[board] American Megafauna opponents wanted

[Tamas]

INTRODUCTION
A quarter of a billion years ago, an unknown
catastrophe engulfs the Earth. The swamps and ice
caps of the Permian1 are replaced by the blistering
deserts of the Triassic. On both land and sea, 96% of
the animal species die.
In the corner of Pangea2 that will be known as
America, small survivors cautiously sniff the postholocaust
air at the dawn of the Mesozoic Era. Some
of these unspecialized quadrupeds have sloppy everreplacing
reptile teeth; these will be the dinosaurs.3
Others have sculpted "one-shot" teeth; these will be
the mammals. The victor in this titanic ecological
struggle will determine the masters of the planet.
Clearly, the ruling reptiles triumphed since that day,
248 million years ago, and dominated for 170 million
years.4 Only to be over thrown, in what must be the
upset of the eon, by the mammals. Yet the contest is
not over.
Overview of Play
Players start as one of four (or five, with the
Expansion) nondescript archetypes,5 but can mutate or
branch out new species from this basic type by bidding
on DNA or genotype cards as they are revealed. Each
player's population grows and is counted when the
Mesozoic cards are all played, and again when the
Cenozoic cards are gone. The player with the highest
total wins.
Game Scale
Each epoch card represents 6 million years. The game
is one galactic year long (260 million years, the
amount of time it takes the solar system to orbit once
about the center of the Milky Way). Each hex
represents a physiographic region 1500 km across.
Each biomass point represents 2000 megatons of
vegetation, arthropods,6 or sea-food. Each genotype
tent represents either 30 megatons of herbivores, or 1
megaton of predatory animals. A "megaton" is a million
metric tons, where each metric ton is 1000 kg.

Evolution's metronome
The evolutionary scale of this game encompasses
animal orders, rather than species. The pace of
change of families, genera, and species is too frenetic
to simulate in a 6 My (million year) game turn. Fossils
indicate that the mean duration of a genus is about 20
My, and that of a species is just 4 My. There are many
examples of vertebrate populations that have, in the course of human lifetimes, been formed with
characteristics distinctive enough that they no longer
interbreed. Speciation evolution has been observed
directly, in Darwinian finches, sockeye salmon
(stream-bred versus lake-bred varieties), Australian
rabbit immigrants, scarlet honeycreepers (shorter
beaks in response to loss of its favorite flower in
Hawaii), littorine snails (armor in response to crab
predation), and novel species of mosquitofish. During
the Triassic, when the world was one big
Gondwanaland, the pace of change was stale. Today,
the intermingling of species from seven continents
may constitute the greatest speciation event since the
Cambrian explosion

It is now known that the biggest event ever, the
Permian disaster that is the occasion for the start of
the game, was as sudden as it was apocalyptic. Both
land and sea were affected. The Mesozoic life that
populated the post-holocaust world was so utterly
different from the Paleozoic oceans that some early
paleontologists had wondered if life had entirely died
out and been reborn. The deep oceans became
hypoxic, a sign of high global temperatures, and sea
levels fluctuated. Sedimentology records show that
rivers worldwide became braided as the denuded land
choked them with sediment. Photosynthesis shut
down. Coal formation abruptly stopped, replaced by
"redbeds", sandstone deposits indicative of warm arid
regions. In many ways, the signature is similar to the
K-T event, known to be impact-caused. But where are
the blankets of debris, or the notorious tell-tale layer of
iridium? Another difference is that the Permian event
dumped enormous amounts of organic carbon into the
atmosphere and oceans, far more than can be
explained by the death of all the biota on the planet.
This huge spike in the carbon cycle might be explained
by massive methane releases from the continental
shelves in the face of dropping sea levels. The sudden
appearance of titanic flood basalts in a geologically
quiet region of Siberia is also suggestive. There are no
indications that the Siberian traps64 were impactrelated,
and so the mystery lingers

[Jaron]

Oh God, not this again.

[Caliga]

 

[Tamas]

Rules and CB box are available. The game's strategy revoles around forward thinking (to avoid putting your species into a trap from which there is no return, and to optimize population growth rate) and adjusting those plans to drastic changes.

That said the game is not that competitive, due to the high randomness factor. But it has tons of flavor and every game tells a good story. I need 3 other players.

[Jaron]

* signed *

[Tamas]

Oh and before Jaron scares anyone off: there is no diplomacy and the only thing he can ruin is his own species.

[Jaron]

Oh and before Jaron scares anyone off: there is no diplomacy and the only thing he can ruin is his own species.

Just like real life!

[Barrister]

Well unless he just quits the game and leaves everyone elser hanging...


I could be convinced to play.  What would I need to do?

[ulmont]

I'm in.

[ulmont]

Well unless he just quits the game and leaves everyone elser hanging...

Ahh.  You must have played with Jaron before.

[The Brain]

No thank you, I've struggled with an American megafauna opponent for years already.

[Tamas]

Well unless he just quits the game and leaves everyone elser hanging...


I could be convinced to play.  What would I need to do?

You would need to read the rules. Please check boardgamegeek.com, or I'll be back in a while with a link.

I'll gather up a pack of CB module, playaid, and rules for those in the game, which we would be already, once you guys read the rules which are quite short, really.

[Jaron]

Well unless he just quits the game and leaves everyone elser hanging...

Ahh.  You must have played with Jaron before.

[Jaron]

Well unless he just quits the game and leaves everyone elser hanging...


I could be convinced to play.  What would I need to do?

What?

[garbon]

Well unless he just quits the game and leaves everyone elser hanging...

Oh you mean like you did when we were going to play RoR?