Dominant Species is a 2010 competitive, area control board game published by

GMT Games GMT Games is a California-based wargaming publisher founded in 1990. The company has become well known for graphically attractive games that range from "monster games" of many maps and counters, to quite simple games suitable for introducing new ...

, designed by Chad Jensen. The game is an evolution-themed game in which players take on the role of broad categories of life: mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, arachnids, and insects in a world heading for the Ice Age.

Game Play

The map is formed from hexagonal tiles in 7 terrain varieties (

mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...

desert A desert is a landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions create unique biomes and ecosystems. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the la ...

forest A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense ecological community, community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, ...

jungle jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past century. Etymology The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''jaṅgala'' ...

savannah A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...

wetland A wetland is a distinct semi-aquatic ecosystem whose groundcovers are flooded or saturated in water, either permanently, for years or decades, or only seasonally. Flooding results in oxygen-poor ( anoxic) processes taking place, especially ...

sea A sea is a large body of salt water. There are particular seas and the sea. The sea commonly refers to the ocean, the interconnected body of seawaters that spans most of Earth. Particular seas are either marginal seas, second-order section ...

). Over the course of the game new tiles are added but also some are overlain with smaller

tundra In physical geography, a tundra () is a type of biome where tree growth is hindered by frigid temperatures and short growing seasons. There are three regions and associated types of tundra: #Arctic, Arctic, Alpine tundra, Alpine, and #Antarctic ...

tiles. Each player has a player board and a number of

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

cubes, which the players aim to spread across the map. A key component in the game is the 6 ''Elements'' (

grass Poaceae ( ), also called Gramineae ( ), is a large and nearly ubiquitous family (biology), family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos, the grasses of natural grassland and spe ...

grub GNU GRUB (short for GNU GRand Unified Bootloader, commonly referred to as GRUB) is a boot loader package from the GNU Project. GRUB is the reference implementation of the Free Software Foundation's Multiboot Specification, which provides a use ...

meat Meat is animal Tissue (biology), tissue, often muscle, that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted and farmed other animals for meat since prehistory. The Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of vertebrates, including chickens, sheep, ...

seed In botany, a seed is a plant structure containing an embryo and stored nutrients in a protective coat called a ''testa''. More generally, the term "seed" means anything that can be Sowing, sown, which may include seed and husk or tuber. Seeds ...

sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

), which can be both on the corners of tiles (representing supply) and on the players' boards (representing requirements) and also in the draw bag or action display. The better a species matches its requirements with the supply offered by the Elements on the tiles they occupy, the better it is doing. Also each player has action pawns which are used in a

worker placement In tabletop games and video games, game mechanics define how a game works for players. Game mechanics are the rules or ludemes that govern and guide player actions, as well as the game's response to them. A rule is an instruction on how to play, wh ...

style in the action display section of the board. Each turn consists of three phases: ''Planning'', ''Execution'' and ''Reset''. In the Planning phase players use their action pawns to claim a slot in the Execution phase. In the Execution phase each action pawn does its action according to the slot it was placed in, starting at the top of the action display and working down. Each player gets a special ability based on their animal class. For example

birds Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

can move further in the

migration Migration, migratory, or migrate may refer to: Human migration * Human migration, physical movement by humans from one region to another ** International migration, when peoples cross state boundaries and stay in the host state for some minimum le ...

stage;

insects Insects (from Latin ') are hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed ...

get a free

speciation Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook coined the term in 1906 for cladogenesis, the splitting of lineages, as opposed to anagenesis, phyletic evolution within ...

action and

arachnids Arachnids are arthropods in the class Arachnida () of the subphylum Chelicerata. Arachnida includes, among others, spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen, camel spiders, whip spiders and vinegaroons. Adult arachnids ...

get a free competition action. Most of the Execution actions move Elements, tiles or species cubes in ways that help or hinder the players. However the two with most dramatic effects are ''Glaciation'' and ''Dominance''. In the Glaciation action the player may change one tile to a much less hospitable tundra tile. This will remove species and possibly Elements from the board and also scores points. In the Dominance action the player selects one tile for a dominance check. Players score points based on how many cubes they have on the tile, but the player whose requirements are best met by the supply on that tile must choose and execute a dominance card from those available. For example, the

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as t ...

dominance card will allow some players to get an extra action pawn. Finally in the Reset phase endangered species (those zero of whose requirements are met) are removed, one player may score points for occupying the most tundra tiles and housekeeping is done on the action display. The game ends at the end of the turn in which the

Ice Age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...

dominance card (always at the bottom of the deck) is played. Then the player with the most points wins.

History

Dominant Species has won the following awards: * 2011 Golden Geek Board Game of the Year Winner * 2011 Golden Geek Best Strategy Board Game Winner It has been reprinted in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2018. Dominant Species is GMT's 3rd best top selling game, after Commands & Colors: Ancients and

Twilight Struggle ''Twilight Struggle: The Cold War, 1945–1989'' is a board game for two players, published by GMT Games in 2005. Players are the United States and Soviet Union contesting each other's influence on the world map by using cards that correspond to ...

. The artwork has been revamped. Joe Jones states that :Depending on which edition you buy, the artwork differs quite a bit. The original came in for a bit of bashing due to its rather dull appearance. Future releases changed this, meaning the artwork is now much fuller and more colorful, ....

has ported the game to a digital format. A cards based version and a marine themed sequel have been produced.

Reception

The

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a popular science magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organ ...

have listed Dominant Species as one of the "9 of the best board games to play for fans of science and tech". According to Andrew Smith: :''Dominant Species'' can be a mean, frustrating game of survival of fittest. But the game mechanisms are extremely streamlined, easy to teach, and fairly intuitive to understand. The rule book is highly regarded as "as one of the gold standards" and "easily one of the best in the industry". In a review of ''Dominant Species'' in '' Black Gate'', Howard Andrew Jones said "The themes in some games seem tacked on as an afterthought, but that of Dominant Species is integral. It may be the finest science-themed game that I've ever played, and is certainly one of the better tactical games, with the added benefit that it does not play slowly."

References

External links

* * {{BGG, 62219, Dominant Species Board games introduced in 2010 Biology-themed board games GMT Games games Worker placement board games Tile-based board games