Prepare the far red planet for the arrival of human colonists and establish your company’s foothold in Terraforming Mars, the area control game from FryxGames.
Welcome in, fellow gamers! We’re back with another area control game, but this one is (sort of) cooperative! Unlike Catan or Ticket to Ride, where you’re actively working to undermine your opponents, all the players in Terraforming Mars are working to finish the titular task. However, the game is still competitive at its core, and players must use their resources wisely to get ahead.
What is Terraforming Mars?
Terraforming Mars is an area control and resource buy game for up to 5 players set on the distant red planet. Players represent a corporation trying to make the dead planet inhabitable for human colonists by altering the water, temperature, oxygen, and other living needs.
Though each corporation is working towards the same goal, they all want to come out on top. At the end of the game, the corporation with the highest overall rating is given dominion over the colonization project, winning the game.
Terraforming Mars was created in 2016 by Fryxgames. The game was designed by Jacob Fryxelius, with artistic work by his brothers Isaac and Daniel. It has been produced by several companies internationally, most notably Fryxgames and Arclight Games. Terraforming Mars is also available as a digital game on Steam, and can be played virtually through Tabletop Simulator.
How Do You Play?
During setup, you choose one of the corporations working to terraform Mars to represent. Each corporation is in charge of a different facet of the terraforming process. Your player board shows your progress with each resource using colored cubes. Gold represents ten, silver represents five, and copper represents one. As play continues, the different meters on the game board progress, such as water tiles and temperature.
Players take turns in clockwise order buying and attempting to complete contracts. Each corporation has a unique set of contracts they can complete, plus generic contracts for the good of Mars. If you complete your contract, you get a reward and improve the layout of the Red Planet. Once the planet is ready for habitation, the game ends, and points are totaled.
Depending on how many points you have in each area, you can get different titles. For example, if you produced the most technology, you get the Scientist title, or the Landlord title for having the most zones under your control. Whoever has the most total points at the end of the game wins!
Isaac Fryxelius has a great tutorial series where you can learn all about the game as he walks you through setup and play. You can check out the playlist on YouTube here.
Terraforming Mars Solo Play
You don’t need a team to terraform Mars; you can do it yourself! Terraforming Mars has a solo mode that plays much like the regular game, but you’re on the clock. You have 14 generations to terraform Mars completely; if you can’t, you fail. If you succeed, you can keep adding additional cubes to increase your final score. Set up a high-score list and challenge your friends!
Terraforming Mars Reception and Reviews
Terraforming Mars is highly reviewed, especially overseas. BoardGameGeek gives the game an 8.4/10 overall rating, with a relatively low difficulty rating. The game has won several awards, including the Vuoden Peli Strategy Game of the Year Award in 2019.
How Long Does a Game Take?
A game of Terraforming Mars will usually take between 1.5 and 2 hours if you only play the base game. However, if you add the Turmoil mode, you can add another hour of play. That’s to say nothing of the other expansions that introduce new strategies and ways to play. If you need to play a lunch game, go basic, but if you want the whole experience, there’s no end to ways to play.
Expansions
Terraforming Mars has five exciting expansions that bring new strategies to the game. Hellas & Elysium take you to the poles of Mars and the great mountains, giving you bonuses to water and energy but denying you a few other primary objectives. Venus Next takes you off-planet to the superheated world of Venus!
Try to tame the hazardous gases and scorching temperatures to bring the fiery planet to heel. Prelude, as the name suggests, takes you back to the beginning, where you lay the groundwork for the supercorps heading to the Martian surface.
Colonies sends you even further afield, allowing your corporation to put settlements on other planets in the solar system to bring back to your Martian colony. You could even make a gas plant on Jupiter!
Finally, Turmoil takes you to the near future, where you must navigate the fraught political and economic climate of a growing Martian community. Will your corp come out on top, or will you sink below the red dust of Mars?
Don’t Miss:
From North Carolina to Texas and back to North Carolina again, Clint lives the life of a traveling artist. An avid gamer, writer, actor, pyrotechnician, and general nerd, he has finally turned his love of EDH into a career. When not busy being a clueless cowboy, Winterfell Bannermen, or whatever else acting life throws at him, he enjoys reading folklore from around the world, writing narratives for his Wargaming armies, or running D&D 5e games as a professional DM. Look for his storytelling podcast, By the Dancing Fire, or find him on Twitch at FeybornPhyrexian, where he produces MTG content.
Read more at this site