Into Decline

Here come the Berserk Dwarves! Like bowling balls with beards, this ale-swilling, axe-swinging band of marauders are no match for the resident Diplomat Elves who hitherto lived peacefully in a perfectly charming mountain realm. It’s a small world, after all, and there’s no room for dwarves and elves to live together in harmony. Before long the Berserk Dwarves had established themselves as the undisputed and rightful occupants of their new kingdom, and nobody better try to kick them out of it. Because they’re berserk! And Berserk Dwarves don’t stand aside for nothing.
Unlike regular Dwarves, Berserk Dwarves are . . . well, one might argue the difference between Berserk and Regular Dwarves is subtle, a redundancy even, a matter of blood alcohol content rather than any taxonomic differences. Be that as it may, Non-Berserk Dwarves can at least be negotiated with, lived alongside, perhaps even, in all humility, befriended. Berserk Dwarves, not so much. Once they’ve ensconced themselves in a region, well, there goes the neighbourhood.
Unless and until they go into decline…
Years ago when I first played the Days of Wonder board game Small World I was taken by the beautiful artwork and the way you could combine races and factions to get a unique combination of traits and special powers every time. Berserk Dwarves, Diplomat Elves. Bivouacking Amazons and so forth. I might have glommed onto my BersDwars a little too fondly, though, since I really didn't like the rule that said you should let your race go into decline and choose a new one once they’ve overextended themselves. Why would I want to do that? What’s better than Berserk Dwarves? Spoiler alert, pretty much anything is better than Berserk Dwarves, even Wealthy Halflings, if everyone else at the table is playing a strategic rather than a nostalgic game.
Ten years later I am a lot more savvy when it comes to board games and design decisions and the going into decline mechanism makes way more sense. It’s called Small World for a reason- there is limited space and limited tokens. If you want to win you’re going to have to manage your races and choose the right time to cut your losses and try a new strategy. Fair enough. But I still kind of wish they had just included way more Dwarf tokens.
I bring this up now not because I think Small World is the best board game ever- it shows its age for sure though it still has some fun aspects- but because I suddenly find myself in the uncomfortable position of being a real life Berserk Dwarf whose real life job unexpectedly switched from full steam ahead to Mines of Moria-style decline.
I’m a coal miner. Not the dwarvish delving-too-deep-into-the-bowels-of-the-earth-waking-up-ancient-horrors kind, nor indeed even the underground guy-with-a-canary kind, but rather I operate heavy equipment in an open pit mine in Alberta, Canada. Started as a summer student back in the 90s, then hired on permanently in 2001, though I endured a layoff for a couple of years, but now continuously since 2004. My whole adult life. I’m a miner! I’m a Berserk Dwarf!
Soon I will be a very different sort of beast, one I didn’t plan to be and have no desire to be. This sort of beast is called the Laid-off Miner. Their special power is they no longer get bonus coins or coins of any kind but at least they no longer smudge everything with coal dust. Yay!
The berserk thing about this whole situation is none of us saw it coming, really. Sure, coal mining is cyclical in nature and there are always ups and downs and good times and lean. But we were ramping up to our next phase, we were hiring anyone with a pulse seemingly, we had a plan and a future. Until we didn’t. A decision came from the big big bosses, Wealthy Humans known as the Board of Directors of the corporation I work for, that we would no longer be pursuing the next phase of mining, and that, once the current phase is mined out, say another year or so, the site would be shut down. After fifty years, our mine is going into decline.
A slow motion decline that will play out over the next year. Weird, right? It’ll take place in phases. Around Xmas time our biggest shovel, a huge electric excavator that moves massive amounts of rock, will be torn down to components and mailed to another mine owned by our parent corp. When that goes, the first major round of lay-offs occurs. Merry Xmas. I have enough seniority that I will be around to the bitter end but that is cold consolation as I wave goodbye to many of my union brothers and sisters.
In the meantime we still have to do our jobs. But, if we do our jobs too well won’t we be out of work that much sooner?  This realization does strange things to our morale and our work ethic. Going into decline has unforeseen side effects which will only be more pronounced as time marches on.
Because time will march on, like it or not, and operations will just keep downsizing and declining. Eventually, and by eventually I mean inevitably and much sooner than I’d like, the doors will be shut, and any of us still employed will be like the last of the dinosaurs, looking around after the asteroid and wondering where all the T-Rexes went. Or, perhaps more fittingly, like some kind of deep-digging gimling who didn’t notice the demon of the underworld that ate all of her kin.
What does a Berserk Dwarf do for a second career, anyway?


Note- Small World is readily available anyplace you would expect to find games, whether online or at your friendly local game store or even some big box stores. Other more modern games with similar feels but perhaps being just a little bit more fun include Ethnos and, if you really want to go all in, Heroes of Land, Air and Sea. I’ve never played Heroes of Land, Air and Sea so if you do I will be jealous but will want to hear all about it. Find me on Twitter @NathanWaddell1 and on Instagram @nwaddell1974