Thursday, March 21, 2013

Gods Have Gone Insane (Smallworld)

A grand total of four games of Smallworld were played in Salo.

Here are two of them. We used Tales and Legends card deck in every game with higher (= more random) stakes in every consecutive game.

Game 1 (Tuesday):

First, we just shuffled whole deck and had upcoming event revealed.

Cards for every round were:
2. Wizened and Old
3. Barbarian Invasions
4. Wheel of Misfortune
5.  Baby Boom
6. Forbidden Forest
7. Tremors
8. Going Down
9. Handle With Care
10. Philter of Forgetfulness

Races and combos that started game were: Mercenary Giants, Flying Gypsies and Bivouacking Tritons.

All races were pretty good starting races, especially Flying Gypsies got to make nice use out of their special ability.

Mercenary Giants were the first to go in decline, mostly because of upcoming Barbarian Invasions.

And truth be told, Merchant Barbarians that followed were atrocious combo. (Heh... barbarians emerged in barbarian invasions? How fitting...)

Bivouacking Tritons went In Decline next, and then came the ultimate mess-up even: Wheel of Misfortune. Merchant Barbarians continued to conquer in the name of Triton player, Gypsy player got to pick a new race, and barbarian player got Flying Gypsies.

Gypsy player took Fortifired Pygmies.

Next Merchant Barbarians decided to go In Decline, and no Gypsies had died, so only player who got anything out of Baby Boom was Pygmies.

Barbarians switched to Ransacking Orcs, but we played Ransacking wrong. The symbol made us think it was Pillaging, which would essentially mean it was double Orc bonus. I guess proper term is to talk about Pillaging Orcs in this case, then. However, one of the largest points score happened I have seen for a while, a horrible amount of 20 victory points for Merchants/Orcs.

Slowly Mercenary Giants were eradicated from the face of current world, so Flying Gypsies lost their wings and finally settled down. Catapult Wizards invaded in their place.

Pygmies found their time had come, too, and their crumbling society gave way for Diplomatic Sorcerers.

And the original Triton player made one final fell swoop in last round with Hill Amazons.

Final scoreboard:

Bivouacking Tritons -> Merchant Barbarians/Pillaging Orcs/Hill Amazons: 108 victory points.
Flying Gypsies/Fortified Pygmies/Diplomatic Sorcerers: 99 points.
Mercenary Giants/Merchant Barbarians -> Flying Gypsies/Catapult Wizards: 99 points.

Game 2 (Tuesday):

For this game we were drawing cards blindly from Tales & Legends deck so that the upcoming even was unknown.

Starting race combos were: Forest Ghouls, Heroic Orcs and Peace-Loving Kobolds.

Cards that shaped the world were:

2. Lost Treasures
3. My Land
4. Decline and Fall
5. Plague
6. Art of Combos
7. Gift from the Sky
8. Small Time Coup
9. Oldies but Goodies
10. Wealth Redistribution

Decline and Fall made all active races go in decline, but Forest Ghouls had already gone In Decline the round before. That was somewhat nice, because Historian Ratmen were able to score 3 points just because of that.

However, Historian Ratmen were not so happy when Berserk Trolls and Fortified Pixies started wreaking havoc all over. Especially Trolls were on a horrible berserk spree, giving bonuses on almost every region they attacked.

Pixies did what pixies do - vanished quickly from the face of the continent. However, next combo they picked was a nasty one. Alchemist Skeletons - that extra two points per turn really combines well with Skeletons' survival power!

Historian Ratmen finally died too, and Barricade Pygmies tried to carve an empire instead.

After Trolls had been raging long enough, there was very short-lived empire of Wealthy Gypsies, who in just few rounds were replaced by the very same race & special power combo that proved so superior in last game - the Merchant Barbarians.

Final scoreboard was:

Peace-Loving Kobolds/Fortified Pixies/Alchemist Skeletons: 106
Heroic Orcs/Berserk Trolls/Wealthy Gypsies/Merchant Barbarians: 103
Forest Ghouls/Historian Ratmen/Barricade Pygmies: 95

Only 11 point differece between highest and lowest points. Pretty even game then, especially when events were completely random and impossible to try to plan ahead.

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