Actions: Initiative to Glaciation
The first seven Dominant Species actions — Initiative, Adaptation, Regression, Abundance, Wasteland, Depletion and Glaciation — with every step, the free reptile pawn and worked examples.
These actions change turn order and elements — on your display and on earth — and end with the ice spreading. They run in this order at the start of each Execution Phase.
Initiative
One 
space. When its pawn comes off, its owner:
- Swaps their initiative marker with the one directly to its left (no effect if already first).
- Places that same pawn on any empty eyeball — effectively the last placement of the turn.
Adaptation
Three spaces, resolved left to right. Each player in turn takes one of the elements in the Adaptation squares and puts it on an empty element space of their display.
- Never more than six elements on a display, printed ones included. With six, the action is forfeited — no part of it happens.
- Duplicates are fine: a second or third copy of an element counts again in matching.
Regression
Happens every turn, pawn or not. For each element type in the Regression box, every animal loses one disk of that type from its display (added elements only — printed ones are safe).
- Pawn benefit: each of your pawns here saves one element from being removed.
Reptiles always have a free pawn on the third space, and may still add pawns.- After Regression, the pawns go back to their owners.
Abundance
Two spaces. Each player takes one Abundance element and places it on any vacant tile corner on earth — even an edge corner touching only one or two tiles.
Wasteland
One space. Its owner first removes one element disk from the Wasteland box (back to the bag). Then, pawn or not, every element on a tundra tile whose type is still in the Wasteland box is removed from earth.
Depletion
One space. Its owner removes one element from earth of a type present in the Depletion box. No matching type on earth: no effect. Without a pawn nothing happens.
Glaciation
Four spaces, but only the left-most pawn acts each turn, whichever space it is on. The others wait and slide left during Reseed. Its owner:
- Chooses a non-tundra tile adjacent to at least one tundra tile.
- Lifts all species off it.
- Covers it with a tundra tile from the stack — it is tundra from now on.
- Removes every element on earth that touches exactly three tundra tiles.
- Scores the bonus points table for the tundra tiles adjacent to the new one.
- Puts back one species of each animal that was there.
- Returns the rest to their owners’ gene pools (not the box).
When all 12 tundra tiles are on earth, the action is forfeited.