This play-through of Bios: Megafauna is approaching a climax. By the end of Turn Six it was obvious that the game wasn’t going to last the usual eleven or more turns, unless something very strange happened. In particular, one player was making very good progress toward developing a species that exhibited language and tool use.

Turn Seven (180 – 210 million years)

The events this turn are Ultra-Plinian VEI 8 Eruption Winter and Desertification. A large-scale volcanic eruption puts teratonnes of dust and ash in the stratosphere, cutting off sunlight and producing a snap cold period. Meanwhile, continental interiors and rain-shadow areas dry out, pushing back the world-spanning forests. Actual changes to the map are moderate, with a new mountain hex appearing on Beta, and a desert hex appearing (for the first time) on Delta. The placement of these hexes means that one piece for each player becomes Endangered.

The atmosphere currently has 30% free oxygen, planetary albedo is at 0.35, and the climate is Warm. All players get four actions.

White resizes both his Archetype and his Swimmer species to size 4. He acquires Feelers for the Swimmer species, immediately promoting the trait to Tentacles. The Swimmer species now has the green Monster marker, and becomes an extremely efficient herbivore. White places two Swimmer pieces in Newborns.

Black acquires Spinneret Silk Ballooning for his Archetype species, and Wrists & Ankles for his Flyer. (Okay, this Flyer species is starting to look very unlike any flying arthropods – that is, insects – on Earth.) Black places one Archetype creeple and two Flyer creeples into Newborns.

Green acquires Cerci for the Burrower, promotes Cerci to Whiskers and Windpipe to Long Neck, acquiring the green Monster marker for the Burrower. Finally, one of his species might be able to compete with Orange more effectively. Green places two Burrower pieces into Newborns.

Orange engages in neoteny, removing one blue cube from each of his three species. He then resizes all three species to size 4. He places two Archetype and two Swimmer pieces into Newborns.

During dispersal, White and Black place their pieces without incident, filling in empty ecological niches on the Alpha and Beta cratons. Green pushes back against Orange’s encroachment of last turn, placing his two Burrowers to attack an Orange Armored carnivore and an Orange Swimmer herbivore. In both cases, the attack works and the Orange pieces become Endangered. Orange consolidates by placing his pieces to fill in empty spaces, in two cases bumping an Armored piece up to the carnivore position.

Since the White Archetype is endothermic, it is able to move away from the new mountain hex where it was Endangered. Black and Green each lose one piece, and Orange loses three.

Turn Eight (210 – 240 million years)

The events this turn are Eltanin Pacific Bolide Winter with Lignin Crisis. A major asteroid impact (not on the scale of the Chicxulub event, but significant) sets off a major climate tipping point, just as the continents are becoming choked with forests full of dead lumber. Many of the events thus far have been moderate; this one turns out to be a major turning point in the game.

The Alpha-Beta continent slides northward, just enough to match the latitude of the southern parts of the Gamma-Delta continent – “rafting” is now possible between them, for the first time in many millions of years. Forests spread slightly, and sea levels rise slightly as well.

Then all hell breaks loose. As noted last time, Black now holds the “Medea” card, which means he controls the movement of the various terrain disks when an event calls for that. He also has the one-time ability to drastically magnify certain events, at the cost of giving up the card to another player. He decides to do this now: instead of moving one white disk from the Atmosphere track to the Clouds track, he chooses to move all of them, representing a major climate tipping point set off by the asteroid impact. The effect is to drastically reduce planetary temperature, while in turn causing the planet’s surface to be wreathed in clouds, blocking out sunlight. Black surrenders the Medea card to White.

The next major event on the card proves decisive. This is the first mutagen event in the game, essentially representing a mass extinction. Many of the largest and most sophisticated species in play will be forced to give up traits, giving way to smaller and more versatile cousins. The way this is implemented is that each species must be compared to something called the “dark heart limit,” which is based on the oxygen level for Players Orange, Black, and White, and on the planet’s current albedo for Player Green. Every species must give up cubes until it has no more than the dark heart limit. If any “basal organs” (cubes sitting directly on the species’ base card) are lost, the species becomes extinct at once.

The current dark heart limit is 7 for Players Orange, Black, and White, but only 1 for Player Green (all those clouds are blocking the intensive photosynthesis his species need). Here’s how it shakes out:

• White’s two species are highly specialized, especially since the Archetype has two Monster markers. However, literally at the last minute while re-checking the rules for a mutagen event, I noticed a rule that permits endothermic species (with one or more white cubes) to add twice their number of white cubes to the dark heart limit. The White Archetype, since it is size 4 and has a white Monster marker, effectively has four white cubes, meaning that its dark heart limit is actually 15. White is able to preserve the species almost intact by resizing it to size 3, and giving up one blue cube from the Pituitary Gland trait. Meanwhile, the White Swimmer species is not endothermic, but it also has a far smaller set of cubes. White is able to avoid the loss of any traits by resizing the Swimmer to size 2.
• Green is forced to use a dark heart limit of 1 . . . and both of his species have more basal organ cubes than that. Green’s two species both become completely extinct, removed entirely from the map. Green is now a “Lazarus” player. He can move back onto the map later, but for now he has effectively been knocked out of the game. There is much baleful glaring at Black from his side of the table.
• Black smiles, as both of his species are under the dark heart limit and he takes no losses.
• Orange also gets off lightly – this is exactly the event he was concerned about from the beginning of the game, and his repeated use of the “neoteny” rule has reduced his exposure. The Orange Archetype loses the Pallial Lung trait, and two green cubes from the Gizzard Stones and Pancreas traits. Since the latter two cards make up the species’ green Emotion, he retains them even through they no longer carry any cubes (the “Cheshire Cat” rule). Orange’s other species are under the dark heart limit.

With events complete, the planet’s atmosphere has 34% free oxygen, the albedo is at 0.8 (!), and the climate is now Cool. Player Green gets 2 actions, all other players get 4.

White is the first player to move, and he spots a superb opportunity. One of the effects of a “mutagen” event is that it clears the current tableau of available traits and lays out a new set of cards for players to acquire. As it happens, this brings two cards to the fore that White would very much like to snap up. He acquires Long-Term Memory and Olfactory Organ for his Archetype species, and immediately promotes both, to Larder Hoarding and Smelling Nose respectively.

This move enables White to line up all of his cards in such a way as to acquire two new Emotions. One of these is red, indicating “anger,” the “fight” part of the fight-or-flight response. The other is purple, indicating “curiosity.” With a purple Emotion, White is immediately able to acquire a Tool card. He selects Net, which renders his Archetype immune to being preyed upon by Flyers, and also gives his Archetype the ability to prey upon Flyers in turn. The newly sentient and tool-using species is about to upset the ecology on the Alpha-Beta continent in a big way, since the age-old pattern of Black Flyers preying upon White Archetypes will now collapse. Three Black Flyer creeples on Alpha and Beta all become Endangered at once.

The White Archetype now has four Emotions, with three different colors in the mix. This is more than enough for the species to develop language, signaling the end of the game. Under the printed rules, the game would end immediately, whereas under the Living Rules it would continue to the end of Turn Ten. Since this exercise is in service of my worldbuilding work, I decide to play out the rest of this turn and stop there. The development of this new tool-using and language-using species into a high-tech civilization will take place so quickly as to take up a tiny fraction of a game turn!

Green, just going through the motions at this point, revives his Archetype species at size 1 with no traits, placing a creeple in an empty spot on Beta. He acquires the Rhizome trait for his Archetype.

Black promotes Wrists & Ankles to Digitigrade Hopping for his Flyer species. He promotes Spinneret Silk Ballooning to Cocoon for his Archetype, and that species becomes endothermic. Black places two Archetype pieces and two Flyer pieces in Newborns.

Orange sees a lot of space that just became empty, with the extinction of the old Green species. He places two pieces each for all three of his species into Newborns.

Black uses rafting to cross the ocean and reach the Delta craton, filling two spaces with his pieces (Archetypes in the herbivore position, Flyers in the carnivore position). Orange doesn’t try to contest this, instead placing his six new pieces in empty spaces, mostly on Gamma.

The Black Flyers that became Endangered due to the White Archetype’s new abilities all die, setting a bit of punctuation at the end of the biggest mass extinction in the planet’s history.

Final Results

Just for form’s sake, I counted up Victory Points.

• Orange has 1 Fossil in his Fossil Record. He has 7 Archetype Creeples, 6 Armored Creeples, and 6 Swimmer Creeples in play, for a total of 19 Creeples. He has 3 Fossils in his Tableau. He has 1 Emotion. Total 24 VP.
• Black has 1 Fossil in his Fossil Record. He has 7 Archetype Creeples and 4 Flyer Creeples in play, for a total of 11 Creeples. He has 2 Fossils in his Tableau. He has 1 Emotion. Total 14 VP.
• White has 1 Fossil in his Fossil Record. He has 5 Archetype Creeples and 7 Swimmer Creeples in play, for a total of 12 Creeples. He has 4 Fossils in his Tableau. He has 4 Emotions, and has developed Language in one species. Total 24 VP.
• Green has 1 Fossils in his Fossil Record. He has 1 Archetype Creeple in play, for a total of 1 Creeple. He has 1 Fossil in his Tableau. Total 3 VP.

So, as I kind of expected, Orange and White ended up tied for first, with Black trailing and Green in a distant last place. (Poor Green was in last place in the Bios: Genesis game too. I predict that he will call for something different to come to the table, next time these guys get together for game night.)

I conclude that this is an interesting planet to work with for, say, a literary project. We’ve seen several indications that the star system and planet are noticeably different from our own. The physical environment is certainly distinctive, a world with a few small continents and lots of little island chains and arcs. The atmosphere will be very rich in both oxygen and carbon dioxide, breathable by humans but possibly not comfortable for them. It’s also currently a planet of clouds and frequent rain-storms.

As for the native life: one could argue that Orange’s invertebrates are still the dominant phylum, the equivalent of mollusks and annelids, but physically large and capable of advanced behaviors. White’s Archetype is more mammal-like, a warm-blooded creature, somewhat smaller than a human, fiercely aggressive and territorial, but clever enough to live off the swarms of flying exoskeletal creatures that live on all sides. All of these are surviving in the aftermath of climate change and a mass extinction, the planet’s weather probably still wildly variable.

In my next post, I’ll be working up the physical parameters of the star system and primary planet. Then I’ll spend some time designing the sentient species, with a character template and an extensive back story. I’ll be marking those posts with the gurps tag, since they might be of interest to GURPS players. That will conclude the immediate exercise, although I suspect I’ll have an Aminata Ndoye story to write, with this world and its people as a centerpiece. We’ll see how that works out.

My play-through of Bios: Megafauna seems to have reached the rough equivalent of Earth’s Devonian period. All the major families of animals have colonized the land and are starting to spread out, and the continents are also acquiring extensive forest coverage. The next few turns will see some odd developments . . .

Turn Four (90 – 120 million years)

The events this turn are Flood Basalt Traps and ELMO Hyperthermal. Large-scale vulcanism is dumping huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, triggering a period of rapid warming. There actually isn’t much change to the world map as a result, as a few disks move back and forth between the map and the atmosphere tracks. One White Archetype is caught by the formation of a mountain hex on the Alpha craton, but that’s all.

At present, the atmosphere contains 18% free oxygen, planetary albedo is still 0.4, and the climate is Warm (verging on Hothouse). Player Green gets four actions this turn, and all other players get three.

Orange begins the turn by promoting two of his Archetype species traits: Crop to Gizzard Stones, and Endocrine Gland to Pancreas. Increasing anatomical sophistication means that the Archetype now has more green cubes, making it a more efficient herbivore. The Orange Archetype has also acquired the game’s first “Emotion,” as the Gizzard Stones and Pancreas cards match up. The Emotion is colored green, meaning that the Archetype is developing cognitive abilities related to “happiness,” the quest for comfort and a full belly. The Archetype will now find it easier to acquire green traits.

Meanwhile, with his last action Orange promotes the Scutes trait to Carapace, creating a new Armored species which replaces one of the Archetype pieces on Delta. The widespread family of giant slugs and worms has now given rise to something like a species of giant snails.

White continues to invest in his Archetype species. He acquires the Hormones trait and immediately promotes it to Muscle Shivering, moving one yellow cube to his species card and acquiring the white Monster marker. The Archetype species is now endothermic, and gains the ability to escape Endangered status by moving its pieces to an open space. This turns out to be a really good move, although I didn’t see all the implications of it until a critical point a few turns later. Incidentally, with both a blue and a white Monster marker, the White Archetype species effectively has more “organs” (traits) than any other on the planet. White places two Archetype pieces in Newborns.

Green promotes Xylem to Nitrogen Root Nodules, creating a new Burrower species. One imagines a carnivorous plant that spreads by creating extensive root systems, and which grabs prey with tough tendrils springing from underground. One of the Archetype creeples on Gamma becomes a Burrower, and Green places one Archetype and one Burrower piece into Newborns.

Black acquires the Spermatophore trait for his Marine Archetype species. Finally ready to finish moving onto the land, he resizes both the Archetype and the Flyer species to size 2. The Marine Archetype is replaced by the land-based Archetype species, with the remaining off-shore creeple becoming Endangered. Black places two Archetype creeples into Newborns.

White begins the dispersal phase by moving his Endangered piece to an empty hex on Alpha. The White Archetype then spreads to new spaces on Beta. Green places its new creeples in open spaces on Gamma. Black places its Archetype creeples in two spaces on Alpha. One of these placements gives rise to an herbivore contest between a Black Archetype and the White Archetype that just moved out of danger. White wins the contest (one green cube to none), so the Black Archetype moves into the carnivore position. Note that Black could have simply placed his Archetype piece in the carnivore position to begin with; I simply didn’t notice that fact until after the contest.

The Black Archetype left stranded at sea dies, but no others.

Turn Five (120 – 150 million years)

This turn will be busy, since the first tranche of victory points will be counted at the end of the turn, and that’s based entirely on how may creeples are on the map at the time. Every player will be investing in lots of Newborns, and traits that might be useful in winning herbivore or carnivore contests.

The events are Illawarra Reversal Superplume and Calcite Seas. A “superplume” of hot magma rises out of the mantle and impinges on the surface of the planet, while ocean chemistry leans toward the formation of calcite deposits on the sea beds. These events don’t disturb the map much, although several green disks get removed from the atmosphere tracks and placed on the map to indicate the spread of forests and off-shore plankton blooms. Free oxygen rises to 26%, albedo actually falls slightly to 0.35, and the climate remains Warm verging on Hothouse. All players get four actions this turn.

For his Flyer species, Black promotes Antennae to Olfactory Antennae, and promotes Aggregation Pheromones to Mobbing. The Flyer acquires its first Emotion, coded yellow, a “fear” Emotion that involves the flight reaction (or, in this case, the “gang up on the predator and drive it away” reaction). The Black Flyers are starting to take shape as swarms of rather large insects, using swarming behavior to take down prey and deal with larger rivals. Black places two Archetype pieces and three Flyer pieces into Newborns.

White promotes Brainstem to Pituitary Gland for his Archetype, which acquires its first Emotion. This emotion is coded blue, a “jealousy” emotion that’s all about social and sexual competition. White then acquires the Vertical Flexure trait, promoting it at once to Lunate Tail, creating a new Swimmer species. The Archetype in Beta’s one Swamp hex becomes a Swimmer. White places one Archetype and two Swimmers into Newborns.

In the Green player’s turn, I made what was probably a serious mistake. I was thinking about promoting the Archetype’s Haustorium trait, giving it the ability to act as a fully parasitic plant, but that trait requires that the species be of size no greater than 1. I had Green resize his Archetype back down to size 1, not remembering that this would make the species Venom icon effectively useless – carnivores will happily crunch down on a Venomous prey species if it’s smaller, and at size 1 a species is smaller than everything else. The implications of this didn’t become clear to me until later this turn.

Meanwhile Green resizes his Burrower species to size 3 as part of the same action. Green acquires the Oral Disc trait for the Archetype, and the places two Archetype and two Burrower creeples into Newborns.

Orange resizes his Archetype and Armored species to size 3, and acquires the trait Malphigian Tubes for the Armored species. He places three Archetypes and two Armored pieces into Newborns.

Black places his Archetype pieces in open spaces on Alpha, and places his three Flyer creeples into the carnivore position in spaces on Alpha and Beta. The Black Flyers are now preying upon both Black and White Archetypes throughout that continent. White places his Archetype piece in an open space on Beta, and places Swimmers off the coasts of Alpha and Beta.

Here’s where my mistake with Green became obvious. I went to see where I could place Green Archetypes, and realized that the species simply could not compete with either Orange species in any arena, not as an herbivore and not as a carnivore. The only possibility was for me to place Green Archetypes in available spaces on the Gamma craton. To free up space, I placed two Archetypes in spaces already occupied by Green Burrowers; the Green Archetype was a better herbivore than the Green Burrower, so the contests enabled me to move the Burrowers up to the carnivore position in those hexes. I then placed the new Burrower pieces in the carnivore position in other hexes already occupied by Green Archetypes.

Then the full extent of the problem became clear, when it was time for me to place Orange pieces. Orange Archetypes filled up the last few empty hexes in Delta, and then I looked for spots to place the Orange Armored. I realized that Orange could dramatically undercut Green, by placing each Armored in a hex on Gamma already occupied by a Green Archetype and a Green Burrower. The way this worked: the Orange Armored would enter the hex in the herbivore position, setting off a herbivore contest. The Orange Armored would win handily (three green cubes to two). Since the Archetype could not move up to an unoccupied carnivore position in the same hex, it would become Endangered. Then the Green Burrower would immediately become Endangered as well, since Burrowers can’t eat Armored. With two creeple placements, Orange was able to kill off twice as many Green pieces.

On reflection, I realized I hadn’t been playing Green very well. Located on the same continent as Orange’s advanced species, Green was bound to come into conflict sooner or later. Rather than messing around ineffectively with species size and Venom icons, I needed to be pouring investment into traits that would at least make Green’s species better herbivores. Being able to stand up to the inevitable Orange invasion needed to be my top priority, and now Green was going to pay for my neglect.

At the end of the turn, the four Green pieces which had become Endangered all died.

Now I counted populations, and found that Orange, Black, and White were all tied with eight creeples each on the map. Green, on the other hand, was down to four. Orange, Black, and White earned one Victory Point each, while Green was left with nothing.

Turn Six (150 – 180 million years)

Events this turn are Kimberlite Field Eruption and Ocean Evaporation. The major effect is that the Gamma-Delta continent drifts rapidly northward, until it no longer shares any of the latitude bands with the Alpha-Beta continent. This cuts off any possible “rafting” between the two – at a critical point in the planet’s evolution, the Black-White and Orange-Green player pairs are isolated from each other. Meanwhile, some more minor changes in geography take place.

The planet has 34% free oxygen in the atmosphere (comparable to Earth during the Cretaceous period), albedo of 0.35, and Hothouse climate. Player Green gets 5 actions, while all other players get 4.

At this point, Black decides to make a risky move. Instead of investing in his existing species, he uses all of his player actions to take a specific card away from Green. This is the “Medea” card, a balancing mechanism that permits the card’s holder to trigger major environmental changes under certain conditions. In a four-player game, Green always begins holding this card. So far, Green has had little opportunity to use it, but Black is concerned that since Green is far behind, he may try to apply it as a spoiler in some future turn. Black decides instead to make the investment necessary to take the card away from Green and keep its capabilities safe.

Orange acquires the Lateral Line trait for his Archetype, then immediately promotes it to Schooling, creating a new Swimmer species. Orange decides to press his advantage, placing two Armored and two Swimmer pieces in Newborns.

Green acquires the Windpipe trait for his Archetype, and promotes Oral Disc to Whorl-Shaped Tooth Files, improving the Archetype’s capacity for herbivory. He resizes his Archetype species to size 2, and his Burrower to size 4. He places two Archetypes and two Burrowers in Newborns.

White resizes both of his species to size 3. He acquires the Pons & Medulla trait for his Archetype, then immediately promotes it to Hypothalamus, acquiring more cubes and a second blue Emotion. The Archetype now has extremely free access to blue traits. White places two Swimmers into Newborns.

Orange places Swimmers off-shore, and places his Armored pieces in the carnivore’s position over two Green Archetypes on Gamma. Green is now blocked in, and cannot place all of his creeples in legal spaces. White places new Swimmers off-shore near Alpha.

Interim Comments

It’s beginning to appear that Orange and White are in the lead, Orange with three species and larger populations, White with its well-developed Archetype. Black may have fallen behind by failing to use Turn Six to expand, and Green is in serious trouble. The game lasted two more turns, so I’ll be summing up next post.

I’m about to start playing through the Phil Eklund game Bios: Megafauna, working from an opening situation that was defined by my play-through of the prequel Bios: Genesis. The ultimate goal here is to define an alien Earthlike world, with its own unique flora and fauna, and its own sentient species, all for the use of my creative work.

At the moment, the planet is at the end of its analogue of the Proterozoic era, although the situation is a little more complex than what our Earth saw. There has already been plant and animal life on the planet’s small continents for a very long time, it just never developed a complex ecology or life forms larger than the palm of a human hand. Now new families of animal life are finally emerging onto the shores, and land-based evolution is finally getting kicked off in earnest.

The planet’s land masses are strung out along the equator, in the form of four cratons that are in the process of coalescing into Earth-style continents. To avoid the sense that this is really Earth we’re talking about, we’ll assign these cratons Greek letters instead of referring to them by their names. “Siberia” will be called Alpha, “Gondwana” will be called Beta, “Baltica” will be called Gamma, and “Laurentia” will be called Delta.

The four player positions are as follows:

• Player Orange represents a family of hydroskeletal invertebrates. Since he was far ahead of the other players during the Bios: Genesis game, his Archetype species is already on land and has a number of evolutionary developments in place. His initial population is represented by an Archetype “creeple” (a small orange dome piece) on Delta.
• Player Black represents a family of exoskeletal arthropods. His initial species is a Marine Archetype, a relatively primitive creature with no significant traits. The initial population is represented by a Swimmer creeple (resembling a little wooden dolphin) just off the coast of Alpha.
• Player White represents a family of endoskeletal vertebrates. His initial population of Marine Archetype creatures is represented by a Swimmer creeple off the coast of Beta.
• Player Green represents a family of cytoskeletal plants, most of whose member species are likely to be somewhat carnivorous or even motile. His initial population is represented by a Swimmer creeple off the coast of Gamma.

Player Orange has a considerable advantage, especially since the other three players all need to finish moving up onto the land before they can make significant progress. With that summary, let’s begin.

Turn One (0 – 30 million years)

Normally, each turn is kicked off by the draw of at least one, and most likely two, event cards. The first turn is an exception – no events take place, according to the “Boring Ordovician” rule. The motive here is to let everyone get a foothold before the cycle of random events begins, since most of the events range from disruptive to mass extinction brutal. If I were using the game’s Living Rules, I wouldn’t even draw an event card, and everyone would move in a pre-defined player order. Since I’m not, I draw the first event: Ocean Rifting, and use that card to define player order for the turn without implementing the rest of the card.

At present, the planet’s atmosphere has 7% free oxygen, its albedo is 0.4, and the climate is “Eden.” Player Green gets three actions, while the other players get two.

Players Black, White, and Green all face an immediate challenge. They can’t increase the size of their Marine Archetype species without immediately turning it into a land-based Archetype, which will immediately become Endangered because it’s out at sea. Unfortunately, since all of their Marine Archetypes are very small, and none of them have any blue (reproductive strategy) traits yet, they can’t spread very quickly or very far. So, with their budget of actions, they’re probably going to want to acquire some blue traits, prepare to place new creeples on the map, and eventually increase their Archetype’s size to make the transition.

Green chooses to invest in some useful traits first. He acquires the Sensory Hairs and Windborne Seeds traits for his Marine Archetype. The Sensory Hairs trait would normally be illegal for Green, since it comes from the trait deck containing red and yellow cards, off-limits for plants. However, Sensory Hairs is marked with a “horror plant” icon that makes it legal for him to purchase. He closes out his turn by promoting Windborne Seeds to Hitchhiking Seeds, moving one blue cube onto his Archetype and acquiring another. Green’s Archetype now has a reproductive strategy that should be very effective in spreading across the land.

White’s approach is more straightforward. Green’s purchase of Windborne Seeds exposed the Courtship Dance trait in the deck of blue and green cards. White acquires this trait and two blue cubes. He then places two creeples into the “Newborns” pool, ready to deploy them onto the map at the end of the turn.

Black acquires the Air Sacs trait for his Marine Archetype. This is an indirect move, since it provides his Archetype a yellow cube rather than a blue one. However, when promoted, Air Sacs will give Black the opportunity to create a new Flyer species. On this world, arthropods seem ready to take to the air directly from the sea. Black places a single creeple into Newborns.

Orange promotes the Egg Case trait his Archetype already has to Jelly Eggs, moving two blue cubes onto his Archetype card. He moves four Archetype creeples into Newborns. Since Orange is already on the land without immediate competition, he intends to grab as much territory as he can up front.

Once all player actions are complete, it’s time for Newborns to be deployed to the map, and for any Endangered populations to be removed.

White has acquired considerable mobility with the two blue cubes he acquired with Courtship Dance. From his starting position off the east coast of Beta, he places one creeple in a hex on Beta with Swamp terrain. He then uses “rafting” to cross the gap between Beta and Alpha, placing his second creeple in the Swamp hex on Alpha. Swamp terrain is land, so the land Archetype can survive there, permitting White to make the transition next turn.

Meanwhile, Black makes no attempt to move onto land this turn, placing his second Swimmer creeple in the other sea hex near Alpha. Orange scatters his Archetype creeples across land hexes on Delta, one of them rafting over to land in the Swamp hex on Gamma. Green has no Newborns to place, and there are no Endangered creeples to remove, so this ends the turn.

Turn Two (30 – 60 million years)

The event this turn is Tunguska Magma Coals. Somewhere on the planet, a large volcanic province is heating coal beds and dumping lots of methane into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, continental drift gets started, as Alpha moves eastward and collides with Beta, producing a belt of mountains in the westernmost hex of Beta. The two cratons will now move together as a fill-fledged continent. Carbon deposits around the world are “liberated” into the atmosphere. Sea levels rise with the increased greenhouse effect.

The event kicks off a mass extinction, which will be represented by the loss of blue or green traits from each species, an effect called “Darwinian Radiation” in the rules. Effectively, the largest and most specialized members of each family will be driven into extinction, leaving behind more primitive forms. White loses one cube from the Courtship Dance card on his Archetype. Orange loses the Jelly Eggs trait, while Green loses the Hitchhiking Seeds trait. Black is unaffected, since the one card he purchased last turn gave him no blue or green traits.

At this point, the planet has 6% free oxygen in the atmosphere, albedo of 0.4, and a Warm climate. Player Green gets three actions, while the other players get two actions.

White begins the turn by resizing his Marine Archetype species to size 2. The leading members of this family are now larger animals, about 2 kilograms in mass. The Marine Archetype is replaced by the Land Archetype, all of the Swimmer creeples replaced by the little domes of Archetypes. The creeple remaining off the coast of Beta becomes Endangered.

White also promotes the Courtship Dance trait to Territorialism. This moves the remaining blue cube on the card to his Archetype, and gives the species the blue “Monster” marker. This marker is always equivalent to as many blue cubes as the size of the species, so at present White’s Archetype species is heavily invested in reproductive strategy. The Territorialism card also carries the beginnings of one or more “emotions,” cognitive traits that will emerge as the species develops a more sophisticated brain.

Orange acquires the Crop trait for his Archetype species. He also engages in “neoteny,” removing one of the cubes presently sitting on his Archetype card. This is a hedge against a possible mass-extinction event that might occur in the future. The rules state that if any species is forced to give up a “basal organ” – a cube sitting on its core card, representing a well-established trait – then the species simply becomes extinct at once. At present, the Orange Archetype carries four such basal organs; the current limit (determined, for everyone but Player Green, by the level of free oxygen in the atmosphere) is lower than this. Orange hopes to reduce the Archetype’s vulnerability, although it’s possible (even likely) that the level of free oxygen will rise before the specific event he’s worried about takes place.

Green acquires Haustorium (an adaptation of plant roots) and promotes the Sensory Hairs trait to Urticating Hairs. The Green Archetype now has the Venom icon, which limits how easily other species can prey upon it. Green places a Swimmer creeple into Newborns.

Black promotes the Air Sacs trait to Flow-Through Lungs. This automatically creates a new species, a Flyer, which is inherently more mobile (although it can’t survive at sea). Black replaces one of his Swimmer creeples with a Flyer, which immediately becomes Endangered. Black also places a Flyer creeple into Newborns. This is actually a rather aggressive move; each species has a limit of only seven creeples on the map, so having more than one species in play means that a greater population can be supported in the long run.

During the dispersal of Newborns, Green places an Archetype creeple in the same hex on Gamma already containing one of Orange’s creeples. Green immediately chooses to move his creeple into the carnivore role, enabling it to share the hex as a predator on the Orange species. We can imagine this as a parasitic plant starting to prey upon animals in the area. Meanwhile, Black places a Flyer creeple on land in Beta. The White Archetype and Black Flyer stranded at sea both die and are returned to the players’ pools.

Turn Three (60 – 90 million years)

The event this turn is Failed Rifts, which requires a second event, so I draw a card from the event deck for warm climates and get Rivers. One of the continents is “extending,” creating rift basins but not quite managing to break apart into its component cratons. Meanwhile, major rivers are forming, carrying nutrient-rich silt onto alluvial plains and into the seas.

Continental drift pulls the Alpha-Beta continent southward. Delta also moves westward and collides with Gamma, causing an orogenic episode which creates mountains just where the Orange and Green creeples are starting to intermingle. Gamma and Delta now form another full-fledged continent. The Orange and Green creeples in the new mountain hex become Endangered.

This event combination calls for several green disks to be pulled off the atmosphere tracks and placed on the map. For the first time, very large plants are appearing across big areas of continental land – the planet’s first forests. This doesn’t disturb any of the creeples already in play, although the presence of forest can change how species competition works in a given hex.

Orange, with the most creeples on the map, suffers a “crowd disease” event and is forced to remove half of his Archetype creeples. He chooses to remove one from the new mountain hex on Gamma, since that one is already Endangered. The other one comes from elsewhere on Gamma.

At this point, the planet’s atmosphere has 15% free oxygen – probably the biggest, fastest “oxygen spike” in its entire geologic history. Albedo is still at 0.4, and planetary climate is Warm. All players get three actions this turn.

Black invests further in his Flyer species, acquiring the Antennae and Aggregation Pheromones traits for it. He also resizes the Flyers to size 2, although he leaves his Marine Archetype species at size 1 so that it doesn’t automatically convert into a land species.

White acquires more traits for his Archetype species: Brainstem and Periodontum. He places one Archetype Creeple into Newborns. At this point, he is restraining the spread of his Archetype species, putting creeples into Newborns much more slowly than he could. This maintains a large creeple reserve, so that White continues to have better access to upcoming cards in the traits decks.

Orange acquires Scutes for his Archetype species, and resizes it to size 2 to keep up with the leaders. He engages in neoteny, removing one of the blue cubes from his Archetype card.

Green acquires the Xylem trait for his Marine Archetype, and then resizes it to size 2. The Marine Archetype is immediately replaced with the Land Archetype, with its one creeple becoming Endangered. However, even Endangered creeples can still act as the starting point for the placement of new ones. Green places two Archetype creeples into Newborns.

As dispersal begins, White places his Archetype creeple into a hex on Alpha which is already occupied by a Black Flyer. This triggers a “herbivore contest,” in which the two players determine which species is the more efficient herbivore. White wins the contest, since his Archetype has one green cube and the Black Flyer has none. It should be noted that under most circumstances, Archetype species cannot prey upon non-Archetypes, but any non-Archetype can prey upon an Archetype. The Black Flyer can therefore take the carnivore position in a hex occupied by a White Archetype herbivore. Since there is no carnivore species already in the hex, Black moves the Flyer into that position.

Green places his Archetype creeples into two hexes on Gamma. He would like to move onto the Delta craton, contesting Orange control of the area, but he realizes that his Archetype isn’t as efficient as an herbivore, so he decides not to push the confrontation yet. At the end of the turn, the two stranded Green Archetypes, one in the mountain hex and one out at sea, both die.

Interim Comments

Honestly, the game is just getting started. Several players seem to be aiming for different strategies – White is developing his Archetype toward sentience, Black is trying to develop multiple species, and Orange is grabbing for as much territory as possible.

Once every player has two or three species in play, the board is likely to get very crowded, but for now everyone is just jockeying for advantage. Next time I’ll describe the next few turns, in which it should become more obvious who’s doing well.