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Rikki Hammond (33 KP) rated Dominant Species in Tabletop Games

Jun 12, 2019 (Updated Jun 12, 2019)

Dominant Species

2010 | Animals, Environmental, Prehistoric

5.6

(5 Ratings)

Tabletop Game Rating

Interesting term mechanism (2 more)

Each species plays slightly differently

Some interesting event card powers

Woefully long at high player counts (2 more)

Boring to look at

Can be almost impossible to come back from losing

An absolute slog of a game

Dominant species is one of those games that you will either love or hate. Now I don't despise many games but this is definitely one of them.

Players choose one of many different types of species in the game, and try to become the dominant species of the game by expanding their species across the different hexagonal tiles on the board, through migrating, reproducing, and attacking other animals. If a player has more animals on a tile than other players, they are considered the dominant species of that tile and can therefore gain victory points from doing so.

Turns are determined by players placing their action pawns on different spaces on the grid to the right of the board. Once everyone has placed their pawns on the grid, actions are then worked from the top of the grid to the bottom. These actions include, but are not limoted to moving your species to another tile, attacking another species, or picking up an event card to use later. The game ends once this stack of event cards runs out, and final scoring takes place.

Each species starts out with a certain traits which means they are suited to a certain type of terrain. You can use one of your actions to gain different traits and therefore allows you to expand your species into different terrain tiles. The event cards are also useful in that they give you special abilities or can change the game in some way. This could be having your species migrate more than once in a turn, to removing every other species from your own tiles.

I like the way the turn mechanism works as it gives each player a little bit of freedom as to where they can place their pawns, and how soon they want their turn to be taken. There are a finite amount of spaces on each place of the grid so if you're action is taken up by other players before you get to it then that's just tough luck. I also like that the different species are slightly different and so gives the game a slight bit of replayability.

These are all the positives that I can give this game however. The game in general is just incredibly dull and boring to look at. Each species is differentiated by different coloured cubes and cones on the board. Take the player boards away and this game could literally be about anything you want.

The game also goes on for far too long especially at higher player counts, and especially if people don't quickly pick up those event cards, as that is the only way the game will end.

The game can also be horrendously unfair to a player. If you make one or two wrong judgements at the start of the game it can be nigh on impossible to come back from being in last place which to me, does not sound fun at all.

Personally I do not recommend dominant species as a game and I do think there are much better ones out there.

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The Marinated Meeple (1853 KP) rated The Bottle Imp in Tabletop Games

Sep 17, 2018

The Bottle Imp

1995 | Card Game

8.0

(1 Ratings)

Tabletop Game Rating

So much deeper strategy that it appears (1 more)

every round is tense

three players is a tough player count (0 more)

Exceptional 3 player trick taking game.

This is the kind of game every person should own. It's simple, and easy to play, and yet is really tense and you are making fun decisions. Someone at the table is getting screwed, will it be you. You push your luck for a few more points, or play it safe. The simple mechanism of making the "trump" the highest low card. and then that becomes the new bar you have to play below to activate the trump. But it also gives you the bottle, and if you end up with the bottle at the end of the round you get none of the points you collected and the card people put in the middle at the start are your negative points. You can also "Control your destiny" by passing three cards from your hand, one to the left, one to the right and one you bury in the middle" At first this seems like an easy choice, but then you see the are layers to that decision. This is the kind of game with lots of ah-ha moments and I would say the first play reveals some, the 2nd play reveals more and by the time you have played 3 or 4 hands, you probably love the game as much as I do now. It's worth the $20, this will be in my collection a long time. I'm very strongly considering creating a 6 player version of this game, we have lots of game nights with 6 and almost none with 3. I'd love to get this game out more often.