Expert
Alter
Spezial 2
FROM INSECTS TO MAMMALS
Dominant Species
Who survives the food chain?
Fettdruck beibehalten
Introduction from the rule book:
90,000 B.C. — A great ice age is fast approaching. Another titanic struggle for global supremacy has unwittingly commenced between the varying animal species.
Dominant Species is a game that abstractly recreates a tiny portion of ancient history: the ponderous encroachment of an ice age and what that entails for the
living creatures trying to adapt to the slowly-changing earth.
Each player will assume the role of one of six major animal classes—mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid or insect. Each begins the game more or less
in a state of natural balance in relation to one another. But that won’t last: It is indeed “survival of the fittest”. Through wily action pawn placement, players will
strive to become dominant on as many different terrain tiles as possible in order to claim powerful card effects. Players will also want to propagate their individual species in order to earn victory points for their particular animal. Players will be aided in these endeavors via speciation, migration and adaptation actions, among others.
All of this eventually leads to the end game – the final ascent of the ice age – where the player having accumulated the most victory points will have his animal crowned the Dominant Species.
But somebody better become dominant quickly, because it’s getting mighty cold….
As the game was only available in English language at the time of this review I stick to the English keywords used on the board, which should make things a bit easier.
As GMT Games is mostly known in Europe for its Conflict Simulations Games Twilight Struggle, Paths of Glory and Commands & Colors, I should mention that the company already did produce some Euro-style games before publishing Dominant Species; one of them is Manifest Destiny, which is barely known in Germany in Austria. All those games are connected by a common element: The use of “strategy cards” keeps the game interesting and diversified, so also in Dominant Species, where the cards are used for a completely different but again very essential aspect of the game … but more on that later.
Game play:
Players are representing a class of species and try to adapt them to their environment in the course of the game, at the same time trying to adapt the environment to the survival needs of their species. Players discover new territory in the shape of hex tiles and must cope with the ongoing encrouching of ice, represented by Tundra tiles.
As is typical in the animal kingdom species are arranged by a Food Chain, which remains unchanged throughout the whole game. Mammals before reptiles, birds, amphibians, arachnids (spiders) and insects, always resulting during the game in advantages for the species higher up in the chain when tiles are scored.
But, how are the animals fed? The game designers found a very reasonable implementation for the assignment of sx different element types (food or resources) to the individual species, at least at the start of the game (pre-set starting elements on the „animal“ display): Meat for mammals, sun for reptiles, seeds for birds, water for amphibians, larvae for arachnids and grass for insects.
Members of your own species can only survive on hex tiles (see survival in the reset phase), which are bordered by at least one element of their own animal display.
What is dominance?
Finally we reach the point where we can ask, what is a dominant species?
Dominance is resolved separately for each single hex tile, you only take the directly adjacent elements into account. Each type of element which corresponds to an element of your own animal display, is added in the following way to calculate the dominance value:
The number of elements of one type on the hex tile is multiplied by the number of elements on your own animal display. The dominance on a hex tile chances immediately and directly through the effects of a corresponding action-
When there is a tie in the dominance values there is in fact no dominance. Which also is the case for a dominance value of Zero, for instance in the case of mammals which can support one of their own without corresponding resources.
The board is separated into two distinct regions:
The Action Display
The Map / Earth
1. The Action Display
On this you play, direct, win and lose.
Hier wird gespielt, gesteuert, gewonnen und verloren.
Planning phase:
First you determine in the right part of the board, the action display, what you want to do and when you want to do it. This area has been initialized before the first round of the game by drawing element chips randomly from a bag and placing them on each of the squares showing a leaf.
In sequence of the playing initiative the action markers are placed one by one onto free „eye“ spots, with each action area offering only a limited number of places, so the motto is “First come first served” ! When all action pawns (in short AP) have been placed by all players, the actions are executed in turn, that is from top to bottom and from left to right within the separate regions.
You can only mark an action for execution when you really can implement it, with one exception: Blocking of initiative to become the starting player of the next round.
Execution phase:
To execute an action you must have one of your own APs on an “eye” spot in the respective area. Here comes a short description of the action areas in the sequence of their execution. A player removes his AP and executes the action immediately:
1. Initiative
The Planning Phase is done in reverse order of the food chain; the insects begin, mammals are last. You swap the position of your species’ initiative marker with that of the animal immediately to the left and thus moving one step ahead in initiative. This could be one last desperate action to be able to react.
2. Adaption
An element still present in this area is placed on your own action display and thus your species adapts to the environment. You may not place an AP if your own action display is full. This can change the dominance on several spots on the map.
3. Regression
(see also reset phase, is not done in the first round)
If present, you would have to remove elements in place here, several if necessary, from your action display. By placing of an AP you can fend off such a regression, two identical elements in this area can be deflected only by placing two APs.
The advantage for snakes here is a free AP.
At this point, too, the dominance on several spots on the map could change.
4. Abundance
An element that is still present in this area is relocated on a free corner spot between three hex tiles on the board to adapt the environment.
Now dominance on spots adjacent to the newly placed element could change.
5. Wasteland
(see also reset phase, is not done in the first round)
One of the elements present in this area is removed. Elements that have a counterpart to a Tundra square on the map are removed from the map. This happens automatically.
Here, too, the dominance in squares adjacent to elements that just have been removed could change.
6. Depletion
(see also reset phase, is not done in the first and second round)
You must remove an element from the map that corresponds to an element in this area.
Here, too, the dominance in squares adjacent to elements that just have been removed could change.
7. Glaciation (see reset phase)
If your AP is left-most in this section, you decide in which direction the glaciation = covering of a hex by a tundra hex is continuing. Glaciation can only happen in non-tundra tiles that are adjacent to at least one tundra tile. All animals are temporarily set aside, a tundra tile is placed. Then one animal of each kind that was present is put back on the tile, the others go back to the “gene pool”. Then you score victory points in relation to the adjacent tundra tiles. Should an element be surrounded by three tundra tiles it is removed immediately from the map. This again could change dominance in neighboring tundra tiles.
8. Speciation
In relation to the element shown next to the action area you must choose one element on the map and may place animals from the gene pool on the three adjacent hex tiles up to the maximum number of animals possible for that type of hex, regardless if there are already animals of your own or other species on this tile. Spiders have the advantage to place another animal in any hex tile after speciation is finished.
9. Wanderlust
You choose one of the three open hex tiles and an element and place together on the map next to an already existing hex tile. The number of adjacent hex tiles is the basis for scoring victory points according to the scale. Then animals wander into the directly adjacent tiles in order of the food chain.
This again could change dominance in neighboring tundra tiles.
10. Migration
For each AP you move an animal one step up to the value printed next to the spot. Advantage for birds is to move two steps.
11. Competition
Depending on the location of the AP you can remove an opposing animal from up to two tiles, but you must have one of your own animals in the tile which „kills“ the opposing animal. These killed animals are not put back into the gene pool.
The arachnids are allowed one free kill in any tile before actual competition.
12. Domination
Choose a spot for scoring. The allocation of victory points is done in relations for the tile, see scale in the left area; sequence is determined by the number of animals, in case of a tie by the food chain order. Then the “dominant” player, marked by the cone of his color, chooses a “dominant card” and executes it immediately.
13. Reset phase
Animals that cannot survive become extinct, they are not put back into the gene pool. For the survival scoring majorities are determined for animals on Tundra tiles. The number of Tundra tiles on which those animals are located is the basis for the victory points according to the scale in the left bottom area. The mammals can keep one of their own animals alive without the necessary resources.
Reset means that the elements from the areas of regression, depletion and Wanderlust are removed, the others are moved down one action area according to the arrows and the now empty spots marked with leaves are filled again with elements randomly drawn from the bag.
The sequence of the action areas is very well chosen and logical, as a plan for the round only begins to emerge during the planning phase. To determine the move in advance is absolutely impossible, as in Agricola, as actions are available in a limited amount and thus are maybe not available next time.
2. The Map / Earth
Somewhat abstractly depicted, earth is influenced either by actions on the Action Display or directly by Dominance cards. The game develops slowly – new land areas are explored and the Tundra is expanding, resources evolve and wane, generations of species roam the earth, fight each other and are slowly doomed due to the expansion of the glaciers. The game board is getting rather confusing, as for instance birds due to migration can change their habitat rather fast.
The end of the game comes with the use of the Ice Age Card. The remaining dominance actions are implemented. In addition to scoring the Ice Age Card for victory points according to the left bottom scale in relation to the number of dominated squares each square is scored one last time.
All that doesn’t sound too dramatically, but it is; the devil is in the details. Dominant Species is definitely not a fun family game, and to capture the entire scope of options might not be possible before you've played your tenth game.
It's not only made up of some EuroGames-typical elements such as Worker Placement but also of a die-hard COSIM factor.
On the map the heat is on! The coveted areas "Sea, Wetland and Savanna" are always contested, and to dominate or at least to be represented on these areas is of "long term importance" in any case, as you would not want your opponent to acquire a "Dominance Card" for free or to let him have valuable victory points?
Here, then, you can see the advantage of being in front of the foot chain, those species usually participate in scoring without lots of effort, which in turn leaves them some resources for their own further development.
Nor should one never be sure of one’ dominance, even if the areas are as well protected as possible, the next disaster usually doesn’t take long to arrive. You should always keep an eye on the cards, for example the evil "Blight" cleans out all resources on a hex tile. There really is a constant up and down in who is currently grabbing the bad end of the stick. And yet, you should not forget to aim for victory points!
Time and again elements arrive ill-timed in the areas of "adaptation" and "Abundance". Should an opponent be before you and grab the advantage, you will have your hands full with the containment of a possible disaster in subsequent rounds. To have a realistic chance to react to those imponderabilities is only possible in two-player games, and this is the version were Dominant Species really has a lot to offer. For two players, the game really gets somewhat predictable as it makes do without any use of dice and thus can be put on the same level as the tactical games such as Le Havre and Agricola on the same level.
The only drawback is the disproportionally long duration of the game, which should not be an issue for hard-core chess-players, but the six-player-game will turn into torment even for the hardened ones. You are not taking part in the game anymore, most of the time you will wait and do not have too much direct impact on the game, which means, that the game depends on the confused decisions of the players ... but could it be that I have not yet understood the game properly? That is why I prefer playing Dominant species only as a two-player-game. One can make the game more difficult by agreeing beforehand on the number of players, and for example only choose one race per player; the game will still be playable comfortably in a time span of 120 minutes. To keep the two-player game somewhat fair, we have also agreed to use a chess clock, which has contributed significantly to the game play and the maintenance of fairness.
A big plus should be awarded to the game for the well-structured set of rules. No comparison to Paths of Glory or Twilight Struggle, which still adhere more to the complicated structure of old COSIM games. No more of this here. The game is described by the flow of the game, clear graphics make it easy to understand.
A beautiful game through the development of the earth, it creates a life-like atmosphere of the prevailing conditions; Darwin would certainly have had fun with this game! Dominant Species is, for the time being, my favorite game because it impresses by its wonderful abstraction of the subject and provides – for me as a chess player – enough power and complexity, which can be continuously explored.
Roman Heinzinger
Spieler: 2-6
Alter: 12+
Dauer: 240+
Autor :Chad Jensen
Grafik : Chad Jensen, Rodger B. MacGowan, Eric Williams
Titel : Ident
Preis : ca. 59,00 Euro
Verlag : GMT Games 2010
Genre : Development game
Zielgruppe : For experts
Version : en
Rules : en
In-game use of language : yes
Kommentar:
Well-working mechanisms
Lots of Interaction
Varied game play
Very well structured rules
Long duration
Felicitous abstraction
Vergleichbar
First game of its kind
Meine Wertung: 7
Roman Heinzinger:
A very beautiful game on Earth’s development, a real-life simulation of conditions long gone-by! Darwin would have loved this game.
Zufall 2
Taktik 1
Strategie__ 3
Kreativität
Wissen_
Gedächtnis
Kommunikation
Interaktion 2
Geschicklichkeit
Action