Played a game of Smallworld, this time with all available expansions.
Tales and Legends had little impact on this game, however, First two cards that were drawn were one that denied going In Decline (not many are going In Decline on second round of the game...) and the second card that came into effect on turn three gave some give & take bonuses from In Decline races. Also one card made spaces with Lost Tribes more valuable to conquer but at time there were no longer Lost Tribes around...
Anyway, I won the starting roll and bought an amazing race combo. Hordes of Amazons. That meant 13 amazon race tokens with additional 4 tokens on conquests.
Other race combos that entered play were Heroic Goblins (hey, how's that possible?) and Seafaring Ghouls (Well... maybe they didn't sail on ships, they rather walked on the bottom of the ocean?)
Three player map made those two hero tokens quite important. Against only one player (for example if the other one is far away) they can make nasty blockades.
Hordes of Amazons went into decline on turn three and it got me thinking that amazons are an annoying race. They can spread over almost the whole map and go in decline quite easily with the situation that you have one token per region. It's difficult for opponents to conquer those regions and they're giving the controlling player nice amounts of victory coins, often more than what your active race brings! Anyway, I had placed my "Hordes of" tokens and lost two regions because of it when I went to decline.
I chose Merchant Ratmen as my new race and it proved to be a killer combo too. Merchant power gives only two race tokens but Ratmen got dozens of them already. These two races scored me staggering amounts of victory coins... but there was a price to pay on turn to come.
Somewhere here Ghouls went into decline too and were replaced with Hill Orcs.
Goblins were ditched too (I think it was Summer of Love when they did so) and Swamp Kobolds were raising their ugly head.
Well, about that time there was this Tales and Legends card "Bling bling" that forced players to count their points and reveal them to other players. Well, I had the most points at that time because my merchandise (I just wonder what the heck ratmen are selling that the other races so enjoyed? Well, on the other hand... other races were Ghouls and Goblins) had gathered me quite a many points.
Next turn all but one ratmen... or ratman, should I say? were wiped off.
So I went in decline with that lone token and got Berserk Halflings to wander about. I scored one point that turn.
Hill orcs and Swamp kobolds started to score over ten points per turn then.
Halflings were a funny story, though. They managed to do only two succesful Berserk rolls in the whole game if I remember right. First one they made when they entered the playing field - imagine a whole nation of bloodthirsty, red-eyed Halfings bursting from the ground. Then they played a couple of turns not succeeding at any rolls. Last region they conquered in the whole game was a Hills region that was empty. Other player pointed out that there were sheep pictured in the space.
My poor Berserk Halflings were brave enough, barring the outburst, only to mess up with sheep.
Swamp Kobolds and Hill Orcs scored steadily but I think they didn't embrace going into decline enough. Well, Hill Orcs had ghouls in decline that had managed to capture all water regions so it's understandable that the player didn't want to lose them. (The ghouls were funny, though. They had four tokens and three spaces - they tried to conquer one occupied region every turn, but mostly failed. Funny imagining that too - zombies rise out of the water, only to be kicked back.)
Anyway, final score board was:
Hordes of Amazons/Merchant Ratmen/Berserk Halflings: 99
Seafaring Ghouls/Hill Orcs: 86 or 88
Heroic Goblins/Swamp Kobolds: 83 or 84
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