Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 40.95

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 58.95

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 79.95

Sixty-Something Millions of Years Ago — A great ice age has ended. With massive warming altering the globe, another titanic struggle for supremacy has unwittingly commenced between the varying animal species.

Dominant Species: Marine is a game that abstractly recreates a small portion of ancient history: the ending of an onerous ice age and what that entails for the living creatures trying to adapt to the slowly-changing earth.

Each player will assume the role of one of four major aquatic-based animal classes — dinosaur, fish, cephalopod or crustacean. Each begins the game more or less in a state of natural balance in relation to one another. But that won’t last: It is indeed “survival of the fittest.”

Through wily action pawn placement, you will attempt to thrive in as many different habitats as possible in order to claim powerful card effects. You will also want to propagate your individual species in order to earn victory points for your animal. You will be aided in these endeavors via speciation, migration and adaptation actions, among others.

All of this eventually leads to the end game – the final ascent of a vast tropical ocean and its shorelines – where the player having accumulated the most victory points will have their animal crowned the Dominant Species.

But somebody better become dominant quickly, because there’s a large asteroid heading this way....

Game Play

The large hexagonal tiles are used throughout the game to create an ever-expanding interpretation of the main ocean on earth as it might have appeared tens of millions of years ago. The smaller Hydrothermal Vent tiles will be placed atop some of the larger tiles throughout play, converting them into Vents in the process.

The action pawns drive the game. Each pawn allows a player to perform the various actions that can be taken—such as speciation, environmental change, migration or evolution. When placed on the action display, a pawn will immediately trigger that particular action for its owning player. Dominant Species: Marine includes new “special” pawns that can be acquired during the course of play. These special pawns have enhanced placement capabilities over the “basic” pawns that each player begins the game with.

Generally, players will be trying to enhance their own animal’s survivability while simultaneously trying to hinder that of their opponents’—hopefully collecting valuable victory points along the way. The various cards will aid in these efforts, giving players useful one-time abilities, ongoing benefits, or an opportunity for recurring VP gains.

Throughout the game species cubes will be added to, moved about on, and removed from the tiles in play (“earth”). Element disks will be added to and removed from both animals and earth.

When the game ends, players will conduct a final scoring of each tile and score their controlled special pawns—after which the player controlling the animal with the highest VP total wins the game.

Dominant Species Veterans

For players of the original Dominant Species, this iteration introduces several key evolutions to the system (pun definitely intended):

1. Actions are taken immediately whenever a pawn is placed instead of waiting to execute actions after all pawns are on the board. This gives players a bit more flexibility in their strategy, doesn’t increase game time when more pawns are acquired by players, and lessens the brain-burn quite a bit since it alleviates the burden of having to plan out an entire turn in advance.
2. Domination is no longer on a per-tile basis, and is no longer ‘competitive’ with other players. In this game you check dominance for each element type over the entire earth, and whether or not you dominate an element type is independent of whether one or more opponents also dominate it. Domination of an element is how you acquire – and try to maintain – control of the special pawns.
3. Animals no longer have default special abilities. Now, players are dealt 3 Trait cards during setup, choosing one to keep and putting the others back in the box. The chosen Trait gives their animal one of eighteen unique abilities spread amongst the Trait cards.
4. Acquiring special pawns through domination gives a player great flexibility in planning and executing a strategy. Special pawns can ‘bump’ an opponent’s basic pawn in order to take an action that would otherwise be blocked. They can be placed anywhere on the action display (where basic pawns must be placed in top-to-bottom order only). There are powerful action spaces where only a special pawn can be placed. And at the end of the game, each special pawn awards its owner VPs according to its highest achieved dominance value.

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 85.95

Game Overview

• 90,000 B.C. -- A great ice age is fast approaching. Another titanic struggle for global supremacy has unwittingly commenced between the varying animal species. 
• Dominant Species is a game that abstractly recreates a tiny portion of ancient history: the ponderous encroachment of an ice age and what that entails for the living creatures trying to adapt to the slowly-changing earth. 
• Each player will assume the role of one of six major animal classes -- mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid or insect. Each begins the game more or less in a state of natural balance in relation to one another. But that won’t last: It is indeed "survival of the fittest." 
• Through wily action pawn placement, players will strive to become dominant on as many different terrain tiles as possible in order to claim powerful card effects. Players will also want to propagate their individual species in order to earn victory points for their particular animal. Players will be aided in these endeavors via speciation, migration and adaptation actions, among others. 
• All of this eventually leads to the end game -- the final ascent of the ice age -- where the player having accumulated the most victory points will have his animal crowned the Dominant Species. 
• But somebody better become dominant quickly, because it’s getting mighty cold....

Game Play

• The large hexagonal tiles are used throughout the game to create an ever-expanding interpretation of earth as it might have appeared a thousand centuries ago. The smaller tundra tiles will be placed atop the larger tiles -- converting them into tundra in the process -- as the ice age encroaches.
• The cylindrical action pawns (or "AP"s) drive the game. Each AP will allow a player to perform the various actions that can be taken, such as speciation, environmental change, migration or glaciation. After being placed on the action display during the Planning Phase, an AP will trigger that particular action for the owning player during the Execution Phase.
• Generally, players will be trying to enhance their own animals’ survivability while simultaneously trying to hinder that of their opponents’ -- hopefully collecting valuable victory points (or "VP"s) along the way. The various cards will aid in these efforts, giving players useful one-time abilities or an opportunity for recurring VP gains.
• Throughout the game, species cubes will be added to, moved about in, and removed from the tiles in play (the "earth"). Element disks will be added to and removed from both animals and earth. 
• When the game ends, players will conduct a final scoring of each tile -- after which the player controlling the animal with the highest VP total wins the game.

• Dominant Species: The Card Game

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 20.95

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 42.95

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 34.95

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 54.95

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 26.95

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 26.95

15,000 B.C. – a great ice age is ending. Another titanic struggle for global supremacy has unwittingly commenced between the animal species.

Dominant Species: The Card Game is a fast-playing game that abstractly recreates a tiny portion of ancient history: the ponderous rescinding of an ice age and what that entails for the living creatures trying to adapt to the slowly-changing earth.

Players will use six major animal classes – mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid or insect – to further their goals in various terrain. Through wily card play, players will strive to become dominant at as many different terrestrial and sea biomes as possible in order to claim valuable victory points: It is survival of the fittest.

All of this leads to the end game – the final descent of the ice age – where the player who has accumulated the most victory points wins the game.

But somebody better become dominant quickly because it's getting mighty warm...

Dominant Species: The Card Game consists of ten rounds of competition, each round occurring on ten of the twelve different Biome cards. The player who starts a competition must choose to either play one Action card or pass.

Play proceeds clockwise around the table in like fashion until every player has passed consecutively or when any one player has passed with an empty hand. At that point Element cards and the current Biome card are scored, with victorious players recording their gains on the Victory Point Track. If the competition is at a Tundra, one or more dominant players will advance one space on the Survival Track.

The current Biome card as well as all played Action cards are then discarded, and a new Biome card brought into play. Finally, each player draws (and perhaps discards) new Action cards based on his position on the Survival Track, and a new competition round begins. Play proceeds from Biome to Biome in like fashion until the game ends and a winner is determined.

Reimplements

• Dominant Species

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 86.95

Combat Commander: Volume II - Mediterranean (or CC:M) is the expansion to Combat Commander: Europe ("CC:E"). CC:M's main theme is the addition of three new "nationalities" to the Combat Commander family:

• Britain & the Commonwealth
• France & the Allied Minors
• Italy & the Axis Minors

This second module in the Combat Commander Series includes units, cards, and scenarios depicting the fighting forces of these nations.

FATE CARDS: As for Germany, Russia and America in CC:E, each of the new nationalities has its own 72-card Fate Deck highlighting its historical strengths and weaknesses (marksmanship for the British, giving them fewer shots but of higher quality; a higher likelihood of surrender for broken Italian units; quality Orders, Actions and Events for the French but saddled with only a "1" discard capability; etc.).

CC:M's Playbook will include the following:

• 12 new historical scenarios, each one including at least one of the three new nationalities.
• An updated Random Scenario Generator incorporating the new nationalities and the twelve new maps, as well as allowing for the early years of fighting in 1939 and 1940. This random scenario system provides an almost unending variety of map configurations, force structures, and combat situations. Re-playability value for Combat Commander gets even better with this new addition to the family.
• A complete manifest of all 432 Fate Cards included in CC:E and CC:M. Number crunchers rejoice!
• Assigned Point Values for all units, weapons, radios and fortifications in CC:E and CC:M, allowing players to easily create their own scenarios and Orders of Battle.
• Additional designer's notes and play hints.
• And more...

Combat Commander is one of those rare exceptional values in wargaming - one that can be revisited time and time again, each with a new tale to tell.

NOTE: Combat Commander: Mediterranean is not a stand-alone game. You will need to own Combat Commander: Europe in order to play it.

Components:

• 352x large counters (5/8")
• 140x small counters (1/2")
• 216x 2.5 x 3.5 cards
• 6x 2-sided 17 x 22 maps (twelve maps in total)
• 3x 2-sided player aid cards
• 1x 32-page Playbook

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 79.95

Combat Commander: Europe is a card-driven board game covering tactical infantry combat in the European Theater of World War II. One player takes the role of the Axis (Germany) while another player commands the Allies (America or Russia). These two players will take turns playing one or more “Fate” cards from their hands in order to activate his units on the mapboard for various military functions.

Players attempt to achieve victory by moving their combat units across the game map to attack their opponent’s combat units and occupy as many objectives as possible. The degree to which a player succeeds or fails is measured by a scenario’s specific “Objective” chits, the destruction of enemy units, and the exiting of friendly units off the opponent’s board edge.

A game of Combat Commander is divided into several measures of Game Time. There is no sequence of play to follow, however: each Time segment is divided into a variable number of Player Turns, each of which may consist of one or more Fate Card "Orders" conducted by the active player. Fate Card "Actions" may generally be conducted by either player at any time. "Events" — both good and bad — will occur at random intervals to add a bit of chaos and uncertainty to each player’s perfect plan.

SCALE: Each hex of a Combat Commander map is roughly 100 feet of distance (about 30 meters). Each complete Player Phase abstractly represents several seconds of real time. Each complete measure of Game Time abstractly represents several minutes of real time.

Each unit in the game is approximated as either a single Leader, a 5-man Team, or a 10-man Squad. Radios — and individual weapons larger than a pistol, rifle or BAR — are represented by their own counters.

Vendor: GMT Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 29.95

Game Overview:

Urban Sprawl is a game for 2–4 players. Urban Sprawl abstractly models the growth of a town into a teeming metropolis.

Players assume the roles of entrepreneur, tycoon, and politician—each helping in the development of a hypothetical "Anywhere, USA." Wealth and Prestige will be earned and spent throughout the game. Buildings will rise only to later be demolished for better and larger fare.

Throughout the game players will gather valuable Permits. These will result in either a wealthy Investment or the foundation of a new building Contract. Players will strive to become dominant in one or more building Zones in order to acquire beneficial political offices.

All of this eventually leads to the end game—a vibrant metropolis that is revered around the world—when the player with the most Prestige will be crowned the winner.

Game Play:

The grid of streets on the board provides the framework for building the small town. The buildings will be placed within the grid and identified with control markers (wooden cubes) to show each player's contribution to the growing urban area. Each building's value is determined by the cumulative Wealth and Prestige values of the block in which is it constructed.

At the start of a player's turn he may discard one or more Building Permit cards from hand as "Investments," gaining Wealth in doing so. Next that player gets 6 "Action Points" (APs) with which to spend on any of the the following activities:

• Acquiring new Building Permit cards from those available to choose;
• Constructing new buildings from those currently available;
• Acquiring a "Favor"—a Building Contract that only that player can build.

Each activity carries with it a variable cost in APs, depending on where the chosen card lies on the board.

Once a player has spent his APs it's time for a quick reset phase in readiness for the next player's turn. It is during this phase that events can occur, elections can be held for the various political offices, and players receive payouts in Wealth and Prestige. Wealth payouts provide funding for new buildings while Prestige payouts provide victory points.

Generally, players will be trying to build in areas that provide better payouts. Players are also looking to construct more buildings of a particular "zone"—Government, Residential, Industrial, or Commercial—in order to help them win an election, as the politicians each confer a special ability to the player holding the office. Many of the buildings also provide a one-time bonus as they are built, and players can benefit from construction in the right neighborhoods.

Throughout the game, the values of the buildings will generally increase as the town grows into a city and then a large metropolis. Neighborhoods that were once valuable can become run down and new city centers spring up as the urban areas sprawl out across the grid.

When the game ends, players will conduct a final scoring of each Prestige row, earn points based on accumulated Wealth, and score bonus points for political offices held—after which the player with the highest Prestige total wins the game.