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Popular board game publisher Days of Wonder have announced an exciting new title: Small World of Warcraft. That’s right, folks. This is an exciting board game mash-up. This collaboration sees huge hit Small World team up with Blizzard Entertainment’s MMORPG, World of Warcraft. This is what happens when DOW meets WOW!
Small World is an area majority game from Days of Wonder, designed by Philippe Keyaerts. It’s set in, literally, a small world. There’s too many creatures in it, and they’re all fighting over what little land they can lay their paws, claws and jaws on.
Small World of Warcraft is a standalone game, also designed by Keyaerts. It’s for 2-5 players, with an estimated time of 40-80 minutes, and for ages 10 and up. This takes many of the core mechanisms of Small World, but Small World of Warcraft has one big difference. Here, you’re battling to take control over the territories in Azeroth!
Play As 16 WoW Races!
Gone are the 14 generic races. Small World of Warcraft allows you to sweep across the board as your favourite races from the Warcraft universe. You could play as, say, the Portal Mage Pandarens, or Herbalist Goblins. Will you favour the Alliance, or the Horde? Which of the 20 special powers will you splice onto them? Which legendary terrains will you claim? Which powerful artifacts will you seek to control?
The latter two mechanisms might sound familiar. Keyaerts explained all to Days of Wonder. “The concept of Legendary places and artifacts, first introduced in Small World Underground, naturally found its place here,” he says. “I also introduced a game mechanism that had been on my mind for a while: travelling between distant places.”
That sounds intriguing! No empire lasts forever, though. Every (under)dog has its day. To excel in Small World of Warcraft, you’ll have to strike when the time is right. Like its predecessor, deciding when you want to put your race into ‘decline’ is key. When one door closes, another one opens. There’s more than one race seeking to rule Azeroth…
Let’s /dance
Days of Wonder pour every last drop of love and care into their component quality. This promises to continue that trend. Small World is a superb ‘gateway-plus’ game. It’s the ideal next-step-up in depth from games like Ticket To Ride, or Carcassonne. We expect SWOW – yeah, we’ve acronym’d it – to delight the same audience. Meanwhile, no doubt the MMORPG crowd will be quick to type ‘/dance’, celebrating this news!
Small World of Warcraft comes only one week after the announcement for Ticket To Ride: Amsterdam. It’s an excellent time to be a Days of Wonder fan.
It’s expected that Small World of Warcraft will be available in summer 2020 in North America and Europe.