Is Evolution a Thing or is it All Imaginary? – Doomlings: Imaginary Ends Review

What do you do when you’re really trying to evolve but you’re just not sure if you’re doing it right?

Maybe all of the evolution that you think is happening is all in your head?

That’s where the Doomlings: Imaginary Ends expansion for the evolutionary card game from Doomlings LLC comes in.

This is the second expansion (or, if you ordered the previous ones individually rather than as part of the Upgrade Pack, the sixth or seventh, I think?) for the Doomlings card game, that wacky game of evolution where you are trying to make your species as great as possible…before the world ends.

I promise not to get existential this time.

Much.

Check out the previous reviews linked above if you want to know about the base game or the Upgrade Pack expansion.

This time, they decided to just package everything all together rather than dole them out individually.

But the expansion is still modular, allowing you to add things to your Doomlings deck as you see fit.

What does it offer?

Let’s take a look.

There are four new modules similar to the Upgrade Pack, with new cards, Catastrophes and Age cards.

One of them, though, is just some cards that combine the other three. I’ll explain that below.

The Moonlings are cards that don’t add any rules, but instead give you new tactical opportunities depending on the cards that you get.

Often you have to give something away, most of the time cards.

But then you get a pretty good benefit.

They are designed to really help with low Gene Pools, which of course is often an issue when you’re getting to the end of the world.

Frumple Dumple relies on you not having many cards in your hand at the end. With a Gene Pool of 2, that would be very likely!

Which also makes JibWib very enticing.

Sure, it gives bonuses to other players (unless they’ve been trying to keep their Gene Pools higher), but you get 6 points on top of that +5!

These cards do well in that they make it not quite as imperative to increase your Gene Pool during the game. It will likely get down to 2 unless one or more of the Catastrophes don’t actually decrease it (some don’t).

This group of cards just gives you a new approach to playing the game, or at least makes it so the inevitable small Gene Pool actually isn’t as damaging as it has been before.

Then we have the Glitterlings, which are chancy cards that bring all players together.

You’re not opponents. You’re friends!

There are no enemies at my table.

Sometimes you’re just being nice, like with Pink. Sure, you’re getting 3 points, but everyone draws a card!

Maybe they’ll draw something good and be happy with you.

Magic Beans doesn’t help friends, but it does help you. And it may even help you more if you draw a card with a face value of 1.

The Awesome card can be very awesome indeed, and would go well with the Moonlings by Stabilizing to 2 at the end of the game!

Of course, you want to make sure you keep the two best cards in your hand, so you get lots of points.

These cards are fun and chaotic, but if you think this game is too random already, this pack of cards will push you over the edge.

Your mileage may vary.

Deeplings are the only one of these four that actually adds a new mechanic to the game.

These cards often allow you (or force you to) “Suppress” cards under other traits.

Ideally, this will give you smaller trait piles, which these cards then also feed off of.

Suppressed cards go face down underneath another card and will count as 1 point at the end of the game.

They lose all of their other abilities and point values too.

Traits like Spineless and Stygian get you points for keeping your Trait area lean and mean, and other cards will also give you bonuses for that kind of thing.

It’s a neat idea and again just gives you new tactical options.

Finally, we have the Fuzelings, which just brings all three of these modules together into multi-module cards.

Some of them will combine two of the above, and some even combine all three!

Thus you’ll get cards like Effervescent that combine the Deeplings and the Glitterlings, making you suppress a card and giving you the chance to possibly do it again.

Remarkable combines all three, making you have few cards in your hand, making your friends do something (do you really make your friends do anything, though, if you’re a good friend?) and then suppressing your own hand.

It’s a nice combination, but you only want to be using this module if you’re using the other three.

As I said in my Upgrade Pack review, you are risking deck dilution by adding a whole bunch of modules to your deck. Thus, if you’re using Fuzelings at all, I would suggest not using any of the Upgrade pack factions.

But again, your mileage may vary.

Before I get to the fifth addition that Imaginary Ends offers, let me show you the Ages and Catastrophes that can be brought into play with these modules.

The catastrophes are pretty cool, fitting the mechanisms of the module they go with.

Abyss Stares Back goes along with the Deeplings ability to minimize your Trait area and giving you a penalty if you fail to do so.

Moonpocalypse makes maintaining a high Gene Pool a bad thing at World’s End.

The Ages are pretty self-explanatory too and further the theme of the modules they go with.

Now we get to the major addition to the game, the fifth module.

The Magical Merchants adds a big new mechanic to the game that can get you a ton of points (relatively speaking) but can also make life difficult sometimes.

This module adds Trinkets to the game.

Each player will have one Trinket in front of them at all times (unless they’ve managed to pocket it and a new Merchant Age hasn’t come out yet).

The trinket has a power that will be in effect as long as it’s on the table, with victory points on the bottom right if you manage to pocket it.

Low-VP trinkets like Forbidden Mushroom will have positive powers. The Mushroom lets you draw a card every time you play a purple trait!

High-VP trinkets will usually have more limiting powers, such as Muffins.

With Muffins, you can’t play traits with a face value of 3 or higher.

How do you pocket these trinkets to score them (and get rid of their possible negative effects)?

Each trinket has a “Pocket Objective.” As soon as you fulfill that, you pocket it (turn it face-down) and you can score it at the end of the game.

You can pocket Izzy if you reveal cards with four different colours from your hand (remembering that “grey” is actually “colorless” and thus doesn’t qualify).

Silby Park is pocketed if you reveal two purple traits from your hand.

There are other ways to pocket them, though.

Each set of Age cards (three Age cards and a Catastrophe) now has two Merchant Ages replacing two of the basic Ages (leaving only one basic Age card in the group).

These Ages will often let you pocket (or trash) your trinket. Destroying it may be good if its power is severely limiting you and you can’t seem to meet the Pocket Objective.

If you don’t have a Trinket at the beginning of an Age, you draw a new one, so you will always have one when these cards come out.

First, I have to say that this module will greatly increase your point totals because all pocketed trinkets will get you the points in the bottom right.

While the 5-VP ones can be difficult to have on the table because their powers are very limiting, there’s a good chance an Age card will come up to just let you pocket it without having to worry.

This increases the randomness of the game even to the next level beyond the Glitterlings.

Which may be enough to catapult you over the edge.

But if you like that kind of thing, more power to you!

For me, while I found them fun, they make setup of the game a bit more difficult (adding three different types of cards to each 4-card pile, which means you have to shuffle those three types) and I also really like the regular Ages and their effects.

It’s too bad that you only get one Basic Age per pile, meaning only three in total.

I won’t avoid playing with the Magical Merchants module, but it’s not something that I’m eager to play with.

It depends on my mood and how much randomness I want in this particular game.

I did teach the game to a new player with all five of these modules in the game and they didn’t have any trouble understanding the rules, even the Magical Merchants. The additions aren’t really that difficult to incorporate.

As with the Upgrade Pack, it just depends on how much you want to dilute the deck.

The actual new mechanics are not difficult to get.

Imaginary Ends is not a necessary expansion, though if you like the game it does add a bunch of cool stuff to it.

New cards are always fun.

If you really don’t think that Doomlings is random enough for your tastes, then by all means add the Magical Merchants!

In this way, with all of these expansion modular choices, it’s almost like you’re a cook getting dinner ready for people.

Add the right seasonings to taste and voila!

You’ll have happy players.

Or maybe you’ll have put too much in and everything will fall flat.

That just means you need to judge better.

If you don’t already like the base game, these modules and additions will do nothing to change your opinion.

In fact, it may even make it worse depending on why you don’t like it.

Because heaven forbid you fall off that ledge.

(Many thanks to Doomlings LLC for the review copy of this expansion!)