Hello race fans, welcome back to Las Vegas Motor Speedway...

Oh, sorry. Wrong gig.

Hello board game fans, welcome to GameHead where we put the games, -uh, in your head. I mean figuratively in your head by exposing you to what’s new, hot and cool. The Small World franchise is no joke and I’ve covered it extensively with a Beginner’s Guide here and a Getting Better strategy guide here. It’s a game that appeals to kids of all ages and gamers at all skill levels. It has amazing re-playability with its many possible combinations of Races and Powers. It’s no wonder Days of Wonder wants to keep the train going with a new standalone that can also be mixed with the original to some degree, or even fully with the new Small World Tunnels expansion.

Small World Underground explores a whole new slew of races from the under-dark and keeps it fresh with new Relics, Locations and mechanics to keep you playing for quite awhile. Normally my reviews lay out how a game is played so you can have an idea if it’s right for you before purchasing it, but because Underground is based on the same rules-set that the original Small World uses I’ll just cover what’s new.

If you’ve played Small World before, we’re good to go. If you’re completely new to the franchise, go read my beginner’s guide for the original and see if it’s your cup of tea. Then you can come back here and read this and decide which end of the pool you want to jump in to. You could totally start with Small World Underground if it’s more appealing to you as it is a completely stand alone game.

First, let’s take a look at the Map and how it differs from the original Small World. There are no oceans and lakes, but there is a river on every map. Any race can move through a river section by conquering it with 1 token. At the end of the player’s turn during redeployment, you can not leave that token in the river, you must pick it up and redeploy it on one of your other occupied land regions.

Also on the map are chasms that can’t be moved through or conquered; the black regions with the red minus signs in them. There are a couple races that can use these. The Spiderines can move through them from one to any other like tunnels and the Flames will enter the board through a volcano that will surface up from a chasm of the player’s choice.

There are no Lost Boys occupying the board at the beginning of the game, instead there are monster tokens that are placed in pairs making them more difficult to defeat than Lost Boys.

They will take 4 of your army tokens to take down but they are worth it as the reward is to grab a random face down tile revealing either a Relic or Popular Place.

The relics are represented by the little bag symbol. They will grant the possessor different powers depending on which relic it is. Froggy’s Ring from the picture above can be placed in any of the troops’ regions who control the ring. That player will collect 1 Victory Coin from every active race adjacent to the Ring. Relics will always remain on the board; at the end of your turn a relic will stay in the region where it was last used. If the region containing the relic is abandoned the relic remains in that region waiting to be picked up by a new race. If you defeat a region where a relic is being held, you now control that relic and are granted its powers.

Popular places will stay on the region in which they are discovered granting any powers to whatever race occupies that region. In the picture above is Stonehedge; the player who discovers Stonehedge immediately draws a Specail Power at random from the stack of Special Powers that are normally connected to the Race tiles (it’s not clear, but I assume you do not include the 6 Powers connected to the 6 revealed races still up for Auction). The controller of Stonehedge will have that special power in addition to the power already connected to the race. Other Locations grant their own powers, not necessarily associated with the Special Power tiles.

The Relics and Popular Places add a whole new level of strategy and re-playability to the game. You’re really gunning to be the first to conquer the Monster occupied regions to find and abuse the new powers the relics and places provide. Fans of fun and cool combos will find this version of Small World even more combo-licious adding new layers to the cake.

There are 15 all new Races and 21 all new Powers as well. While the Dwarfs really got the shaft in the first game, the Iron Dwarves of the Underground find themselves in their element and one of the most powerful races. They have the ability to forge Hammer Tokens for every mine region they occupy which can be used in attacks like the extra Amazon tokens of the first game. The one race I am disappointed in are the Drow. In fantasy lore, the Drow are the most powerful and feared race of the underground, but their race power seems to focus on the alienation aspect, earning extra coins if they can occupy a region with no other races as neighbors. That’s kind of hard to pull off in a game called Small World built around the concept of a world with too many neighbors.

The rest of the races and powers are all very cool; some are familiar takes on ones from the old game but for the most part, everything is new and fresh. I’ll leave it to you to discover them all individually, or wait until I expand on my Getting Better: Small Wolrd articles by breaking Underground races and powers down one by one.

Right now when we get the itch to play some Small World, this is the game we’re going to. I mentioned mixing this game with the original before. You can do that by choosing if you’re going to play above ground or below and selecting races from the other side that have powers that will make sense in the new world. For example, if you’re playing above ground, the Shrooms race won’t make any sense because there aren’t any mushroom forests for them to occupy. And vice-versa, Humans won’t find any plains to farm underground.

There is a new Tunnels expansion that allows you to play with above gound and underground maps connected by tunnels. I’ll be picking that up on my next trip to the game store and report back to you how it goes.

Until then, may the checkered flag be yours!

Hrm, wrong gig again...

Have fun stormin' the chasm!