Review #17: Terraforming Mars

# of Players: 1-5
Playtime: 2-3 Hours

Core Mechanic: Action Selection

Theme: Space
Type: Euro

Weight: Heavy

Year: 2016

Rating: 9*

This is an amazing game, both mechanically and thematically. Of all the games that were released in 2016, this one was at the top of my list of the games I wanted to play the most. I really didn’t even know much about the game play but it was rising up the ranks quickly, was well-reviewed, and the theme was so interesting.  It definitely had a lot of hype to live up to and I am glad to say that it met all my expectations when I eventually got to play it.

You and your opponents are corporations and will be taking actions to increase the temperature, oxygen, and ocean global parameters of Mars until it reaches habitable conditions.  Once all three parameters have been met, the game ends and the player with the most victory points is the winner, which comes from your Terraform Rating (points you earn by increasing the global parameters), won awards, claimed milestones, and certain played cards.

There is a common game board showing a map of Mars, where city, greenery, and ocean tiles will be placed, along with relative scoring, parameter, milestones, and awards tracks.  Each player also has his or her own game board with production tracks and resource storage.  This personal game board is the biggest problem with the game as one bump will cause players to lose track of all their production value - if you are serious about playing this game I would recommend purchasing a third-party game board that eliminates this problem!

The game is played over several round which consists of four phases: rotating first player, research phase, action phase, and production phase.  In the research phase, you will be purchasing cards that you hope to play during the action phase.  In the action phase, each player takes one or two actions, continuing in player order until everyone passes.  There are eight actions that can be taken during this phase: playing a card, using a standard project, claiming a milestone, funding an award, using blue card actions, or converting plants and heat.  Finally, in the production phase, everyone produces resources according to their production track.

It is all about planning and creating a massive engine.  Early on you will be struggling to find a balance between money spent on purchasing new cards during the research phase while ensuring during the action phase you have enough money to play some of your cards.  There will always be some cards that you draw that look fantastic for later on but you always question whether you have enough money to buy it now just to hold onto it for later.  There is a lot to keep track of and some cards may not even be playable if certain global parameters have been met.  I also really like that each player gets a unique corporations with different starting set-ups and abilities, which adds to the variability.

Again, the core of the game is drafting and playing cards. Back to the actions, if you can't play cards there are several other options available. Standard Projects are a good way of progressing the game, such as adding oceans or cities, even if they are not the most efficient. Claiming a milestone gains you victory points if you are the first to meet one of the milestone requirements, such as having at least 3 cities or 3 greenery tiles. More risky is funding awards, which requires players to spend money to activate the awards which give victory points at the end of the game if you are the leader in certain categories, such as the most science tags or most heat resource cubes.

I would recommend always playing with the Corporate Era variant, especially because it appears to be the official version of the game.  In this mode you really get to see your engine chug along and be able to chain multiple cards and effects together.  It is not a difficult game to play either and doesn’t induce stress the way some other games do since you have so many good choices. Terraforming Mars is definitely a contender for the Heavyweight collection. The popularity it has gained also earns it a spot in the Essential and Collector collections. For me, there might be too many cards that sometimes you aren't able to draw the ones to piece a good strategy together for, which brings it down a few spots for me. Still, I can't deny that it scratches the engine-building itch extremely well and is a very thematic experience.