Board game analysis – Smallworld Underground

Game description

Smallworld underground is a game for 2-5 players for the age of eight and up. The objective is to have as many victory coins as possible at the end of a certain number of rounds. The game has 15 different races and 21 different powers that can be combined with those races.

To acquire victory coins you conquer land areas with your races unit tokens, you get one coin for each area in the end of your turn. You then get more coins depending on any modifiers you might have.

Each map has a set of areas that are inhabited by neutral units that is an enemy to everyone. When these neutral units are cleared, the player draws a loot token. These loot tokens represent either a popular place, for example an altar, or a righteous relic, for example a sword, that can be claimed by players. Both the popular places and the righteous relics have special abilities, such as free movement once per turn (the flying doormat) or sacrificing an in decline unit for three extra coins (the altar of souls).

During the players turn he can choose between two things, either play his turn and conquer areas or go in decline where you change in your race + power combination for a new one the next turn.

Player turn

At the start of your turn you use your minions to attack adjacent areas. Areas have different landscapes, and there are specific powers that have bonuses according to the different landscapes, such as gaining an additional victory coin per specified landscape.

Combat

To conquer areas you have to attack the area with your unit tokens. The requirement to conquer an area is two + any enemy unit tokens + any stationary extras (for example black mountains or fortress). If there are enough units you will conquer the area and no units will die or flee, the amount of units that was needed however cannot continue conquering areas. If there are not enough units the player may still attack with a minimum of one unit, the player throws a dice with three sides with a number on it. The number represents any extra units that may fill the gap to be able to conquer. If the fight fails however the player must put one of the units back into the box, the rest flees back to the origin area.

Go in decline

A player can choose to buy a new race + power combination and then you go into decline. Your previous race is left behind with only one unit on each area and the next turn you are allowed to buy a new race from six different that is on the board. When a race + power combination is bought a new combination is displayed on the board, so that there are always six different combinations on the board. The player then gets to use the new races units to attack with while their previous race stands still defending the areas they are in.

There is however a limit to how many races you may have in decline and that is one, if you go in decline two times the other declining race is discarded from the board and the areas become unoccupied.

End of the last round

In the end of the last round each player counts their coins, which they have held hidden until now. The one with the most coins in the end is declared the winner.

Best and worst sides

Victory coins

The victory points are the biggest part of the game, since it is what you need to win in the end. Victory coins are awarded after the players turn, how many you are rewarded depends on how many areas you are occupying and what different modifiers you control. Modifiers include +1 coin for a certain region, +1 coin for every set of regions, +1 coin for every black mountain and so forth. The most important part of the victory coins is that they were not to be public until the end of the last round where everyone counted their coins and the winner was revealed.

Races + powers combinations

As there are 15 different races and 21 different powers there are 315 combinations that can occur, giving the game a great deal of replay value. Some of the powers might seem similar, like the ones that increases the coin rate of the areas, but since the areas are on different places the game can still play out very differently. The power and race combination is what decides what kind of strategy you are going to use throughout the game, an example we had when we played the game was the race “Drow”, it gets an additional coin for every land area that do not have areas adjacent that are occupied by anything else than the drow race (including in decline races). By just holding about six to seven areas that player got more than a player that had ten areas or even more. This might seem like an overpowered situation, but the player only have a set amount of units to work with when they play each race, and drow had nine units to use while for example mummies had fifteen.

Different maps

There is a different map for every amount of players that is playing the game. For example there is a map for two players, one for three players etc. They all had a similar layout, but it gives the game even more replay value as you can still play the other maps even if you are not the recommended number of players.

Number of rounds

When playing the game you notice quite quickly that there are very few rounds which mean that if you want to switch race you get punished hard, you lose an entire round when you do it and when you are playing five people there are only eight rounds. This gives the rest of the players more time to conquer areas or farm coins.

Core game system

The core game system in the game is the victory coins. They are present in almost every part of the game. It decides how you want to play each round to maximise the effect of every move. The coin system is affected by how many areas the player have, if the player have any modifier such as the mining power (+1 coin for every mining area being controlled), and if the player is controlling any black mountains it is rewarded with one coin each. An important thing to not about the system is that players need to understand it in order to be able to win, and since it is so simple it is easy for players to grasp it.

The most interesting system

The most interesting system in Smallworld Underground is the race and power system. It almost always guarantees that each play session plays out differently, especially with the ability to switch races midgame. Because the race pieces are scrambled and given a random power in the start of the game, and the players are only aware of six of these at any given time in the game. The combination that you chose in the start of the game decides you initial strategy considerable.

For example in the first play through I started with the drow race and the mining power which made me look for a secluded area with at least one mining area. When I found it I moved my army to that position and conquer areas in a safe line, making sure that I do not have any adjacent enemies at the end of my turn, maximising the potential as best I could of the drow race.

Target audience

The box says that the game is aimed towards player with the age of eight and above, however I do believe that you want to be at least ten or eleven to get the most out of the game. With all that is going on when you have different races, powers and social interaction between the players. The social interaction that occurred is similar to that of Risk and Dust where players form alliances and try to keep the players they think are in the lead in check. Which is not a necessarily a feature in the game, however if a player want to make the most of the game it is an intriguing part of the gameplay.

I would recommend the game for anyone that have played the game Risk and want to try something similar but with enough differences to be considered a different game.

Summary

The game is very interesting with the race and power mechanics, every play through felt different and there were new things to try out every time. Even though it felt like it was too few rounds, the game was intense from start to finish. The games mechanics makes it clear what you want to do in order to win the game. The simply idea of having the most coins in the end is easy to grasp and makes sure that everyone is on what they need to do in order to win.

The box says that it is aimed for player at the age of eight and up, however I do believe that there is a bit more restrictions than this. Since the game involves a lot of planning the suggested player should at least have an interest in playing strategy games. I would recommend the game for players that have played and enjoyed games such as RISK or Dust.

Board game analysis – Dust

Introduction

During the course Advanced game design we were split into groups to play and analyse a board game. Our group chose the strategy game Dust.

Game description

Dust is a board strategy game, for two to six players, similar to RISK where your objective is to hold key locations on the game board which give victory points and the first to a set amount of victory points win. To do this the players have different cards and units to their disposal. The key locations are power sources and capitols. However there is also majorities that give victory points, the one with the most land areas, sea areas and production centers have a majority in the given category land, sea and production.

A round in the game is broken down into three parts, the Initiative step, the player turn and the victory point phase.

Initiative step

Unlike many other board games the order of which the players play their turns are not set from the start. The order is determined every new round by the players. They all put down a card facedown and then show them at the same time, the one with the highest combat value is the first to start, if there is a tie it will be determined by the movement value and then the production and then there is a number of stars in the bottom of the card to act as a tiebreaker.

When the order is set the players turn begins.

Player turn

The player turn is composed of three different phases, the production phase, the movement phase and the combat phase.

Production phase

During the production phase the player calculated how many production points that are given that turn. These production points are used to buy units, cards and production centers.

Movement phase

During the movement phase they player is allowed to move as many times as the movement value on the card that was played during the Initiative step. A movement is considered to be when you move unit(s) from one area to another, without picking up or dropping off units during the move. The areas need to be connected by friendly forces to be able to make a movement that is longer than one area.

Combat phase

The combat phase is the part where the player attacks other hostile forces to conquer new areas. The player may attack as many times as the combat value on the card that was used during the initiative step.

During a battle there are a few things to consider.

• Who has tactical supremacy?
• What is the combined combat power of the units?

Some units have a tactical supremacy value and the one with the most combined supremacy throws their dice first. Each combat power is equal to a dice throw, so say you have 15 combat power that gives you 15 dice throw before it is the opponents turn to throw.

Victory point phase

After every player has played their turn the game moves onto the victory point phase.

The victory point phase is a calculation of how many points each player has accumulated during the round and then moves a tank as many steps as the points the accumulated on a victory point track.

A point is given for each power source the player have and for every capitol the player controls. If they player holds the most land areas the player gets a token for land majority, and the same goes for sea majority. There is also a production majority which is given to the player with the most production centers.

Best and worst sides

The best side of the game was how the game handled the victory, as it was based on points that were accumulated every round it prevented stand stills. A game session could not go on forever as everyone always gets a bit closer to the end during each turn.

There is also a lot of strategic thinking outside of where you put your units, such as what card you play during the initiative step, how you compose your armies according to what cards you have and if you want to focus on sea units or land units. This really makes it feel like the most cunning person has the upper hand throughout the game, and not just the one with the best dice rolls in battles.

The worst side of the game was that it felt overly complicated. It felt as if the developers were trying to combine a computer game with a board game, there are a lot of rules and it felt as if they all had exceptions during some point of the game.  It seemed that the developers wanted to have a computer handle all the different rules for the players and telling them when they were allowed to do what and when what they were doing was no longer allowed. They already have two different game modes, but it lack easier game modes that gradually introduce you to game mechanics.

Core game system

I believe that the core system for Dust is the card system, because they determine how you are going to play during you turn. The cards have two different usages, one is their special ability. These varied a lot so I will only give a few examples. One would be used when one of your units died in battle and you used a card that gave you the ability to roll a die for every unit that was killed to see if you could spare its life and retreat with it instead. Another card would give the ability to nuke a city with three dice with the possibility of destroying three units from the area. This card could also ignore the priority system that is used in battles, which will be explained later. There is also a card that doubles the combat power of every aerial unit in a battle, which can be the basis for whole strategy involving planes.

The other usage the cards had was the initiative phase where you used a card to determine the player order and how many actions you were allowed to make during your turn. The card determined how many movements and battles the player could use as well as how many extra production points the player could use to produce units.

The most interesting system

I think that the most interesting system was the combat system because there are several ways to go about composing armies. The combat system created a lot of depth to the game, without I feel that it would have been too similar to risk.

In the game there are four land units and one sea unit. The land units consist of tanks, mechs, fighter planes and bomber planes, the sea unit is a submarine. When a unit dies in combat the game has a priority to what unit is allowed to die, if there is any tanks they must die before the mechs can die and if there is fighter planes they must die before the bomber planes can die.

The only unit that does not have a tactical supremacy value is the tank, and it is also the cheapest unit with a production cost of two while the fighter plane has the same combat stat but with a tactical value of one for the production cost of three. Since you always want to have tactical supremacy in battles this makes for some tough decision making when buying units. If you do not have tactical supremacy in battles it is likely that you are not even allowed to roll the dice, as the opponent can wipe out your units before it is your turn. There were several scenarios where one player had a ton of tanks but no tactical supremacy and got wiped out by a handful of mechs or tanks plus fighter planes.

Target group interpretation

On the box it says that the game is for the age of twelve and up, and I agree with this due to the fact that the rules can become very complex. During our game sessions we looked in the rulebook almost every round due to the rules being hard to interpret or that we had seen an exception to a rule and needed to find the reference to it. I believe that since the game is a lot about planning the younger audience might not like the slow pace compared to the faster pace in most other board games.

I would recommend this game to people that enjoy strategic thinking and have the patience to read through the rulebook several times to understand the rules and all its exceptions. Since the rulebook can be hard to interpret I would also suggest that the players are at least twelve years old and have a firm grasp on the English language.

Summation

The game is very complex and confusing. However this is both advantageous and disadvantageous. It creates a depth to the game which allows for a lot of strategies and it does that while still maintaining an acceptable game length.

 

Though since it is has a lot of rules and all rules seem to have an exception during some point of the game it makes for far too much confusing while playing the game and you find yourself looking more in the rulebook than at game during your initial play sessions.

Since the game already has two game modes I do not understand why they did not include an “introductory” or “tutorial” mode where the game is simplified to the point where it includes most of the systems but takes away all the variation so the complexity is minimised.