While dinosaurs are very popular in movies and books, I cannot immediately think of any game about dinosaurs other than Evo. The theme of Trias is about dinosaurs struggling to spread out across the continents splitting from Pangea. And although the game is quite abstract in nature, I am happy to announce that we now have another great dinosaur game. I will give you more detailed explanation of the game. A large hexagonal board is formed using many hex tiles, with the south pole in the center. Each tile has terrain of either mountain, plain or forest. Players get 16 little dinosaur meeples (each one depicts a herd of dinosaurs), and each put one on the scoreboard. They also place 4 dinosaurs on the board by putting down 2 dinosaurs twice in turn order. There are terrain cards composed of age 1 and age 2 cards. Terrain cards show a type of terrain, and one of the age 2 cards is a meteor card. The game ends when this cards appears. Put age 2 cards beneath age 1 cards. Each player gets one age 1 card for his/her starting hand. A game turn is composed of several phases : 1) Mandatory drift : you must "drift" a land tile further away from the south pole. You can either play the card in your hand to move a tile with the same terrain as the card, or you can draw the top card from the stack and play that. The tile must be drifted such that it stays connected to the continent(s) it once belonged. But it's also possible to create a new continent by drifting. You can only drift a tile from a continent where you have at least one of your herd. Drifting a tile with dinosaurs on it is allowed. If you do that, those dinosaurs become "swimmers"(any space without a land tile is considered to be water area). Moreover, you can also drift a tile beneath a group of swimmers, thus rescuing them. 2) Spend action points : you get 4 action points per turn. You can either Optional drift (3 points) : you can drift again, and this time you can drift a tile with any type of terrain you want. Migrate (1 point per a herd/a hex) : you can move one of your herds one hex away for 1 point. Rescue (1 point) : you can rescue up to three swimmers for spending 1 point. You can rescue the swimmers only to adjacent land tiles which are not overpopulated (this will be ex-plained later). Reproduce (1 point) : each herd can reproduce only once per turn. Put down another meeple on the tile. 3) Remove swimmers/dinosaurs in overpopulated hexes : at this point, every swimmer you couldn't rescue drowns and is removed from the board to your reserve. Also, each terrain type has certain population limits. Forest can support up to 4 dinosaurs, plain 3 and mountain 2. If there are any of your herds in overpopulated hexes at this point, you must remove your herds until the overpopulation is solved. But you cannot remove other players' herds. 4) Replenish your hand : if you used the card in your hand in phase 1, you get another card now. There are two types of scoring. First one happens during the game when a new continent is formed. If you have drifted a tile to the newly formed continent and your herds are the majority there, you get 2 points. The second gets one point. The second kind of scoring happens at the end of the game. For each continent, the player with the most herds get as many points as the size of the continent. The second gets half of that. Game ends when the meteor card appears. Everyone gets to spend another 2 action points after the meteor card. Because you use a card every turn, game length is limited. This game is very tactical, and very abstract, but it's great. Drifting is lethal, and often you can't move your herds to where you want them to be. There can be some long term strategy, but just a little since the drifting changes the board layout frequently. On the other hand, you will see a lot of really clever driftings during the game. I really admire the way this game changes during the game play. In the early stages, you must try to form new continents to get points. As a result, new continents spread out away from the south pole. However, at the end of the game, you need a bigger continent to get more points, so you'll concentrate on merging small continents by drifting. This isn't easy because you must drift a tile away from the south pole. Meanwhile you must constantly migrate your herds to outer continents to get the majority in the bigger continents which are formed later in the game. But they have no means of moving between continents other than becoming swimmers and getting rescued. In a word, there are many tough decisions waiting for you. The components are of good quality. Score board is a bit ugly, but it functions well enough. You may have difficulties when measuring distances from the south pole when drifting, but repeated play will help. I wish the tiles and meeples were a little bit bigger that they are now, but the game still looks and plays good as it is. The abstract nature of this game may turn some of you down, but it's not so much of a brain burner. It's good tactical game with hard decisions and understandable amount of theme attached to it. If you like games like Tikal or Torres, this one is for you. Back to Table of Contents -- Game! # 12 To Game! List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by George Phillies. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com