Any thoughts on Dominant Species?

Feckin' refresh button . . . mutter, mutter . . .

This just went out of stock at GMT in like a couple months! Wow. So if you want it get it now, GMT says it's going to take a bit to reprint it.

My thoughts-

"Some people on BGG make this game sound really cool."

"Man, I wish I got into that game of Dominant Species instead of this game of Age of Steam."

"80 bucks is a lot. I guess I'll never know."

Yeah, it's pricey. Would have been a prime candidate for GMT's half off sale from a couple weeks ago.

NagaPepper wrote:

I played DS a couple of weeks ago. If that's the type of game I'm going for, then it would be my game of choice. So, DS is it if I have four players, four hours, and feel like playing a deep worker placement. Basically it's a whole lot of how far can I go before someone else eliminates my options. There is a lot of potential for screwage.

It's definitely in the I'd never buy personally because I know it will rarely get to the table, if ever again.

NagaPepper welcome aboard with your first post to F:AT. Keep posting, we're not The Hive here, we like many views on games.

DS looks like a game I'd like to try out some time but... Do I really need a 4 hour euroey to collect dust on shelf?

KingPut wrote:

NagaPepper welcome aboard with your first post to F:AT. Keep posting, we're not The Hive here, we like many views on games.

No we don't. Go away NagaPepper and take that rat bastard tree hugging Kingput with you.

We like NO new opinions and NO new posters. Keep your trap shut. The last thing we need is another verbose pontificator like Dogmatix.

Stop cluttering up the board with worthless information. You're taking up valuable space for hate filled rants and the rehashing of old news.

Steve"Old ways are best"Avery

Avery, you are so fantastic. I think you just won my heart from Barney.

Hey thanks! I'm aiming to be more irascible than Scissors and MlJ...

Now I've got to go beat on some kindergarteners.

Steve"In the hands of an angry god"Avery

I've played it once. For all the bitching about components, that was about the last thing I thought about. They were perfectly adequate for their purpose. Sadly I played it with a couple of extremely AP prone folks one of whom was reading through the rules - it was excruciating. Once we got into the game itself it was okay. I'd give it a meh+

I'd like to play it again with a more fluent group. I'm not sure I'd be gaga over it but it might go from meh+ to fairly amusing. Not sure.

Zerosum wrote:

I've played two games of Dominant Species. It's got a lot of interaction & struggle and a lot of different ways to influence the game. The different animals all have their own feel, not extreme differences but enough to notice. The map is grown by the players over the course of the game, and the ice-cap expands by player action as well, wrecking prime real estate in the process. The presence of and adaptation to resources is also governed by competitive player actions. It is a Euro but everything in the game is direct competition. In that sense it's a lot like a wargame, I think it's deceptively great.

I would shorten the game though - pull out 5 cards to knock a turn off the play time, otherwise it drags in my opinion. It does require patience and there is constant counting, as well as a giant round of scoring at the end (expect 25-50% of your points to come from the final scoring round). Not a good drinking game.

Adding to Zerosum's description, the game borrows the action selection table from Age of Empires III, right down to the top-to-bottom, left-to-right execution of placed action pawns. But unlike AoE3, this game actually has real confrontation. There are two levels of area control going on -- one for your cubes (representing your species) and the other for the elements (food sources) that are placed in the corners of the hexes and on your player sheets. The latter area control gives one player dominance of a hex/tile. When a tile is scored, the points are distributed for cube area control and then the dominant player gets to take and play one of 5 face up cards that provide, like the actions on the action selection table, a variety of defensive and offensive effects.

I played this with three wargaming buddies. I expected to hate it, especially after seeing the AoE3 action selection table. I don't mind being limited in the number of actions that I can take on my turn (e.g., Struggle of Empires) but I've never been a fan of not being able to do something because other players beat me to it (which is seen in DS, especially as you add more players). That said, I enjoyed the game and have played it twice more with the wargamers in 3-player games.

After my first playing, I ordered a copy from Games Surplus and have played it twice with my non-wargaming group. I taught both games, a 4-player game and a 3-player game. I bought the game specifically to play with these guys since they tend to like euros to break up the constant AT games that I teach them. All of them really liked the game.

I've been trying some variants to shorten the game by either pulling out cards (certain cards add/remove action pawns which can be quite rough for new players in a 3-player game to recover from) or by shuffling the game end card up about 6-10 cards from the bottom rather than on the bottom of the deck.