For this reason Merchant Wizards is unlikely ever to be chosen, and 1VP each time it is overlooked is not enough. Getting races with bonus VP is even more important than in Vinci, since the big successful races scoring 1VP per space seems unlikely to win.

But I don't think your entry is deserving of being called a "review". It is no more such a thing than the average, long-winded complaint found in many threads on BGG. Obviously, it got approved, and so the approval process is as much at fault, but I still think you should have put more effort (and perhaps even some objectivity) into this, before submitting it as a review.

Having men on the ground is as critical as in Vinci, but keeping them there is harder. For this reason Merchant Wizards is unlikely ever to be chosen, and 1VP each time it is overlooked is not enough. Getting races with bonus VP is even more important than in Vinci, since the big successful races scoring 1VP per space seems unlikely to win. Admittedly one would hope these effects would cancel out, but they don't, and if they did it would probably favour an uninvolved player.

the writing of a review should provide some type of overview of the product and its intent.

That being said, I don't think this is a WELL-WRITTEN review, and I would never give it a thumb of approval. The review does not help me much (since I have never played Vinci), it is poorly explained, and some parts seem almost incomprehensible.

The die is a silly crapshoot that introduces a worse problem than the one it was intended to solve. The balance of VP it decides is enough to change VP order at game end. They didn't like this sort of thing in Streetcar.

I don't get this part. Are you saying that bonus-VP-powers are not strong enough to merit choosing, or the reverse, or something else entirely?

Both. I think you need ten men and a VP bonus. I imagine sacrificing one to have more of the other will work poorly, especially in the final turns. We were playing four-player, and Andy Ogden's mining Dwarves were sitting in castles on mineral symbols along the bottom edge, in decline, with active Hill Skeletons who maintained their numbers from the middle to the end. These gave him up to 16 points a turn, and he won by a similar amount. His opponents either couldn't or saw little point in attacking the Dwarves, and wanted to stay away from the skeletons.

I do agree to some extent, that number of tokens is the highest commodity. Because the scoring traits/races have less tokens, they are a little bit weak compared to those Amazons and Tritons e.g.

Vinci is an interesting beast being a crossover between a euro and more conventional wargames.

Small World is more of an entry level euro with greater accessibility but of less interest to seasoned players.

Andy D has voiced his opinion on SW after one play in his usual inarticulate, verbose and peculiar style.

AD began the game he describes with swamp amazons which gave him lots of points and presumably made him feel he should win the game quite easily.

Unfortunately he held on to his amazons rather too long

and then made a poor choice in his new combo with merchant wizards when his closest opponent was laying waste to the neighbourhood with hill skeletons. Mounted giants would have served him rather better but sadly AD was unable to see this.

I don't mind people winging about games provided they have an experience base of that game to comment from. Slagging a game in which you played inoptimally once and came last seems to be a poor platform from which to rubbish said game.

Playing SW for the first time made me pine for Vinci but there is little doubt that SW appeals to a different audience where accessibility is a prime concern. Certainly I was able to intice my girlfriend into a game of SW when she would not have considered a forbidding beast such as Vinci.

I suspect SW shines in the 2/3 player game with a specially designed smaller board compared with the one size fits all version of Vinci.