Except for the final attack, because on your final attack you can roll a die to see if you can win it even if you don’t have enough units. And this is a great use of randomness because you are never expecting to get a certain result and get frustrated when you don’t get the result you want. It provides enough uncertainty but your strategies are never foiled by luck.

Next you get to reallocate your units from different territories you control to other territories you control. You get money(which is the games victory points) for each territory you control. And thats most of the game right there. Does that sound fun? Maybe a bit. Bu there one more thing in Smallworld that makes it great. And it’s the fact that you don’t just play as one army. Because instead of playing a turn you can choose to skip it and go into decline. When you go into decline you remove all units except one on each territory you control, you can no longer control that army(but you still get money from them), but most importantly you get to choose a new army.

And that’s where a lot of the theming comes in. From the surface Smallworld might look light a generic fantasy theme with some nice artwork. But Smallworld is really a satirical parody of fantasy settings. You don’t play as a courageous hero, you play as a corrupt warlord killing the innocent locals on the island your attacking with your armies, and discarding said armies as soon as your done with them.

And each army is randomly generated with a fantasy race and ability. For example you could have the flying halflings, the hill orcs, or the berserker humans. Each of which have a drastic effect on gameplay. Some things effect the amount of money you get for each territory, some let you build forts, some races let you continue to control them even after you decline them. Without these powers there might not be optimal moves in Smallworld, you would never really have interesting strategies. But with these powers you can find an opportunity to switch to a different race and just destroy the other players(until of course they switch). Because declining your current army is wasting a turn you might want to wait until the last second to do it, but then you will be too thin on the ground. There are so many interesting puzzles because of this one mechanic.

This makes Smallworld a very focused experience. You never feel lost or too overwhelmed with possibilities. But there is still enough choice to keep things interesting. And you can Smallworld with a little as two players and it is still fun. If you are looking for a reasonably simple war game with a neat twist I would definitely suggest Smallworld. It’s only real negative is that someone could just be in the right place at the right time and get a super overpowered race and power combination. Luckily they will still eventually have to decline. Now if you’ll excuse me I have a ride review site to create.