Fans of the tabletop board game, Small World, and the massively multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft, are in for a treat. Small World’s publisher, Days of Wonder, has teamed up with Blizzard to take the iconic world of Azeroth and transform it into a battleground-in-a-box characterized by the conflict that has defined World of Warcraft since the beginning: the constant tug-of-war between the Horde and the Alliance.
For those familiar with Small World, the mechanics are virtually the same. The game is designed for 2-5 players who “vie for control of several islands in this hostile world and their only hope will be to pick the right combination of races and special powers.” Players will choose a race, attempt to conquest certain lands with that race, and eventually go into decline and choose another race to continue to stake claim on a world that is just too dang small for everybody.
Philippe Keyaerts, game designer of Small World, remarked that “the concept of Legendary places and artifacts, first introduced in Small World Underground, naturally found its place here,” and he also found space for a new mechanic that had been turning over in his mind for a while: traveling between distant regions.
Small World of Warcraft is designed to take around 40-80 minutes and stands alone in the Small World franchise, so there’s no need to buy any games prior. There will be sixteen different World of Warcraft races included and six double-sided game boards for plenty of replayability. Oh, and also murlocs. Fifteen of them to be exact.
Days of Wonder worked closely with Blizzard to achieve an optimal adaptation of the beloved world of Azeroth; Keyaerts commented that “the World of Warcraft Universe Team at Blizzard tried each of the successive versions,” and he hopes that it will be an experience fans of both universes can enjoy.
Small World of Warcraft is set to come out in Summer of 2020.
