Decline and Fall

Two games of Smallworld just played, now we're having a pause of sorts (which I obviously used to write things up!)

Both were three player games.

Game 1:

First races used were Diplomatic Skeletons, Forest Wizards and Heroic Amazons.

Amazons and Skeletons were kinda paired up, though diplomacy prevented amazons from attacking the skeletons and the heroes were blocking skeletons attacks against them.

I with my Wizards tried to stay as far away from such killer combos but sad thing was that the skeletons and amazons had both taken the side of the board with most forests and magic sources.

Skeletons played for long. No-one could really challenge them. Amazons didn't have to fight them, they could just spread wide and go in decline.

Poor Wizards were soon seized by the incoming skeletons and were put in decline too. I chose Historian Dwarves as my next race, thought of getting few mines and going in decline with them too real soon.

Amazons went in decline too and chose Swamp Tritons next.

Swamp Tritons carved a rather nice spot in to the middle of the Skeleton empire. Skeletons lost 4 regions and 4 tokens but still they had as many tokens as they had when they started the game... So that meant a bit of a weird thing happened. Skeletons were as strong as ever so they didn't go in decline after such a staggering blow. They just continued to kill stuff. And made an alliance with the Tritons, meaning the only way for Tritons to expand was to conquer their own in decline regions.

Skeletons had pretty much devoured my in decline wizards so I decided to go to decline with Dwarves too. To get rid of those horrible skeletons I picked Mounted Kobolds.

However, Tritons had been mauled to near extinction and they went in decline too. Alchemist Orcs came next.

And then when there were two fresh races coming up real soon the Skeletons were finally put to decline too. New race combo was Fortified Goblins.

Goblins destroyed all of my Dwarves in one fell swoop.

Kobolds conquered around 7 regions in one turn.

After all, it's a world of slaughter?

Game was nearing end and I put my kobolds in decline so I could play the last round with Merchant Priestesses, which was rather nice as I was the last player.

Final scoreboard for game 1 was:

Heroic Amazons/Swamp Tritons/Alchemist Orcs: 89
Diplomatic Skeletons/Fortified Goblins: 87
Forest Wizards/Historian Dwarves/Mounted Kobolds/Merchant Priestesses: 86

Pretty close.

Then it was time for:

Game 2:

Now we decided to use the Tales and Legends expansion.

Tales and Legends cards that were in effect were:

2. Baby Bloom
3. Greedy Gob
4. Tremors
5. Decline and Fall
6. Tabula Rasa
7. Handle With Care
8. Flooded!
9. Wealth Redistribution
10. White Queen

I won the starting roll and opted for Hill Sorcerers.

I thought that it would be a good choice but I guess I didn't take the other options into account that were available. I did check other choices that much that I saw that other options wouldn't benefit from upcoming Baby Bloom.

Well, other races that came up were Heroic Priestesses and Bivouacking Wizard.

So, both had easy access to immunities to my racial power.

Also, Wizards were far far away from the Priestesses and Priestesses were able to block my advance to them so they were building up a pretty damn impressive tower there though they didn't score many points.

Greedy Gob made it quite a race between Sorcerers and Wizards. In the end both scored 10 points so no-one gained anything from that card. Both Sorcerers and Wizards were spreading quite thin so entering decline was drawing near.

Priestesses did enter decline though and built up a 6 priestess tower.

And the new race chosen was Hordes of Elves. It was then when I realised how horrible that combination was.

But then the upcoming event was realised: Decline and Fall. It meant that all active races would go into decline at the start of round 5. It was a nasty turn for Sorcerers and Wizards who had spread themselves all over the board. This would have been the optimal turn to enter decline.

Also it wasn't too awesome for the priestesses either... that awesome tower, only to vanish next turn because Elves with only a few regions were to decline.

Well, the joy only escalates!

When every race went to decline next upcoming event was revealed... Tabula Rasa. I had the effect that all In Decline race tokens would be discarded.

Not. Nice.

New races chosen that round was transition of Sorcerers into Alchemist Goblins, Elves into Berserk Orcs and Wizards into Seafaring Humans.

Handle with care didn't have that big impact. It decided that I would go in decline with my goblins too because they got hit pretty hard in the head by both orcs and humans.

Goblins were left alone in the big small world and a new race of Fortified Ghouls came up.

During the course of floods that shaked the area an evil race of Swamp Ratmen emerged and Humans were put out of their misery.

Also Berserk Orcs had conquered something like 7 regions even when they hadn't succeeded in almost any of their berserk rolls. So away went the orcs too and Underworld Amazons came around, just in time for round 9 and Wealth Redistribution.

Only my poor Ghouls were alone in the map at the start of round 9 so I couldn't attack any active tokens. In the hindsight I should have probably went in decline, don't actually know why I didn't... I wanted to build castles I think.

Well, Ratmen carved an empire of 4 regions that included 2 swamps.

Amazons conquered two of my regions and destroyed one of my beautiful castles.

Last turn there was an auction at White Queen.

It was bought for the once-berserk orcs. That meant the ratmen could only get only few empty regions and amazons could only tease ghouls. Ghouls could do nothing.

Scoreboard:
Bivouacking Wizards/Seafaring Humans/Swamp Ratmen 101
Heroic Priestesses/Hordes of Elves/Berserk Orcs/Underworld Amazons 80
Hill Sorcerers/Alchemist Goblins/Fortified Ghouls 80