Evolution - How To Play

you hi everyone welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith in this video we're going to learn the 2 to 6 player game evolution by North Star Games the world is a harsh place with many species fighting for survival so yours are going to need to adapt in order to feed on the limited natural plant life or on the species of other players you'll need to evolve wisely or go extinct so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up place the watering hole in the center of the table and the food tokens nearby in a pile known as the food bank then shuffle and place the deck of trait cards facedown on the table if you're playing with two players first remove 40 random traits from the deck and return them to the box I'm going to set up a three player game so I'll keep these in the deck nearby I also put out the species boards and these wooden cubes each player should now take a token bag and a player aid pamphlet then randomly determine a first player and give them the first player marker and that's the setup now for the purposes of this video I am going to make a couple of small adjustments first of all these player aides are fantastic when you're first learning the game they give you a quick overview of the rules and they also show you all of the different traits you're going to find in the trait deck but I'm not going to need these during this video so I'm just going to put them aside I'm also going to remove about half of the species boards you generally won't need all of them unless you have more players and help keep things organized on the table I've turned the food bank into a food bowl and I also have a glass jar here for the extra markers and that's just going to help me keep things organized in the table as I move things around evolution is a game where players are going to be developing and guiding their species so that they can eat as much food as possible every food token that you collect is going to give you a point and at the end of the game if you have any species that are surviving you will also gain additional points the game is played over a series of rounds and each round is broken into four phases starting with the deal cards phase each Macy's is represented by its own board and at the beginning of the space if you don't have a species you're dealt one for free so at the beginning of the game we'll give one to each of the players you'll also notice these are double-sided to allow you to orient them however you like but otherwise they're used to track the exact same information a new species also starts with wooden markers in the lowest position of the body size and population tracks when you first get a species it's very basic it has no notable traits but you'll have a chance to change that later now in this phase each player is dealt three trade cards plus one extra for each species they control so in the first round all players will get four cards now you move on to the second phase selecting food here players will secretly choose one trait in their hand to put facedown on the watering hole this can be done in any order since the information is going to remain hidden at least for now collectively these traits are going to determine how much additional food is added or taken away in some cases from the watering hole this is based solely on the value found here in the bottom right hand corner of your trait so that's primarily what you'll be focusing on when you make your selection also keep in mind any trait that you place in the watering hole is one that you will not be able to use later in the round so that could also factor into your decision making process now it's time to move on to the play cards phase you'll start with the first player and they'll be able to play as many cards as they want to or are able from their hand then the next player clockwise order will do the same and so it goes each player will have one opportunity to do this during this phase if you have six players they recommend you use the quick play variant and in that situation all the players just play their cards at once you don't wait to take your turns and that just speeds things up a little bit if that's something that you're concerned about when it's your turn to play cards you're going to have three different actions that you can take and you can take them in any order and you can repeat them as often as you want to or are the first option you have is to place a trait from your hand into the discard pile which should be beside the draw deck for each trait that you get rid of in this way you can then increase either the body size or population value of one of your species by one simply move one of the markers up on the track so when you move up on the population track it represents you putting more of your species out into the world basically they're having lots of babies and that can be good because the more that you have to eat the more food tokens you can collect but the more you have to eat the more susceptible you are to starvation so you have to be careful of that when you go up on the body size track it represents each individual member of that species gaining larger and bigger physical attributes which can be great if you're trying to build a predator or if you're trying to defend yourself against predators either way you can never increase these markers beyond the six position on the board another option you have is to discard a trait in order to start a new species by collecting a new species board and then placing markers again in the lowest positions of the body size and population track there is no limit to how many species you can have at a time but when placing you must always put new species either to the right or left of your current group of boards you can never put them in between two other species this is important because some of the traits you'll assign to your animals will have arrows in the top left or right hand corners and this means that their abilities will affect the animals that they're adjacent to speaking of which the third option you have is to assign traits from your hand to your species and these go facedown at first they will be revealed later but this way your opponents don't initially know what you're planning I'm going to flip this one over for now so I can better explain the rules around the traits essentially you're giving your animals abilities that will aid them in surviving for example this species now has a long neck and the benefit of that is listed right here a single species may never have more than three traits and in a two-player game never have more than two traits you also can't duplicate traits within a single species so I couldn't give this one another long neck but I could add it to this other species that I control because it's separate also any time during this phase you can choose to discard one or more traits from any of your species this is especially useful if your species is already at its maximum of traits and you want to add a new one remember traits are initially played facedown but once all players have completed the play cards phase all assigned traits are flipped face-up in your first games it's a nice idea to have the players share out loud the traits that they have assigned to their species in this video will not go over the individual traits that each species can attain but don't forget they're all explained directly on the cards and in the player reference sheet that each player will have access to the final phase of the round is feeding the first player will reveal the trait cards that were put on the watering hole and then add food tokens from the bank to the pond equal to the numbers that are found here you'll notice some values are negative and that means it's possible to have an overall negative total in that case you will remove that number of food tokens from the watering hole that might have existed from a previous round if you run out of tokens to remove just ignore any extra amount in this case however we have a positive total 8 take away 2 4 6 will take that number of tokens from the food bank and add it to the watering hole you'll notice these are double-sided one side shows meat the other shows plant and they should go into the watering hole plant side up as a shortcut you can skip flipping the tokens now and instead just flip them to the correct side when taking them you then discard the trait cards that were used to collect this food any players who have traits on their species with this greenish gray border will have effects that trigger now and players don't have to take turns doing this as the effects won't interfere with the other opponents but if you have multiple green bordered effects then you can decide the order in which to resolve them within your own species longneck says that when the food cards are revealed take one plant food from the food bank and so we'll do that now and food tokens are always added to the bottom most empty space on this track here a species is said to be hungry until it has as many food tokens as its total population so this animal will no longer be hungry once it has a token in this space an animal that is full can't eat anymore once all of those greenish traits have been resolved you will then go back to the first player and they will choose one of their hungry species to feed our first player has two species but they're choosing to feed this one first and after choosing to feed an animal you take one plant food from the watering hole and add to the lowest empty space on the track here as we saw before a player may have a trait that will allow them to collect even more food for example if this species also had the foraging ability then any time this species eats plant food you take one additional plant food from the same source so in this case after eating we would get to take another one however you cannot take food if it would give the species more than its population so in this case the foraging ability would have no effect so then the next player in clockwise order chooses one of their animals to feed and then the next player goes and so on around and around the table until all of the animals have been fed or once the food supply runs out in which case there may still be some leftover hungry animals it's also possible that you may completely feed your animals and the other players haven't yet in which case you'll just sit out and wait until the rest of players have continued feeding as much as they can everything I've described so far is how non carnivores eat and all animals are considered non carnivores unless they specifically have been given the carnivore trait so if it gets to your turn to feed and you have a carnivore you can instead choose to eat with it and it has slightly different rules let's take a look at that now carnivores will never eat plant food even if they have traits that say they could collect plant food you'll just have to ignore those instead they feed by attacking other species hopefully once controlled by your opponents however that may not be possible they may not be valid targets in which case you might have to attack one of the other species that you control in other words animals will always feed if there's an option to do so even if that could end up being bad for you as a player carnivores can only attack a species if it has a body size larger than its target and the traits necessary to overcome any defensive traits the target may have for example if this species had the climbing trait then the carnivore could not attack it unless it could also climb and this is explained right here on the text of the ability in this situation will assume that the species can't climb and that would make it a valid target when the species is attacked you reduce its population by one and then take food from the bank equal to the body size of the animal attacked and give that to your carnivore in this way a carnivore feeding on a larger animal will fill itself up more quickly this kind of war will continue to feed on future turns until it has food tokens equal to its population size or once it runs out of valid targets to attack if it would ever gain more tokens than its population size you just ignore those extras and don't collect them if reducing your opponent's population causes the marker to go below the current amount of tokens they had on their board they should add any excess tokens to their bag right now let's say the players continue taking turns and it comes back to this player again and they choose to have their carnivore attack this species once more the population will be reduced by 1 the carnivore will collect another token from the food bank this token will be added to the players bag but once a species population has gone below 1 it is extinct and we'll discuss that in a moment remember I said carnivores will never collect plant even if they have a trait that says they could but non carnivores although they can never attack to gain meat even if they're hungry they're allowed to add meat to their board if they're gaining it through a trait that they have after all the players have fed as much as they can if a species did not fully eat then reduce its population down to the amount that it did eat this represents a portion of its population starving off if the species did not eat at all it goes extinct which again we'll look at shortly after feeding each player should take their own food bag and add to it any of the food tokens that their species collected at the end of the game each token is going to be worth one point so you can see if your species have larger populations you will be able to collect more tokens over the course of a round as long as there's tokens to collect otherwise those species may starve you also leave any tokens on the watering hole that remain and to signal the end of the round pass the first player marker clockwise to the next player as mentioned if a species population goes below one then it becomes extinct and will resolve that right now first you discard any trade cards it had assigned to it but then draw up that number of traits back into your hand which you'll be able to use in a later round if the species went extinct by being attacked and has any food tokens on it then the owner of this species will put those tokens into their bag and then remove the board from play if it was between two other species close the gap between them the rounds will continue until during the deal cards phase you run out of cards to deal at that point reshuffle the discard pile into a new draw deck and then deal out any cards that are required that will be the last round of the game if you go extinct and you're drawing cards to replace traits that you lost and then you run out of cards in the deck reshuffle again and then the next round will be the final one at the end of the game play we'll add their points to see who won first each player gains points equal to the total population size of all their surviving species so this player would gain three points here and another one point here you ignore the species body size then give yourself one point for every trait associated with your surviving species so here we would get another three points and then gain one point for every food token in your food bag the player with the most points is the winner if there's a tie then the tied player who got the most points from their trait cards is the winner and if there's still a tie then the tied player who get the most points from their population size is the winner and if there's still a tie then you must order a pizza and play again because that's what the rules say I'm not kidding and that's how you play evolution if you have any questions at all don't hesitate to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance but until the next episode thanks for watching you

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 180,497

Keywords: Game Rules, Instructions, Learn How To Play, Card Games, Evolution, Learn To Play, Board Games, Learn, North Star Games, tabletop, Watch It Played, How To Play, Rules

Id: -BJ6TUFE_yY

Length: 17min 8sec (1028 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 26 2015