Monday, June 8, 2009
Small World first impressions
I do have to say that my first impressions of the game are very positive. It seems very well thought out as far as player aids and other components and the balance between forces. Some commentary has criticized the dwarves as being too weak, but I think that not having a perfect balance between races is not a bad thing. Much of that criticism seems to be coming from a eurogame perspective, but as a wargamer I'm pretty used to units that simply aren't as good as others. For wargames that's simply something you cope with. That militia may be close to worthless, but that's what you have, so deal with it.
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The problem we had with it was difficult components. It's very difficult to parse the board easily, especially with the "greyed out" ex-empires. Many of the tokens, when put into the context of the map, are indistinguishable from a distance. Vinci did a much better job with using simple cubes and discs for the exact same kinds of combinations.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do appreciate the shorter game time, scalable maps, etc, the components really hurt this game and it's a shame that they were allowed to do so. You'd think that most publishers had a better idea of where the component pitfalls are by now, but it seems that they keep falling into the same traps. I understand that production artwork is going to be a bit of a surprise with every game, but to my mind that's just all the more reason to avoid masses of tokens that all look the same from two feet away.
We literally had extremely experienced gamers "discovering" that they had units on various parts of the board. I don't think that bribes would get some of them back to the table if this game was on it, but they'd play Vinci.
On the plus side, kids will love it. If Mom doesn't go into cardiac arrest at the maiming of the Disney slogan on the front of the box! I'm amazed their lawyers haven't been logging hours already, especially given the change from "laughter" to "slaughter"! Clever, but I can't imagine wanting an eight-year-old quoting that at school. I am *so* old.
My initial impressions are also positive as well. A lot of people out there are quick to be unhappy and want to complain.
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