Evo (board game)
Encyclopedia
Evo: The Last Gasp of the Dinosaurs is a German-style board game
for three to five players, designed by Philippe Keyaerts
and published by Eurogames
. The game won the GAMES Magazine
award for Game of the year 2002 and was nominated for the Origins Award
for Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game 2000. The game went out of print in 2007.
. The board can therefore be assembled in four ways:
The island itself is made up of hexes of four different terrain
types - "Hot", "Warm", "Cool" and "Cold". The game also uses a separate board for marking the current climate
and round number, another for players scoring and bidding progress, and each player has a board to mark their dinosaur
's mutation
s. The players' scores are also used as money during bidding phases.
Players start with three Event cards, a stack of "dino" tokens several mutations: one "Egg
", one "Leg
", one "Tail
", one "Horn
", one "Fur
" and one "Parasol". Each player places a dino token on their starting hex and a scoring marker on "10". Play proceeds through various phases:
Event cards can be used at various points to alter the game. The player with the most points when the game ends wins.
at the core of Evo is made more interesting by the constantly changing climate. Positions which can be advantageous in one turn are often deadly a few turns later, so unlike many games where a winning player can come to dominate the game, the balance of power shifts frequently.
Unlike most German-style board game
s, it is possible for a player to be eliminated if all his dino tokens are removed from the board. However, this is very rare in practice.
German-style board game
German-style board games, frequently referred to in gaming circles as Euro Games or Euro-style, are a broad class of tabletop games that generally have simple rules, short to medium playing times, indirect player interaction and abstract physical components...
for three to five players, designed by Philippe Keyaerts
Philippe Keyaerts
Philippe Keyaerts is a Belgian designer of German-style board games. His two most popular games are Evo and Vinci. Those two games use the mechanism of allowing the players to spend victory points to improve the characteristics of their play. He also invented Space Blast, a small space battle game...
and published by Eurogames
Eurogames (game publisher)
Eurogames is a publisher of board games, founded in 1984 as Jeux Rexton to publish the man-to-man miniature combat game, Cry Havoc and its expansions. In 1988 Duccio Vitale expanded the company to begin publishing more board games, starting with six games purchased from the bankrupt Italian gaming...
. The game won the GAMES Magazine
GAMES Magazine
Games magazine is a United States magazine devoted to games and puzzles, and is published by Games Publications, a division of Kappa Publishing Group.-History:...
award for Game of the year 2002 and was nominated for the Origins Award
Origins Award
The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the game industry. They are presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for the previous year, so the 1979 awards were given at the 1980 Origins.The Origins Award is commonly...
for Best Graphic Presentation of a Board Game 2000. The game went out of print in 2007.
Game play
The main game board is made of two reversible sections; on each, the two sides contain differently-sized halves of a prehistoric islandIsland
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...
. The board can therefore be assembled in four ways:
- small-small for three players
- small-large or large-small for four players
- large-large for five players.
The island itself is made up of hexes of four different terrain
Terrain
Terrain, or land relief, is the vertical and horizontal dimension of land surface. When relief is described underwater, the term bathymetry is used...
types - "Hot", "Warm", "Cool" and "Cold". The game also uses a separate board for marking the current climate
Climate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
and round number, another for players scoring and bidding progress, and each player has a board to mark their dinosaur
Dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...
's mutation
Mutation
In molecular biology and genetics, mutations are changes in a genomic sequence: the DNA sequence of a cell's genome or the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. They can be defined as sudden and spontaneous changes in the cell. Mutations are caused by radiation, viruses, transposons and mutagenic...
s. The players' scores are also used as money during bidding phases.
Players start with three Event cards, a stack of "dino" tokens several mutations: one "Egg
Egg (biology)
An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...
", one "Leg
Leg
Łęg may refer to the following places in Poland:*A former name for the town of Ełk *Part of the Czyżyny district of Kraków*Łęg, Pleszew County in Greater Poland Voivodeship...
", one "Tail
Tail
The tail is the section at the rear end of an animal's body; in general, the term refers to a distinct, flexible appendage to the torso. It is the part of the body that corresponds roughly to the sacrum and coccyx in mammals, reptiles, and birds...
", one "Horn
Horn (anatomy)
A horn is a pointed projection of the skin on the head of various animals, consisting of a covering of horn surrounding a core of living bone. True horns are found mainly among the ruminant artiodactyls, in the families Antilocapridae and Bovidae...
", one "Fur
Fur
Fur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...
" and one "Parasol". Each player places a dino token on their starting hex and a scoring marker on "10". Play proceeds through various phases:
- Initiative - the order players will act in is determined by the number of "tail" mutations they have. Ties are resolved by roll-offs on a six-sided die.
- Climate - a six-sided die is rolled to determine how the climate changes. Normally it proceeds in a cycle from hot to cold and back again, but on a 5 it stays the same, and on a 6 it moves in the opposite direction to the expected one.
- Movement and Combat - players can move their dinos. The more "leg" mutations they have, the further they can move their dinos. If they attempt to move into a space occupied by another dino, they must fight. The aggressor is at a disadvantage unless they have more "horn" mutations than the defender.
- Birth - players can add one new dino to the board for each "egg" mutation they possess, next to their existing dinos.
- Survival and Mutation - dinos die off depending on climate and terrain. "Parasol" and "Fur" mutations allow them to withstand heat and cold, respectively. The players then bid for new mutations; their (successful) bids are subtracted from their score. In addition to the starting mutations, there are "gene" mutations which make future purchases cheaper, and "card" mutations which give the player additional event cards.
- Meteor and Evolution - In later turns, there is a chance that a MeteorMETEORMETEOR is a metric for the evaluation of machine translation output. The metric is based on the harmonic mean of unigram precision and recall, with recall weighted higher than precision...
strikes the island, ending the game. In earlier turns, and in later turns in which the game does not end, the players gain one point for each dino of their colour on the board.
Event cards can be used at various points to alter the game. The player with the most points when the game ends wins.
Game Interest
The simple strategy gameStrategy game
A strategy game or strategic game is a game in which the players' uncoerced, and often autonomous decision-making skills have a high significance in determining the outcome...
at the core of Evo is made more interesting by the constantly changing climate. Positions which can be advantageous in one turn are often deadly a few turns later, so unlike many games where a winning player can come to dominate the game, the balance of power shifts frequently.
Unlike most German-style board game
German-style board game
German-style board games, frequently referred to in gaming circles as Euro Games or Euro-style, are a broad class of tabletop games that generally have simple rules, short to medium playing times, indirect player interaction and abstract physical components...
s, it is possible for a player to be eliminated if all his dino tokens are removed from the board. However, this is very rare in practice.