Evo(i)l

My gaming group had a minor disaster last night - we'd moved venue and I'm not sure everyone got the message. In the event only three people turned up to where I was waiting, which wasn't good for me because I wanted to play Richard III, a 2-player game. Luckily I'd bought a multi-player title as well and that was the dinosaur evolution game Evo, which had the dubious distinction of being the second longest unplayed game on my shelves, after the now-legendary length of time that I've owned an untouched copy of A Game of Thrones. So it was good to blow the dust off and give it a go.

And we had a lot of laughs. The theme is really fun and implemented well, with lots of cutesy-poo dinosaur artwork, the chance to decorate a dinosaur species cards with new legs and tails and stuff and a near-infinite potential for "I've got the horn" jokes. It also features map maneuver and combat, unusual in a Euro, and this is much the better for it. In fact this game was won by Graham (the Graham who always wins games) actually managing to completely eliminate the other two players by turning into a carnivorous species and eating all the other dinosaurs on the board. It also features a clever climate mechanism which seems certain spaces on the board become lethal, with the danger zones changing along with the climate and a nifty twist on an auction where you actually spend your VPs to get new genes.

So, definately fun but as a game I found it left quite a lot to be desired. After playing I can see why so many people suggest that the auction for new genes each turn should be played with one gene less than the number of players - the auctions can be pretty stable affairs otherwise. I also don't think three is a very good number to play with - I think this really needs the maximum to make sure there's a good variety of genes coming out. But the most curious thing of all was the combat sytem: attacking a dinosaur and winning puts that dinosaur off the board and (in all probability) leaves yours in  space where it will survive any climate damage this turn.  Since you score points based on the number of dinosaurs you have, this is a huge bonus.  But if you attack a dinosaur with the same number of horns as you, you win on a 1-2, whereas if you have just one more horn you win on a 1-4. This means horns are at an absolute premium and auctioning to get them pretty much dominates the game, and leaves a bad rich-get-richer problem as those who fall behind can no longer afford to spend VP's in the auction to try and get the genes they need to catch up.

It'd be easy to house rule this one. Use the N-1 gene variant. Make combat on even horns win on 1-3 and have one more horn make it 1-4, two more 1-5 and so on. It'd make the game rather more chaotic and you'd probably want to shorten the play time but that's not much of an issue either - start everyone off with more egg genes (more offspring each turn) and have the game last fewer turns.  Besides which, surely it's unfair to deride a game as needing serious house-rulings after just one play, isnt it?

I'm not sure. I think there is some replay value in this but the bottom line is that with a collection of eighty games, a quarter of which are unplayed, I really couldn't see that it was ever going to be good enough to make frequent re-appearances in spite of the fun theme. So when Graham mentioned his kids might like it I sold it to him then and there: a no loose situation for me as the game is still in the group should I ever decide I want to play it again.

So what do you think? Is one play enough to make that sort of judgement? Or should I have given it another chance?