Evolution: Climate

Theming: What’s the point?

• In Evolution Climate, players take responsibility for species evolving in an ever-changing ecosystem.
• The game involves:
  • Creating and evolving species with different traits,
  • Adapting species to withstand challenges posed by the changing climate,
  • Managing populations, and
  • Competing for limited resources.
• The goal is to have the most successful and well-adapted species by the end of the game.
• This is achieved by scoring points at the end of the game based on:
  • The food that a player’s species have eaten over the course of the game.
  • The population of a player’s surviving species.
  • The traits attached to a player’s surviving species.

Setting up: How to get started?

1. Assemble the board.
   • Choose the appropriate side (2-3 vs 4-6).
2. Climate marker: Place the climate marker in the temperate zone.
3. Climate event cards:
   • Shuffle each of the cold and hot decks.
   • Place them face-down in their respective zones on the board.
   • Draw the top card from each deck and place it in the climate zone on the card.
4. Deck of trait cards:
   • Adjust the deck size according to the table below.
   • Shuffle the deck.
   • Place the deck face-down on the table.
5. For each player:
   • Give one food bag.
   • Give one species board with wooden markers (portrait or landscape); all species start with 1 population and 1 body size.
6. Food bank:
   • Put the food tokens in pile on the table.

• Deck sizing:

Number of players	Number of cards to remove
2	Half
3	60
4	30
5-6	0

Rounds and Phases

• A game is made up of 5-7 rounds.
• A round consists of 5 phases:
  1. Dealing cards
  2. Selecting food cards
  3. Playing trait cards
  4. Modifying the environment
  5. Feeding

Dealing cards

• For any players who don’t have any species boards, place a species board in front of them.
• Deal cards from the draw deck:
  • Deal 4 cards to each player + 1 card for each species they have.
• If the draw deck runs out, this is the final round of the game; shuffle the discard pile and use this to finish dealing.

Selecting food cards

• Each player chooses one of the trait cards from their hand

Playing trait cards

• If playing with 6 players, all players play their cards at the same time without looking at what their opponents are doing.

Modifying the environment

Feeding

Scoring

Terminology

• Food bank: All of the food tokens on the side of the table.
• Watering hole: Collection of food tokens on the board.