Your group is as weak as your stronger adaptoid | Adaptoid

Javi Santos

(barnyams36)

Spain
sevilla

During the International Boardgame Festival in Córdoba, Spain, that took place from October 9th to 12th, (you can get some information here. I had the chance to meet the creator and editor of this little portable game which belongs to a quite interesting line of games. Since I expressed some interest in trying some games, he offered me with a nice variety, and first he beat me at "Hippos&Crocodiles", then he beat me at "Yavalath", and finally we got to "Adaptoid", in which he could have beaten me easily, but decided to give me some hints. After a couple of games with him, I kept playing with some other people, and found the beauty of this little gem.

Take your adaptoids everywhere

Most gamers complain about big boxes containing little more than air, I certainly do. Sometimes, to take a game somewhere, it is much better to leave the box at home, or change components to another box (for example, I have carried all components of Caylus Magna Carta in a Citadels box, which is about three times smaller). So when we are offered a nice way of carrying our games we should be happy. This is what we find here. Adaptoid, (and actually the rest of the games in the editorial so far, I think) is presented in a cotton bag, where the board is kept rolled as a mousepad, and the little plastic components are easily stored in zip-bags. All in all, the game is really light and can be transported very easily. In Adaptoid, we find a mouse-pad board consisting in a classic hex-board with 37 circles, and two sets of adaptoid´s bodies, legs and pincers, plus five tokens in each color (black and white). Pieces are made of special plastic, and are obviously very durable. The only thing to take care about is that they are small pieces with edges, so be careful if there are little children around. Eating an adaptoid may not be a good idea. Good components, nice presentation... that sounds good!

What do adaptoids like to do?

Adaptoids are small creatures that do not like to share space, so when they see an adaptoid from a different clan, they try to kill him. Yes, exactly, this is what the game is about. Try to kill and eliminate five adaptoids from the other player (and use the tokens to count them). So the objective is simple, then how to do this?

Adaptoids are born as bodies without legs or pincers, just a body that cannot do really anything. But fortunately they have the ability to evolve, and become more powerful with time. The more legs they get, the further they will be able to move. The more pincers they have, the stronger they will be in order to kill the enemies. Up to now, this looks more or less familiar. Actually, the things to do in your turn are also quite straightforward. First, you choose one of your adaptoids to move. You may move as many steps as legs the adaptoid has. If you finish your movement in a position occupied by an enemy, and you have more pincers, you kill him, well done! Secondly, you evolve your adaptoids. Choose one of them, and add a leg or a pincer, as you please. Another possibility is to create a new adaptoid adjacent to one of yours, just the body. The point is that you can only evolve one individual adaptoid, not your community as a group.

From this picture it may seem to be quite simple, but it is not. Because getting more and more powerful may bring a big problem. Food. Yes, adaptoids need to be feed, and they need more food as they have more legs and/or pincettes. This is represented by the number of free spaces around an adaptoid. It needs as many free spaces around it as legs and pincers. Thus, being too powerful really turns you into a very difficult to maintain individual. And the power of legs increases dramatically, since an adaptoid may kill another just by occupying the needed free space, just moving with legs, not using brutal force of pincers...

Then, each movement, each evolution needs to be carefully considered. Adding another pincer to have a killer machine may not be such a good idea if it cannot really move anywhere without getting killed. Having multiple adaptoids with some evolutions may give you quite a lot of freedom, but you will always have to be careful with other adaptoids just one pincer stronger than you are. Multiple paths, different choices, make a deep and very clever strategic game in which making the first error can be definitive if your colony is not well balanced. A really good game for two people.