Archive for the 'Triassic Terror' Category

Triassic Terror is a dinosaur-themed, area control game by Peter Hawes – designer of Francis Drake (I will be reviewing this soon), Wars of the Roses and Heads of State.

THE GAME
During the game, players try to dominate the landscape by growing their dinosaur herds and moving them from area to area.  The board is split into 4 different terrains which are each split into 3 areas.  There are 3 positions within each area – the largest herd in an area takes the best position, second largest takes the next one, and third largest takes the last one.  If there’s a fourth herd in an area, it immediately dies – welcome to the harsh brutality of Triassic Terror.

The game lasts several rounds and Victory Points (VPs) are scored after each era (a group of rounds).   VPs are scored based the on position a herd occupies in an area – each area scores slightly differently but the most VPs are always for the better positions (occupied by the biggest herd in the area).  One side of the board is for 2-4 players, the other for 5-6 players – the difference being that the numbers of VPs scored are slightly different and all 3 positions in each area score in the 5-6 player game (rather than just the top two). Read the rest of this entry »

Triassic Terror is by the designer of Francis Drake as well as the very good War of the Roses.  It is an area control game with some interesting game mechanics.

During the game, players place dinosaurs (meeple) of their colour in different areas on the board.  A group of dinos of one colour is called a ‘herd’.  Players with the largest (and second largest) herds in each of the 12 areas during the 2 or 3 scoring rounds score points, and the player with the most points at the end of a fixed number of rounds wins.

Each area contains 3 spaces called ‘habitats’.  The biggest herd in an area occupies the primary habitat (scoring the most points), the next largest herd occupies the secondary habitat (scoring fewer points than the primary), and the next largest herd occupies the tertiary habitat (which scores no points but, hey, it’s better than being any smaller as herds not in the 3 largest instantly die).  Whenever herds grow or shrink, the habitats are re-assessed; for example, if there’s a herd of 3 blue dinosaurs in the primary habitat and a herd of 2 red in the secondary habitat grows to 4, then the red herd would move into the primary habitat and the blue herd would move down to the secondary. Read the rest of this entry »