You can read the full review with photos at MeepleMountain.com
In 2016, Terraforming Mars made its debut in the world of board games. The game is about a future where the World Government wants to make Mars a habitable planet for forthcoming generations. Of course, such an endeavor would attract the largest corporations since the success of such a project would provide unmeasurable wealth and prestige for its victors. To achieve this, corporations fund projects which benefit both terraforming efforts and themselves while also claiming land on this red frontier.
Players are given playmats, which help them keep track of what resources they have available for heating the planet or planting trees. You play cards from your hand to gain more resources and abilities to use. On a hexagonal board in the middle of the play area, you can build infrastructure for scoring points and blocking your opponents. It was a game with many moving parts.
Simply calling this game successful would be undermining it. Since its release, there have been five expansions, an app version, and they announced they are working on a Legacy version as well as a dice spin-off. Reviewers chanted about its greatness, praising its card system or hexagonal map, often comparing it to games like Race for the Galaxy. Travel to BoardGameGeek’s files, and it is littered with user-made content such as new cards, variants, and even alternative maps. While Terraforming Mars is popular enough to form its own government, I wasn’t a fan.
Raising the heat
The box says 90-120 minutes of game time, my games lasted 2 to 3 hours, a length I didn’t find acceptable for this type of gameplay loop. As much as I like card drafting, it added an extra 30 minutes and felt like a used band-aid attempt to prevent players from creating powerful combos. The map looked nice at first glance, but over time it became a monument to analysis paralysis. Much like Tapestry, Black Angel, and Great Western Trail, this game has many systems glued together to form an attempt at cohesion, like letters on a ransom note.
However, there was one area of the game I liked: the cards.
I can’t explain it. It’s perhaps just the simple rule of playing cards from your hand by paying cash. Or maybe it is the use of the icons, or “Tags” as the game calls them, in several areas throughout the game. Maybe it’s the uniqueness of every single card, making your hand of cards feel like a kid in a candy store where you don’t know where you should begin.
My favorite aspect of the cards was not only their mechanisms but also their narrative. 581
You are running a corporation, and every single card represents a project that you can fund. Some of these are sensible, like air filters and trees. Then you get the insane, such as hiring raiders, conscription, or unleashing a virus. Even environmentally friendly corporations could resort to slinging asteroids, endless mining, then suddenly throw dogs into the mix. The stories here can be just as sensible as getting a bar of soap during a meteor shower.
Making it lightweight
So when I heard they were making a card game version of Terraforming Mars, I pulled up a lawn chair because I wanted to see where this was going. After I heard they were implementing phase selection similar to Race for the Galaxy, I had to get a second lawn chair to rest my feet. For those who are unaware, phase selection gives players the option to control actions performed in a round, resulting in more player agency. It is one of my favorite systems in board gaming.
A few months and half a dozen games later, here we are. Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition still uses the player mat that tracks the production of your resources and the amount of each that you have. Playing cards requires money, planting trees for oxygen requires greenery, and temperature increase uses heat. Perhaps the biggest, and most welcoming change, is the Steel and Titanium. Now, they serve as continuous discounts on certain projects, rather than being spendable resources. As you can see, there’s nothing too exciting here, and I’m glad since I enjoyed that feature of the original board game.
I can’t say the same about the map. You still have the board in the middle of the table that tracks the temperature, oxygen, or oceans. The oceans are now tiles that start face down, and during the game, you will flip them face up for random resource bonuses. While I am disappointed at this mindless approach, I can understand the intention. It is a game that wants to focus on card play, and having an involving map system like the original game would distract the players from the core experience.
As for the cards themselves, the mechanisms haven’t changed much because why mess with near perfection? 349