North Star GamesOceans - An Evolution Game: Deluxe Edition

Oceans is a 2-6 player strategy game in the Evolution game series where you create a vibrant web of marine life through millions of years of evolution.

The Evolution games are known for vivid themes, easy rules, and hidden depth. With many thousands of play-tests, years of non-stop design, over 100 unique illustrations, and more content than ever before, Oceans is North Star Games' most ambitious project to date.

At the game's start, the only food source is plankton, the foundation of the ocean food web. It populates the beautifully illustrated Reef and Ocean boards. Your goal is to create and evolve species so they find their niche in the growing ecosystem, by giving them helpful combinations of traits.

Each species is defined by its population, and its traits. Through the game it'll gain and lose traits, and gain and lose population depending on what it can eat, and what can eat it. Despite your best efforts, some species will go extinct! It's natural selection at work. 

Because you can build species from any combination of traits, thousands of species are possible, and they all interact in their own particular ways as the ecosystem builds. Every game creates a one-of-a-kind world, never to be seen again.   

Many species will be predators, each bigger than the next, all the way up to the dreaded apex predator. But some will eat in other ways, for example by scavenging on the sea bottom or filter-feeding on plankton.

THE DEEP

Then there's a whole other side to the game. It's called The Deep. 

Huge regions of deep ocean are unexplored, and what little we've seen of them can seem like fantasy. The Deep will contain, at minimum, 50 unique, powerful traits, which dramatically boost the range - and strangeness - of species you can evolve. 

SCENARIOS

Each time you play, there are 2 scenario cards in play (chosen at random at the start of the game from a deck of at least 25). Each creates a major ecosystem-shift when activated, altering the whole game. It's another way the evolutionary timeline changes each play. The standard scenario deck can create about 600 distinct Ocean histories to evolve through.

CONTENTS

The Standard Edition contains:  1 Reef board, 1 Ocean board, 120 Surface cards, 89 Deep Cards, 25 Scenario cards, 24 Species boards, 200 Population Tokens, 4 Player screens, and 4 Bonus tokens and 1 Cambrian Explosion Card

The Deluxe Edition improves on the Standard Edition in the following ways:
- 15 Scenario Cards (Foiled)
- 10 Deep Cards (Foiled)
- 5-6 Player Expansion:
        - 40 Fish Tokens
        - 10 Species Boards
        - 2 Bonus Tokens
        - 2 Player Screens
- 240 Population Tokens (Acrylic)
- 6 Population Bags (Printed)
- 220 Card Sleeves (Printed)