Year: 2009
Players: 2–5
Play time: 80min
Min age: 8+
Weight: 2.35
BGG rating: 7.19
BGG rank: #409
Best with: 4

Owned by

Michael Redlich

Local copies

Rating: ★ 6.0

Michael Redlich
Rating: ★ 6.0

MeepleMates notes for Small World

Public snippets combine board game metadata with MeepleMates play history so visitors can evaluate the game for real group play and game night planning.

Small World is available as a public board game page on MeepleMates for group planning and collection tracking.
Best with 4 player according to player poll data.
BoardGameGeek average rating 7.19 and BGG rank #409.
Groups use this page to connect Territory Building, Fantasy, Fighting metadata with real play history, ratings and game night notes.
Recommended player counts include 2, 3, 5.

In Small World, players vie for conquest and control of a world that is simply too small to accommodate them all. Designed by Philippe Keyaerts as a fantasy follow-up to his award-winning Vinci, Small World is inhabited by a zany cast of characters such as dwarves, wizards, amazons, giants, orcs, and even humans, who use their troops to occupy territory and conquer adjacent lands in order to push the other races off the face of the earth. Picking the right combination from the 14 different fantasy races and 20 unique special powers, players rush to expand their empires - often at the expense of weaker neighbors. Yet they must also know when to push their own over-extended civilization into decline and ride a new one to victory! On each turn, you either use the multiple tiles of your chosen race (type of creatures) to occupy adjacent (normally) territories - possibly defeating weaker enemy races along the way, or you give up on your race letting it go "into decline". A race in decline is designated by flipping the tiles over to their black-and-white side. At the end of your turn, you score one point (coin) for each territory your races occupy. You may have one active race and one race in decline on the board at the same time. Your occupation total can vary depending on the special abilities of your race and the territories they occupy. After the final round, the player with the most coins wins. Clarifications: available in a pinned forum post.

Mechanics

Variable Player PowersVariable Set-upArea Majority / InfluenceArea MovementDice RollingHidden Victory PointsVictory Points as a ResourceIncrease Value of Unchosen Resources

Best with how many players

Not rec.

Recommended

Best

Recommended

Not rec.

Community votes from BoardGameGeek

Language dependence

No necessary in-game text(132 of 288 votes)

Sub-rankings

Family Game Rank#111
Strategy Game Rank#360

Videos

Video language

BoardGameGeek5

Review2

Session2

Unboxing1

Small World - Unboxing & Reboxing - What's in the box?
BoardGameGeek · broseygames
English · Curated source

External data

Wikidata enrichment: 4 links · 2 facts · latest game data 06/20/2026.

Latest Wikidata run: ok · 07/14/2026.

Facts

Publication date: 2009
Publisher: Asmodee