Evolution. Tough competition during the period of genetic mutations

note! Is not standalone game, and addition to the board game Evolution .

A little more about the game

Some animals would be worth inventing, even if they don't exist. We do not mean dinosaurs (although they certainly do too!), but other dashing inventions of a person who seeks to create his ideal animal. Thinking about this, the authors of the game Evolution decided to give fans more room for creativity and added variety to the local game fauna.

Evolutionary game for the company

In addition Evolution Time to fly 10 new modifiers for creatures appear before your judgment, with which you can collect more more species animals.

For example, you can intercept a predator attacking your animal with the "Anglerfish" card. And with the ability to “fly”, the bird will fly away from those who cannot be compared with it in weight :)

The expansion introduces new dilemmas to the game. What would you prefer: feed yourself by discarding your ability using the Metamorphosis card, or release an “ink cloud” that will neutralize the predator and allow you to avoid reprisal, but only once?

Family Biology Game

Not without anatomical details: "Live birth" allows the animal to bring offspring as soon as it is fed (and a new creature is taken from the deck). Also, the animal can be equipped with a "shell", which protects its tenant from attacks by predators.

Predators also added abilities. Now, using the "ambush", you can suddenly remember your gloomy bloodthirsty nature and attack someone's creature during a watering hole. And if you use "intelligence", you have every right to calmly ignore protective property victims. Guess who disguised himself under that log, you're not a fool :)

First supplement for Evolution. The author writes that the game has become more interesting and emphasizes a successful find - an angler, but he did not like that with the addition Evolution lasts noticeably longer.

Last year I wrote reviews of several Russian games, including Evolution. The first expansion, Time to Fly, is now available to the English-speaking public, including several new animal traits and a sly little anglerfish that makes a big difference game process.

In general, the game has not changed much, The Time to Fly only provides players with a few new properties. Plus, more food tokens are included in the add-on, because with the new properties you can create more animals, and they all require food. Apart from the new properties, nothing in the game has changed.

However, these new properties are quite interesting and add a lot of nuance in terms of strategy and tactics. Some, such as "Flight" or "Intelligence", develop ideas about the properties of the base. Eating a flying creature is not so easy. Intelligence allows the predator to ignore one defensive property of the prey. Other properties are more unusual. The shell allows the animal to hide and avoid attacks, although it also prevents the creature from getting food.

Other properties are completely original. Specialization allows you to get more food, as long as there are no other specialized creatures. With the help of live birth, you can create new animals as soon as the viviparous creature is fed. So there are a lot of animals in the game now, a lot of potential food for predators.

The feel of the game with the addition of new cards compared to the base has not changed. With one very important exception - the angler. In reality, the angler is a fish with a protrusion on its head that attracts food - other fish. This is a significant change from the base set.

The Anglerfish is played face down like all other animals. And as long as it does not have any additional properties, it serves as a bait. He seems to be saying: "Come and eat me, little predator you have nothing to worry about." And if the predator attacks, the angler strikes. He eats a predator, and you can cruelly laugh at your opponent. This change means that predators now need to tread carefully and may want to stop attacking defenseless creatures with no properties.

If you manage to combine this property with live birth, it can lead to interesting consequences. Opponents will either have to attack your creatures, risk losing a powerful predator, or let you create more and more animals. That is, an excellent element of bluffing now appears in the game, which entails additional interest and tension. You play any card as an animal, and no one knows if it is an angler or not. Funny tactic.

The only thing that can keep players from purchasing the expansion as soon as possible is the increased party time. The game continues until the deck runs out of cards. When playing with the basic set, it took 30-45 minutes. Now it lasts 45-60 minutes, which is too long for what Evolution is. it good game for 20-30 minutes, and Time to Fly adds a number of nice innovations to it, but this is not the kind of game that needs to be played for an hour. In our group, we removed half the cards from the deck. It's not a perfect solution, but it does keep the game time within reasonable limits.

Components: 3.5 out of 5. Cards of the same size and quality as in the base. The new food tokens look a little strange - they are round, but the base ones were square. But this is not scary, because in terms of game mechanics there is no difference between them, but still - it's a little strange.

Balance of strategy and luck: 3.5 out of 5. For the most part, the new properties do not upset the balance between luck or strategy. The element of randomness is still present, although it can be leveled with thoughtful moves. But thanks to the appearance of the angler, the game has become a little more strategic.

Mechanics: 4 out of 5. The best thing about the add-on is that it is easy to add to the game. There are no new rules, you just get new cards and play. Although the duration of the party increases, the gameplay flows quite smoothly. Unless with new maps, predators become less dangerous. For example, if you roll "Camouflage", due to the increased number of cards, predators have a reduced chance of getting "Sharp Vision". In this case, "Intelligence" can help, but this card has a minus - it requires additional food.

Replay value: 4 out of 5. More variety of properties increases replay value. The game has more interaction, players have more space to choose from.

Overall rating: 3 out of 5. New properties? Excellent! angler! Great! Longer games? Undesirable. Here are the pros and cons. If you're an Evolution fan, Time to Fly is a great purchase. Please note that the game will now take more time.

The Time to Fly Evolution expansion has been planned since last year. Then everyone thought that birds would appear in it (and argued whether it would be possible to climb into their nests). The birds have appeared. And besides them, a whole crowd of different new animals came, from which it will be possible to assemble even a marsupial flying angler skunk with a developed intellect.

What can a hamster mutate into now?

There are new properties:

One of the main questions for the expansion is whether the slightly wobbly balance of the first version of the game will be stabilized. So, while it is clear that the situation with the balance is about the same: the addition adds unpredictability, but does not radically improve the situation. However, the game becomes more fun.

What's included?

The small box (half the size of the base box) contains 42 new cards, one six-sided die, and new food tokens. Evolution with Time to Fly can be played with up to six players. Required to play

Time to Fly is the first expansion for the science fiction board game Evolution. The set includes 42 cards with ten new properties, a die, additional food tokens, and rules. You will need the base "Evolution" to play.

"Evolution" is a popular domestic board game dedicated to the development of life on Earth. The game is based on competition between living organisms, during which they acquire new useful features. Each player manages their own animal population. During the game, he can both increase it (by playing cards in front of him face down), and endow his animals with various properties (indicated on front side kart).

Each turn, a limited number of food chips are placed on the table, and players must ensure that all of their animals are fed. For this, new properties are needed: some allow you to take food out of turn, others allow you to store calories for the future, and still others allow you to eat other animals. At the end of the game, each participant is awarded victory points for their surviving animals and their properties.

To play Evolution with the expansion, simply shuffle all the cards from the base game and Time to Fly. Please note that the deck has grown by 1.5 times, which means that now you can play Evolution with 5 or even 6 players! If there are two or three of you, and you are playing with an addition, we recommend that you put about half of the cards into the box before the game so that the game does not drag on.

For "Evolution" there is another addition - "Continents". And if you want to purchase the full set of the game at once, pay attention to deluxe edition"Evolution".

The composition of the game set: 42 cards, die and food tokens.

Evolution with the expansion can be played with up to six players.

- Legs, wings, hmm ... The main thing is the tail!

Time to fly- this is the name of the first and many expected addition to the card board game Evolution. Rumors about its development appeared last year, and already this year I managed to participate in testing a preliminary version of the game.

But even being familiar with the test version, I, like many, waited with interest for the final official release. So, meet:

Let's look inside and find out what the Age of Flight will please us with, well, that is. Time to fly. 🙂

P.S. The game was presented to us by the publishing house "Correct Games".

The first thing that pleases the publication is a fairly compact size. Box almost half the number of new "pencil cases" from Right games — 16.6 x 9.5 x 3.8 cm.

Why not quite a small box, like Mysteries of Leonardo: Novem. I think, because in addition to cards and rules, chips and a dice are included in the supplement.

The point is that with the addition Time to fly opportunity to play up to 6 people at one table.

Therefore, additional food chips..

And one game cube

And most importantly, the add-on diversifies the game 42 cards 10 new types.

Flight allows the creature to defend itself against more "heavy" (in terms of the number of properties) predators, i.e. an animal cannot be attacked by a predator that has the same or more properties.

Ambush allows a predator to attack another animal while feeding. At the same time, if the animal is eaten, then the red chip that it was going to eat remains in the food base.

ink cloud can be released by an animal during a predator attack. In practice, this property postpones the death of the animal, because. the predator will be able to attack again in its next feeding phase this turn. This property can be useful when, for example, your animal nornoe and eat and hide.

live birth- a rather interesting property that allows a fed animal to immediately give birth to a new animal. In this case, as an animal, the player will take a card from the deck, and not from his hand.

Intelligence makes predators smarter and allows them to choose one of the victim's properties once per turn, which he can ignore when attacking.

But it should be remembered that "especially smart" animals with live birth and intelligence require more food when using these properties, so it will be more difficult to feed them.

Metamorphosis allows the animal to adapt to the lack of food and "reduce" by one (not increasing the need for food, i.e. +1 ) property, receiving a blue food token in return. At the same time, you can discard both ordinary properties and paired ones.

Sink not just made in the form of a card different from all colors. Firstly, it allows the animal to hide and escape when attacked by a predator. True, until the end of the turn, this animal will no longer be able to receive red and blue food tokens, however, it will be able to supplement food at the expense of the existing fat reserve.

Secondly, if any animal with a shell dies from starvation or a predator attack, then the shell remains in the game and is laid out in the center playing field. From there, any of the players in their feeding phase, instead of feeding, will be able to take the shell and put one of their animals in it.

In both cases, the attacking predator receives no blue food tokens and cannot attack further that turn. Apparently, he breaks his teeth on the sink. 🙂

anglerfish- a very insidious creature and a special card in Evolution. It can only be played as an animal (i.e., face down, hiding its nature from rivals). If one of your animals is suddenly attacked and does not have any properties on it, then you can open the Angler card and attack the attacking predator out of turn, ignoring one of its properties.

If at the same time the predator manages to survive, then he is so frightened that he can no longer eat this turn, much less attack anyone else.

Another type of cards in the add-on is Specialization. Now A and B(… sat on the pipe 🙂 — this is not a counting rhyme, but two types of specializations. To make it easier to understand the meaning of this property, I personally call it Uniqueness. If during the nutrition phase on the table only one an animal of one of the specializations, i.e. unique or an endangered species, if you like, the owner has the option of placing a blue food token instead of a red one. If the animal is not unique, i.e. there are two or more of its specializations, the ability has no effect.

Naturally, one animal cannot have two different specializations. And obviously, specialization can be especially useful when there are no food chips left in the food supply.

Another nice little thing that appeared with the release of the expansion: cards with the property Waterfowl now have a blue background, which is quite logical and adds, in my opinion, the convenience of the game.

In addition Time to fly property is in short format

But in new editions of the Evolution base set the card is completely submerged under water

Summary

As you can see, there are only a few types of cards, but how many different possibilities have appeared in the game. For example, Specializations added another mechanism for the interaction of players, and anglerfish and did give a chance to mislead opponents and even bluff. live birth not only allows you to quickly breed your animals, but also surprise at the very end of the game by taking the last card from the deck and thus completing the game.

Definitely bad steam Fluke and mixed benefits. intelligence, insidious Ambush and light Flight, weak ink cloud or saving Metamorphosis- all this turns Evolution into a slightly more complex, but much more exciting and interesting game.

After several games with the addition, to be honest, I don’t really want to play pure basic set. Time to fly not just an addition to Evolution, but an update that organically fits into it.

Well, as mentioned at the beginning, the pleasant fact is that the publisher decided on the additional costs of changing the boxed standard and presented the game in a new small-sized format.

One of the most important issues for all lovers board games- price - more or less acceptable and is about 400 rub.

Well, now it's time to continue your experiments with evolution, especially, according to the authors, the number of combinations of properties in the game with Time to fly grew from 50 thousand to more than 50 million - yes, the main thing is not to overstrain the brain. 🙂

Now you know almost everything about the add-on, share your opinion:

Which of the new features, in your opinion, are especially useful or, on the contrary, will be practically not useful?
What do you think about the name of the supplement - is it appropriate or do you have your own version?