Small World: Grand Dames
2-5
8+
40+
Introducing the leading ladies to Small World!
The Grand Dames of Small World contains 3 new Race banners and their tokens. And if you expect the Gypsies, Priestesses & the ghostly White Ladies to exhibit only a demure feminine side, you are making a big and perhaps lethal mistake. These ladies are out for blood! The Grand Dames expansion does show its conciliatory side with 2 new Special Power badges - Historian & Peace-Loving.
User Reviews (4)
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This is a expansions to the fun and loveable game Small World.
It comes with tree new races and two new powers.
Race:
White Ladies (2):
These girls cry their hart out every second and they are few in number but when they go indecline they make your opponent cry as the areas they have conquered gets immune to further conquered. Please cry me a river!
Priestesses (4):
No one knows how to stick together than girls and religious people and these religious girls will make you believe this and have faith in the strength of it! When they go indecline they stack all the tokens that are holding an area in one area which makes a religious tower that will make the Tower of Babel look like a hut. And the best of it, they get one money per token in the tower. Money, money, money must be funny in a rich pristesses world!
Gypsies (6):
Keep on going sisters! The Gypsies are always on the move from prejudices and suppression. But these girls keep on rolling and for each area they abandon they gets one VP.
Historian (5):
Time is money and so is knowledge. For each race indecline and race that goes indecline, the historian will get one VP.
Peace loving (4):
Are you born in the 70s or wish you were? Peace loving will get you back so don’t atack you opponent and you will get 3 VP.
All in all this is a wonderful and fun expansions to Small World the powers and races makes up for new ways of making money and conquere areas.
It was only a matter of time before Days of Wonder started adding expansions for Small World, as it screams for them! Grand Dames is the first of what promises to be quite a few in years to come.
What do you get?
New Races…
White Ladies
You only get two White Ladies, but don’t let that fool you. During decline, they are indestructible. Yes! Girl Power!
Gypsies
The Gypsies gain VP by moving around the board. You place a VP from the bank on regions you abandon. At the end of the turn you score normally plus you get each of the VP coins you placed on abandoned regions.
Priestesses
Priestesses ability activate in decline. You pile her leftover tokens in a region she was already in to create the Ivory Tower. You then score a point for each token in the Ivory Tower every turn.
New Powers…
Historian
Gets points for declining races.
Peace loving
Gets points for not attacking active races… but, still attacking declining ones.
Conclusion
After using this expansion in a few games, I think it is a nice addition. I especially enjoy the White Priestesses. The best part about Small World is the variety of characters and powers, so adding expansions is a no-brainer if you love the game like the rest of my family does. Adding female characters created by fans was a brilliant move by DoW, because there was a dearth of ladies for all the wives and daughters of the World. Good move.
Can a board game fail the Bechdel test? If it can, then Small World definitely did. I was very disappointed in the one female represented race (unless the Dwarves count, it hard to tell guy from girl… it’s the beards) had the symbol of a heart. My Jenny Bartlett character in Arkham Horror takes down shoggoths with the rest of them thank you very much and she don’t need no stinkin’ hearts! So it was really nice to see girls added to the sausage party. I especially love that these are all fan submissions too. I think it was great that they not only took those ideas to heart but made multiple expansions based on them. Pretty classy if you ask me 🙂
This expansion comes with 3 races and 2 powers. The races are: White Ladies, who, when in decline, make the spaces they occupy invulnerable to attack. Gypsies get a coin for each space they abandon at the beginning of their turn. For each space that contains a Priestess when they go into decline, you put a token in a stack on one of your spaces, then all other priestesses disappear.
The special powers are: Historian, which gives you a coin for each in decline race on the board, and Peace-Loving, which gives you 3 coins each turn you don’t attack.
Overall, even though this expansion is cheap ($13), it’s borderline as far as whether or not to get it. Once you have the Be Not Afraid and Cursed! expansions, it really adds very little to the game