Dominant Species - Tips & Strategies

Much of the scoring in Dominant Species is based on majority/area control of the terrain tiles. This lends itself to many players rushing to get cubes out on the board quickly to gain points. Often times, too quickly. As the number of cubes you have to start the game decreases as the player count increases, you’ll need to watch more closely in larger games.

You want to make sure you have cubes left in your supply (gene pool) for the last couple of turns. Due to every tile scoring at the end of the game, a notable portion of your score will likely come from this scoring. You don’t want to risk missing out on this end game scoring because you over played your cubes earlier.

In most instances, when cubes are removed from the board, they are also removed from the game (Glaciation being a major exception). Players that are gaining larger numbers of points early in the game tend to be attacked by their opponents to ‘bring them back to the pack’. That lead you built early can be quickly overcome late.

While playing the early/mid game, keep the end game scoring in mind, and ask yourself if you’re reserving enough cubes to take advantage of it.

A few things to think about if you’re the Amphibians player (especially for games with 4+ players).

Special Power

The Amphibians’ special power in the game is starting with a third element (water), while all other animals have only two elements. This means your starting Wetland tile is very strongly under your dominance, while you’re only one away in dominance on the neighboring Savannah and Jungle.

Exploiting Player Power

Unlike other players that will be able to choose a new spot to use their power each turn automatically, you need to actively pursue leveraging your power. The easiest way to do this (while not under your control) is if a water element comes up in the Abundance box. Every time you can get more water elements on the board, you’re gaining a greater advantage towards dominance than any other animal. Other players will generally have less desire (early) to grab water adaptations, as they give the least increase towards taking dominance compared to other animals. (If you’re successful at getting a lot of water onto the board this may change).

You can also grab adaptations of tiles around you to make a play for dominance there.

Starting Board Position

You start on the most fertile starting tile (Wetlands) which give a large number of points. You’re also well setup to get a lot of cubes out into high scoring regions (due to Savannah and Jungle giving 3 cubes each for Speciation.

That said, I would be very wary of Speciation early. It looks like a great move, and can give you a lot of points, but it also makes the Amphibians an easy early target for opponents. In fact, I would consider this strong starting board position a likely disadvantage for Amphibians. From my experience, your starting Wetlands is the most likely target of a first turn Glaciation. This can become even more of a headache if you try Wanderlust from your starting tile, as the tundra is already heading your way.

You have Arachnids and Insects to either side of you. Remember that you are above both in the Food Chain and win ties against them (but only them).

Early Turns

If you feel good about your ability to talk other players into leaving you alone even though you have a lead on the victory track, feel free to add cubes to the Wetland, Jungle and Savannah. I wouldn’t expect this to work.

With Amphibians, I want to play defensively early and limit how much of a target I am. I would strongly consider Glaciation if it’s available to you. It’s too easy for an opponent to drop the tundra on your Wetlands just because it’s worth so many points. Getting the tundra pointed away from you may help focus attention on other people. You’ll likely make an enemy for the game on whichever tile you drop it on, so you probably don’t want to place it next door.

As mentioned above, getting more water elements on the board should be a strong play. It’ll also give you more places to go if your tiles get targeted. Taking an extra adaptation can be a lower risk move, setting yourself up for later without drawing too much attention to yourself.

As with everyone, keep an eye on the Dominance Cards. It’s very likely you’ll keep dominance of your initial tile on the first turn, so you should be able to grab at least one. I will tend to keep an eye on which can hurt me the most, and try and grab that one.

While you win ties against your neighboring species, you don’t win against the other single cube in the next door tiles. This makes it difficult to grab second place points, unless you add more cubes, which may give you first place, but also paint a big target on your flippers.

Wanderlust can be good for you, but I’d be careful of taking too fertile of tiles. If you grab a lower scoring tile, it’s more likely to be left alone. If you build from your main tile, the main joiners will be Arachnids or Insects. You’ll win ties against them, and have the dominance bonus with your water elements.

You start in the top three in turn order, which isn’t bad. Unfortunately, the bottom three species tend to really want to move up. If the animal directly below you is the first to do you, you may see yourself at the bottom of the initiative order in a few turns. I would consider bumping myself up once on Initiative, again as defense against being the primary victim of plummeting turn order. I’d rather have the Arachnids take back the spot I took from them, then have the Birds and Reptiles coming for my spot.

Closing Thoughts

Think defense early.

Amphibians are easy to gain early points with, based on board position and elements for dominance. You’ll be walking a fine line of gaining those points, and not having your terrain targeted. If you can quietly setup the board to give yourself places to move to, you can survive this targeting.

In my experience, I have noticed that the cards add a huge wrench to your strategy, so here’s what I recommend
– Plan for the current round (place your workers to maximize how many points you get in the present)
– Always assume that your opponents will always pick the option that hurts you the most and always make sure you can use all of your domination actions and be the one to play the card
– Don’t be afraid to hurt your opponents, if you prepare properly, you should be able to resist most of their retaliations, I have won multiple two player games by making sure that my opponent cannot score or at least not get any cards

Some cards are much more powerful than others. I enjoy the cards, but they make the final action far more powerful than any other. I suggest the official cardless variant where cards are only collected for end game scoring rather than using them for their actions.