Name: Species of Domination
Publisher: GMT Games
Year Published: 2010
Average Mode Price: $50 – $60
Good: Never in the same game twice – Multiple winning strategies
Bad: High production value – Randomness dominates the strategy – Potential flight leader problem – Badly balanced – does not play well with many or few players
Dominant Species is a new game that is best described as a spiritual successor to the little game Ursuppe. While the game mechanics between the two games are radically different, the concept of constantly expanding while trying to save your food makes the two games feel similar. This is where the similarities end as Dominant Species is a much more complex game than Ursuppe.
At first glance, the Dominant Species doesn’t look like much. The chest art, while beautiful, is slightly outdated in color. This color fading continues when you open the box and look at the board games and the parts. The production value of Dominant Species is quite low and the boards and cheetah paper look slightly better than what could be produced on a low quality color printer.
Fortunately for GMT Games, apparently the Dominant game is better than it looks at first glance. What the game lacks in production, it makes up for in complex, yet well-entrenched game mechanics. Each player takes the role of a different species of animal and the goal is to control your species in the most fertile land. through the game.
The complexity of the rules is such that it is almost impossible to try to report them in a concise manner without any clarity. The short version is to expand your species, adapt your species, expand the world, and dilute the earth’s food source. while avoiding the ever-present cataclysms and the growing ice sheet. If you are able to adapt well and skillfully extend, you will gain more points than your opponents and defeat the beast.
These mechanics highlight the best parts of this game. Because there are so many sub-systems in the game, each one is different than in one game play the latest and winning strategy. to be in another lost plan. This is illustrated by the fact that species are randomly selected in each game and each species has a different advantage than other species.
Unfortunately, the top of the game also opens the bottom of the game. Unlike many modern games, the game is very poorly controlled. Some species simply have better species advantages than others and some species have better advantages depending on the number of players in the game. In addition, the cataclysms that affect the game appear randomly and seem to revolve around the order in which they signify the game’s outcome. In fact, random events dominate almost all strategies, making them more of a game of luck than art.
In addition, the game suffers from a few other problems that are common to many board games. Although officially playable with 2-6 players, the game is quite unpleasant to play with either 2 or 6 players and has a major runaway leader problem with 3 players. In fact, the power of a runaway leader is just about any game size, and there is little that can be done to curb one. Finally, the game allows both king making and wild beasts, both of which can make the game unpleasant for everyone to play. the players
Despite the laundry list of problems, Dominant Species isn’t a terrible game. Simply not up to the standards expected of newer board games. Casual and game mechanics are both one of the best examples of investing in a working game, a type of board game that first crossed over in popularity. Old school gamers will probably love it, while fans of newer board games will quickly tire of the poor game balance.
Ratio: 3 (out of 5).
