by ZomBub
For my first ever game of Small World, of which I had previously been skeptical, I sat down with Drew, the owner of the game, and a bunch of other newbies, John, Candice, and Nicole. we used the base game along with the Cursed!, Grand Dames, and Be Not Afraid supplements.Drew, being fairly experienced with the game, started out strong with the Flying Leprechauns; a plague that would never fully be eradicated. John began with the Bivouacking Wizards, and I with the Fortified Pygmies. There was much talk beforehand about the likelihood of any given player having their races go into decline two or three times during the course of the game, but John and I were intent on defying such talk and staking permanent claim to our own respective areas of the map until the bitter end.
Some fairly memorable combos hit the board such as with Candice's very practical Catapult Orcs, and also Nicole's bizarre Seafaring Kobolds. But in the end, the two races that never went into decline were also the two races that won the game, my Pygmies beating John's Wizards by literally one point, and all others being left straggling.
Though I don't expect most games to play out as this one did, Nicole and I became instant fans of Small World and intend to procure it and its many expansions as quickly as our finances will reasonably allow.