 So, uh, small world, small world, I think before we talk about small world, k arts. It's a small one. Don't even don't even. We got to talk about Vinci. So small world is made. We got to have a Vinci first by Philippi k arts and Vinci is made by Philippi k arts as is another game called evo, which is a fun little game that I played once at RIT with Professor Richmond. I try to remember if I played that the little evolution game. I don't remember. I remember evo for the SNES differ. Oh my God. That game was awesome. But anyway, so we were at we were at a gaming store one day and there was this game Vinci on the discount table right and Alex was and then he bought it and I basically all he had heard about the game was that it was a out of print and be that there were some flaws in it like I knew that had typos and some other like flaws in the instructions. So we got Vinci at the discount bin and we played it and it was actually a fantastic game right and basically the idea Vinci is it sort of risk like where you have units and you conquer space territories on a map. Well, we did a whole show on it. Well, we did we in 2007. Oh, so go back and listen to a two thousand seven that she show. So basically small world is the same game remade with a skin right so that basically Vinci had those flaws with it. So the same guy years later as in a couple of years ago, maybe a year or two he remade the game changed a bunch of the rules to polish it up. He changed the theme to make it fantasy like as opposed to generic Europe medieval crap right so that it would sell on game shelves. He fixed the typos. He basically redid the game while keeping most of the rules. So it's 90 percent the same game put out by days of wonder. So you might as well call it shelves next to all the other days of one game. You might as well call it popular. You might as well call it Vinci 2.0 right and he put out this game small world and we bought it and we finally got around to playing it despite it being crazy popular. And you know what it's pretty good. If you were on the hedge, you might as well just buy it. It's a solid game. I mean, you're not it's not like you're going to buy a copy of Vinci. No, right. So you might as well buy a copy of small world. Now, one thing I have to say, this is kind of an aside, but I've never had this experience until now of having played a game and knew the rules very well and then having played a game that is based on that game so much that it's almost the same game. It is way harder to learn the rules of the second game that's almost the same. I think it's because you don't put in the full effort of reading the rules straightforwardly, right? Because what you do is you look for the rules differences and you skip over the rest. But the other problem with that is you get to a section of the rule book and you say, oh, I know this rule and you skip over it. But really there might have been something different in there you missed because you skipped over it because you're not also days of wonder games have kind of crap instructions usually, which makes it kind of hard to parse anyway. It's kind of hard. It's like once you know a rule, it's hard. It's like it's easier to search a rule book with your eyes if you don't know the rules at all than it is to search them, you know, being very familiar with. Yeah, well, this is an aside. This is definitely in the shit talking stage, but after packs and after things calm down, I started on this privately because I realized that 90% of the rules I've ever read for any board game piss me off and I know exactly what to fix because I've written so much tech documentation in my life. Yeah, I want to write a stupid RFC and here's how to write the rules for a board game. People already it's the thing is that information is already out there, but people don't. It's not in a format that people who write board game rules would ever find. It's also not obvious. It is not like do this than this in this exact format. That's just I'm going for it. But anyway, so we ran into weird problems like we're playing and then after the game, we're like, wait a minute, you have to be contiguous because in Vinci, you had to be contiguous. Yeah, you couldn't in Vinci bisected. You weren't allowed to have say a territory on the left and a territory in the right. All your territories had to be touching each other unless you had what was it astronomy or something like that. It was the one that led you to be contiguous. Yeah, there was basically a special power that let you be discontiguous. Otherwise, you couldn't. You had to keep all your stuff connected. But in small world, we couldn't find a rule in the rule book. Correct us if we're wrong. That says you had to be connected. You can actually let your guys split up. You could take all. You know, it didn't matter. Yeah, we might be wrong. We only played the game twice and I read the right check the rules. I couldn't find anything about being forced to be contiguous, which significantly changes the game. So huge because you can basically conquer a territory temporarily for a turn and then abandon it to get more valuable territories on the other side. So the gist of the game in case you've never played Vinci is that there's a list of set of races and a set of powers and they're randomly combined into a list like, I don't know, dragon rider elves or giant spectral giants. Stout gnomes. Actually, I had spectral ratmen, which was both hilarious and overpowered. Yes. The ones that we noticed that were overpowered where spirit is definitely overpowered. I don't think they're overpowered. I think the people we played with did not optimally fuck. Possibly. But so you pick a race and there's a there's like a loadout, a draft. So if you want to pick one, it's free if it's at the top of the list. You have to pay victory points to skip over them to get one further down the list and you leave those victory points on the ones you didn't take, which is a very elegant way of balancing the game. Yeah. So initially at the beginning of the game, there is sort of a random factor, right? If you go first and an awesome combination is in the first slot, you can get it for free without having to pay victory points. But going first appears to be a disadvantage in the long run. It does because by going on to the board first, everyone can just come in on top of you. And there's not much you can do about it unless you're like the super strong defensive hobbits or something like that. So you come out of the board. The game is deterministic with one twist in that to conquer a territory, you know, you pick up all your guys from the board except the ones that are holding on to territories every round and then you throw them all back on the board. And instead of risk where it's like, all right, I roll the dice to see if my 10 guys beat your four guys or whatever, it costs two guys to take a territory plus one for every enemy guy on it plus any other modifiers that may be in place like forest plus one, mountain plus one. So it's completely deterministic all the combat. It's like, you know, it requires this many units to conquer these territories, but everyone has a limited number of units so you can only expand your empire so far and you can't do it all in one turn. You have to do over the course of many turns. Also the more you expand, the less you expand in the future, and the more difficult it is to defend because you have more places to defend with a limited number of units, also every race gets a different number of units. So what you do is when you sort of reach the limit of your expansion or you don't feel right, what you do is you decline and that empire now becomes declining empire. You basically stop playing it, but it stays on the board and you go and you get a new empire and you keep getting points from it. Right, but you get points from the old empire. So what you want to do is you want to have a big old empire that still exists and a big current empire that still exists and you want them both simultaneously so you can get double points from having two double points. Simultaneous empire is an old one and a new one and as long and then as the old one gets disintegrated, then you decline the new one and you come onto the board with another one. So you always have two going and you cycle them and then you get the most points and when now this mechanic is awesome because it works a lot like a formula one race with the pitting you basically have to pick and when you decline you do it at the start of your turn, but you get victory points from your turn at the end of your turn. So on a normal turn you do all your conquest get all your victory points. You probably have a whole bunch of bonus powers from your race. If you decline, you do fuck all. You don't do anything. Flip over all your guys, all your powers go away. You get some points. You get some points. Not a lot. And then you don't come back out of the board until the next round. It feels really rough to decline unless you have a stout. If you're stout, which is the same thing as rebirth and vinci, you can decline at the end of your turn, which means you can take a turn and then decline and then without wasting a turn, which is incredibly powerful. Now when you decline, it's like being punched in the face. It's like playing Age of Steam, but remember when you're playing this game, everybody has to decline at some point. Yeah. And when you come back onto the board, it's like super awesome tally ho here. I come with a brand new set of guys and I can just kick someone right in the ass because they left the edge of the board and defended blah. Yep. So the game pretty much is that and it goes a set number of turns and then the game is over. I'm like vinci, which went to a set number of victory points. Yeah. That was that's much more interesting, right? I mean in vinci, it was a set number of victory points. You couldn't be you couldn't really work really hard to schedule your declines, right? Because scheduling on the declining on the final turn of the game can only hurt you, right? So it's all about when is the game going to end, how many turns are left in small world, you know exactly how many turns are left. That's a huge dynamic changer coupled with the fact that vinci had open scoring. It had, you know, the 90s style score track around the board. Small world has victory point tokens that are supposed to be kept secret. Now you can keep count. It's basically just a who can actually keep counting thing, but I think what they're trying to remove from the game is the fact that the end of vinci always came down to Pete is winning. I'm going to fuck Pete in the ass. Yeah. To prevent him from going over the edge. Yeah. Because not everyone has counted the victory points and they're I count him. I know exactly who to absolutely counted them, but not everyone has counted them. Therefore it's difficult to convince everyone to say gang up on the leader and also gang up on the leader isn't necessarily going to help you win because you're not going to say delay the end of the game because the end of the game is coming no matter what. So if they've already got more points, the only thing you can do with a limited number of turns is maximize your points and also vinci you could actually slow the game down. Attacking the leader would actually you know give you another turn possibly whereas in small world attacking the leader unless that's the optimal way for you to get points isn't going to help you as much as also removes some of the tension from the end of the game because if you don't know exactly when the game is going to end you might have to really make a tough decision as to whether or not to decline the game might end you might get fucked you don't know in this game if you decline in the last round you're an idiot. Yeah. It's like you I just looked and I won the second game we played demonstratively right and what I did is you know I had a spirit guys who stayed around the whole game getting me points that helped a lot but the other thing I did was I basically looked and I said you know with this many players there's going to be 10 turns I think it was 10 turns right I said I will decline on these turns and I did exactly that I kept to that schedule and I declined exactly three times and because the game is clockwise it is the exact same end game dynamic that happens in El Grande with the big and the low bidding. Yep. It's the exact same thing. So I you know if I play you know with any number of players doesn't matter I'm going to look at how many turns there are I'm going to figure out the optimal declining schedule and I'm going to try to pick my combinations based on of course how many points they'll get me but also will they stick to my declining schedule right if I'm if I'm if I'm behind I got to pick a race that will be able to decline more quickly or if I'm if I'm ahead then I got to pick a slow race that needs like three turns to expand I'm like how many turns will it take for that race to decline that's how I'm going to judge them when I pick them right that's a two turn race as a three turn you know it's a four turn and then I could pick and so that I declined exactly the right times to get the maximum points out of every single turn so the races and the powers in Vinci they were very abstract and then you get there weren't separate races and powers it was just chits and they could be combined any which way yep you could have double in something yeah you could have double barbarian you could have god that's a lot of barbarians diplomacy currency you could have you know astronomy and mining you could have all sorts of powers were also very abstract and usually came down to numbers games in small world the powers are all way out there dune style crazy bullshit like some guys get dragon that they could just put somewhere and is fucking invincible yep but at the same time there's a lot less diversity in terms of the number of unity yet yes so in Vinci you could you could have a one you know civilization you have like five units and one another one 14 14 in this all of the special powers have either three four or five most of them have four only one of them has three and all the races the diversity in the number of units they get is very small game gives you the exact minimum number of pieces yes so almost everyone has like nine ten eleven ish guys almost everyone i think you could have as many i think what is a combination that lets you have like 13 maybe yep now there is a combination that lets you have like five which is the dwarf god did what dwarf something the equivalent of currency yeah i pick that combination and i got hosed so this factor of the fact that the numbers are pretty much all in line and the powers are all equally crazy means that the game is almost too well balanced like no matter what civilization you pick unless you pick those fucking dwarves with the currency you're coming onto the board roughly as strong as everyone else it's very balanced and very deterministic and very i don't know i dislike it a little bit compared to vinci because of that yeah and vinci for example you if you picked mining you would go for the pickaxes on the board and they would be worth two points and that was crazy awesome and you would right so everyone be like oh shit don't let him take the ah crap he's got mining mountaineering fuck but in small world you can pretty much with any civilization you have like four different ways to come onto the board that are equally viable and it mostly doesn't matter who you attack yeah it's like there's not there's nothing that gives you that many points that is so much greater than everything else so it's like okay these guys get points on green and these guys get points on wizard marks and these guys get points on this so it's everyone's going to get bonus points from something it's a better tighter game in some ways which at the same time reduces certain kinds of strategies from the previous game it's like on the one hand we should be happier there's less randomness but on the other hand it's like well it's so you know ah but they added randomness with the die in oh i forgot about that in vinci you throwed all your guys you have extra guys that's it in this if you've got one guy left at least you can roll this die you have a chance of conquering one more thing which is great and that it unsticks the game but it's also a little bad in that it's random but i feel like if that weren't in the game i would have just given up on this game because it's so well balanced that without that little bit of randomness it would have immediately solidified yeah it's weird that they bet that right and the thing is they're putting victory points on the races to skip over them is support i guess civilizations is supposed to be the factor that on that makes up for the fact that they're so unbalanced because it cost way more to skip them in vinci too it only cost one victory point and you get a fuck ton of victory points in small world yeah so it's like you know in vinci it's like okay one raise one sieve might be way more powerful than another one but you got to pay a lot to skip over to the good ones so it's okay that they're unbalanced because some guy who gets stuck with a crappy sieve is gonna get a ton of victory points getting victory points from taking a small world sieve that wasn't great for the mad never really seems no it doesn't help you at all you might as well pay the four victory points to get something more awesome right but that you know i'll have these complaints the game is still great like they're they're balanced out by one the theme is great like the icons on the characters and their little like logos are pretty great yeah the art the art of this game i mean the vinci art was pathetic utilitarian yeah i liked it it looked a lot like the game with the rondle no what's that called antique antique yeah but there's actually a rondle series you know i know i know i i always kind of want to buy it then i remember that antique a wasn't that great you know go is is great though yeah it's not a rondle game i but and also the game it tokenized a lot of the stuff that you just had to know in the old game like pretty much every power has tokens to represent it there are so many unique pieces to make sure that you know the count everything is uniform it's kind of like if vinci were second edition d&d then this is third edition yep everything's tokenized everything's literal everything's worth one everything's very simplified it makes the game very accessible and it's still a great game it's just yeah i mean to make a game that is actually you know vinci kind of a you know somewhat hardcore game it's to make it as accessible as small world has made it is quite a design a i consider it equal to vinci they're equal but different if you like one you will probably like the other but you will like them for different reasons and they're so similar you know despite being different that only hardcore people care about these differences and the vast majority people just love either game yep which mean but the vast majority people like small world better because it's more well produced and you know streamlined and easier rules and better arts and all that stuff so it's a great game you should buy it play small world if you haven't is the reason it's popular now there are a million expansion million expansions i haven't played any of them but my suspicion is that some of them are probably good and some of them are probably carcassone catapult i was gonna say the catapult i have no idea which ones are good which ones are bad if any i will have to do this research at a later date yep so buy the game if you're a board gamer it's a game that just it deserves a place in your library oh absolutely this has been geek nights with rim and scott special thanks to dj pretzel for the opening music cat lee for web design and brand okay for the logos be sure to visit our website at front row crew dot com for show notes discussion news and more remember geek nights is not one but four different shows side tech mondays gaming tuesdays and my comic wednesdays and indiscriminate thursdays geek nights is distributed under a creative commons attribution 3.0 license geek nights is recorded live with no studio and no audience but unlike those other late shows it's actually recorded at 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