Hellas & Elysium

Terraforming Mars (TM) is absolutely fantastic. I'd give it 6 stars if I could. It's that good. Definitely a gamer's game (ie. not intended for newcomers/nongamers), but worth every penny. With that said, TM has a bit of a learning curve. TM also has a wonderful solo variant, so if you're looking for a challenge, and you like to play solo (or at least have that option), look no further. That's actually the main reason I bought this game, and yet now I can't wait to try it multiplayer. And since it has the solo mode, I'll be able to teach it no problem and help move the game along as well. Another huge plus for me. At its core, TM is an engine builder, with cards and projects to help increase 6 main resources and production of said resources (MegaCredits=money, Steel, Titanium, Plants, Energy, and Heat). I won't go into great detail, but it's from these resources and a set amount of starting resources depending on which Corporation (think player) you play as that you start your engine building. There are 5 beginner corporations that are generic and all the same, and then there are an additional 12 that each have their own special ability(ies) and amount of starting credits, and possibly resources and/or resource production. I recommend starting with a beginner corporation, as knowing which cards to keep during setup also has a learning curve. Throughout the game, the player(s) are attempting to gain victory points (known as Terraform Rating, or TR) while simultaneously terraforming the planet. This terraforming includes 3 main elements: increasing temperature, oxygen levels, and water/ocean tiles. In the solo mode, you are attempting to complete all 3 of these before the end of your 14th turn. If you do so, you win. You can also keep track of your best scores, though TM isn't simply just a beat your own score solo mode. You actually have to WIN first (ie. complete the 3 elements to terraforming by end of turn 14), which is NOT easy. It's very clever, and very fun. Games typically take me 1-2 hours. In multi mode, you are trying to accrue the highest TR at the game end, signified by the completion of all 3 elements of terraforming. However, you score not only points from your base TR, cards, city tiles, and plant tiles (as in the solo mode), but also from any awards or milestones that you claimed. In that regard TM is somewhat of a point salad game...which I think is great. Again, looking forward to trying it multiplayer. While initially there is some luck of the draw, this is mitigated each turn during the refresh phase, as each player gets to look at 4 new cards from the deck and decide how many to keep, paying 3 credits per card. It is also and perhaps more so mitigated by the standard projects listed on the board, which every player has access to every turn regardless of which cards they may or may not have. These can be key in the solo mode if you don't get the best starting cards, which I assume would be true multiplayer. At a $41 price point, I can't recommend this game enough. It has numerous expansions (I think around 5 or 6), so even if you tire of the base game at some point (I haven't yet), there is much more you can add to TM. The Hellas & Elysium expansion is a double sided board with 2 new and different faces of Mars to terraform (ie different maps), so you have the option of 3 maps total. The Prelude expansion has additional cards and more importantly additional corporations, for even more variety. I have yet to get to either of these, but am looking forward to it when the time comes. There are also several others that I do not have yet. All this being said, the replayability is quite high on TM. And it's tons of fun if you like to think. There is a reason it's been in the top 20 on BGG the last 4 years since it's inception. EDIT: I forgot to mention that I highly suggest buying at least the 2 pack of wooden player boards from Smonex. They are great quality and completely take care of the problem of accidentally bumping/moving your production markers from the player boards that come with the game. Though not as vibrant or colorful, the wooden boards work so much better. Game on! EDIT 10/1/22: I have all the expansions except Turmoil, and I still love it. Favorite game of all time. Even better with the expansions; so much replayability.

Great strategic game. Not hard to learn. Watched plenty of YouTube videos on how to play before purchasing so I would know whether or not this is game is for me. Learned all the basics and beyond just from watching. Reading the instructions further reinforced my knowledge of how to play. There have been a lot of complaints about component quality and the pictures on the cards which to me are unfounded. I have no major complaints about the component quality. The player cubes are good enough for what they are intended. The cardboard cutout tiles are durable enough. As for the artwork or picture on the project cards, who cares? It is all about what the cards allow you to do. I don’t care if it is AI or stock footage or art work. I am not paying attention to the pictures, rather the outcome of playing the cards. I only wish the cards were a little bigger like the cards in Trekking the National Parks because there is a lot of information written on the card. It would make for easier reading. But no big deal. What about the player boards? A lot of complaints about the flimsiness, size and potential for jostling the pieces around. Well, you can spend 10 bucks apiece for 1 special player board cutout with indents or you can do what I did for a fraction of the cost. See picture. Photo copy the player board at 120x magnification and using clear packing tape, tape it to some cardboard. (Cover entire player board with the packing tape) The enlarged player board allows more space for cube placement on the resource area and production track. Thus allowing more room in case of accidental movement of cubes. Plus the non sticky side of the packing tape is not as slippery as the original glossy player board so the cubes are less prone to sliding around. Plus with the cardboard backing, the player board is instantly durable. What about cube storage? I used the cardboard storage trays from my old risk game which I no longer play and use it to store the 5 most used cubes. See photo. You can be creative and make your own storage trays. Overall, I can see why TM is rated high. A lot of thought and science and science fiction went into making this game. The game is fun and satisfying when you start to see the global parameters move up as you and your opponent work together to achieve the goal of terraforming mars. I like the fact this is not a cutthroat, obliterate your opponent game like Monopoly and Risk. It is long, but so is Risk and Monopoly. If you can spend 2 hours or more watching TV, Terraforming Mars is a better alternative. Good for cognitive function!

We were very pleasantly surprised by how fun this game is. I can see why it was on the top ten modern board games list. The art on the box never would have turned my head in a store. Don't judge this game by its cover!

I heard from a bunch of serious gamers that TM was one game I needed on my shelf. I saw the price drop, so I took their recommendation and bought it. Thematically, you are a corporation whose job is to Terraform Mars. On your turn will take 1 or 2 actions and this usually involves playing a card or activating an ability on one of your cards already in play. At first, your options will be pretty limited to just playing the cards from your hand, but as you buy more cards (consider them patents) you'll have more options. We probably played the first 4-5 rounds (called Generations) wrong. We took our 1 or 2 actions and then we acquired our resources. Once everyone has had a turn, you get another turn if you can take at least one action. And this process repeats until everyone passes/has no more actions they can take. Once everybody has passed, then you acquire your resources. Once we realized we were making this mistake, it sped up the gameplay, increased what we could do, and upped the enjoyment factor. To win at Terraforming Mars, you will count the points you accumulate during the game: playing certain cards, acquiring certain tags on cards, acquiring plants or animals on blue cards, having your cities touch green spaces, and your overall Terraforming Rating. I honestly did not know who was going to win the game until we counted our points at the end. While you are competing against the other players, your actions (and theirs) really don't hurt or help the other players. There was one card that allowed me to take a token from any card (we read that as anyone's card, not just mine and I we might have played that wrong). So, there are 'some' instances of your card/action directly affecting another player, but these are few and far between. There is no fighting and no one can be put out the game or go bankrupt like in Monopoly. Increase the playtime duration by 30 minutes to 1 hour on your first playthrough if everyone is new to it, but I think we got a firm grasp of the game by round 5 or 6. There are advanced rules and I would like to play those on my next playthrough. There are multiple expansions to this game, but I have not played any of them. Some people have complained about the quality of the game pieces (or lack thereof). The cubes are fine. The piece of card board to mark your resources is flimsy, and if you knock the table, your cubes (and you'll have at least 6 of them on your card at any given time) can get knocked off. I have seen a free app for iphone that is supposed to track this and you can buy some really nice wooden or plastic ones that will prevent this, but they are unnecessary in my opinion. Some people have mentioned that some of the cards look like their clip art: most of the art seems original and a minority of them seem like they came from a stock photo (there is one of a white dog I can remember that seemed out of place). To me, this did not hurt the game. There are a LOT of cards and each of them is original, no duplicates! Overall, I enjoyed the game and can see my group playing this one in the future.

Good game, with one major flaw. The victory points on the cards. See, I've played 4 games of this so far (and one solo) & each time, the victory came due to whoever had the most victory points with their cards. Nothing else mattered. No matter the strategy, no matter the milestones or awards. It was the cards. And here's the problem with that. Getting cards with victory points is luck. You either get them or you don't. First game I played, I didn't even pay attention. I was well ahead of one player, and a few behind the leader. Then, the player in last counted his victory points on the cards & zoomed ahead, winning by at least 10 points. Must have had near to 30 points in cards alone. Second game, I played against my wife & went for the cards & easily won. Third game, I played against 4 players & again went for the cards. I got a lot of them & won the game easily. My friend, who had won the first game, said, "I was trying to get the cards with victory points, but I hardly got any. I played every one I got & only got a few points." Fourth game. Played with my brother, his wife & my wife. Everyone played well, & we were pretty much even along the TR line. I got 3 of the milestones, giving me 15 victory points at the end of the game, which made my brother exclaim that it wasn't fair because he was going to get them, but each time, I went before him in the generation & that those 15 points would win me the game. He grabbed 3 of the awards, but only scored 12 points, while I scored 2 more points & my wife scored 7 points. Scoring for greenery, I got another 7 points. I was well ahead & thought victory was mine. We then started to count the points on our cards. As I was counting, I glanced up to see my brother moving his score cube past mine...way past mine. I thought that he must be cheating & he assured me that he had all these points. I looked at his cards & he had indeed all the points he said. I counted my points. 4. 4 points. What happened to my friend last game, had happened to me. I played every card I got that gave victory points & got 4 points. Actually, I had one more card that would have given me 3 more points, but I needed to already have a card that had a bacteria tag on it. But again, with the luck of the draw, I never got one to play, the entire game. Now, there's nothing wrong with luck in games. I mean, every dice game is all luck. Every card game, is mostly luck. There is some strategy to the game, but it's basically play what you can to improve. And most people can figure this out & keep the game even. But with this game, every winner has won by at least 10 points & each has won with the points on cards alone. While this may break a game for some people, I still find the game fun to play. I like the theme & I like the components. Even though the cards are thin & the ME(money) cubes are already flaking, I still like them. The luck factor is good in a way, as it means that one person can't be ridiculously good at the game & win every time. But this is not for everyone. My friend is very competitive & only wants to win. He's the kind of guy that goes online to find strategies on how to win, uses them, wins every game & thus ruins the game for everyone but him. My bottom line is I like the game. It is one of my current favorites. The solo game is very good too. It's fairly quick, compared to the multi-player game. Less than half the time of the full game. I do recommend it to players who don't care too much about winning every game. You're not going to. Get used to it. Even though this is a major flaw for some, I'm still giving it 4 out of 5 for fun.

I would caution that this game takes a long time to play, but it is fun once you begin to understand it. There are lots of ways to develop your strategy making it very replayable. After we bought this, we purchased it digitally on Steam and have alternated playing each version. Give yourself 2.5 to 3 hours to play it the first time.

If you're looking for a really deep board game - this should be your next purchase. I had heard good things about the game from a few people, and it had good reviews on board game geek, so I decided to give it a shot. BUILD QUALITY When it comes to the quality of the pieces and board, it's a bit of a mixed bag. The board itself is perfectly fine. Can't complain. For the player pieces and the currency pieces, these are actually quite nice! They're little colored cubes - some are translucent, others are a little shiny. I'm actually a fan of the pieces. My biggest complaint with the build quality, however, is the player sheet every player gets. This is where you track your "production" and your resources throughout the game. For starters, this sheet is a little confusing. My bigger complaint here, though, is that a portion of this sheet is dedicated to show how much of a given resource you earn every round. To indicate this, you put one of your colored player pieces on the designated number. The problem, though, is that the slightest of bumps on this sheet can slide the pieces around, meaning you can turn your production from a 3 to a 4, which can have a pretty big impact. I would have loved to have seen a physical slider piece, or little slots to hold the pieces. This complaint is not a HUGE deal, but probably my biggest concern with the build quality. INSTRUCTIONS I have to admit, when you first look at the instruction manual, it's pretty overwhelming. There are about 20 very dense pages of instructions to read through which walk through the mechanics of the game. It took myself and 4 other people about 2 hours to digest the instructions. We found ourselves referring to this manual often over the course of the game. The manual isn't the best organized, so answering a specific question about the game can often be trying to find a needle in a haystack. Further, the wording in the manual is often a little bit confusing and tricky to understand. One aspect of the instructions that I like is that they have a "beginner" version, which is recommended for the first time you play. Essentially, this gives every player the same "corporation", which removes some of the variability but makes it a bit easier to learn the mechanics of the game. MECHANICS This is where the game really shines. While there is definitely a learning curve to this game, it offers so much variability in the way you play the game. There are numerous way to increase your "Terraform Rating" (aka, your score), and these actions you take ultimately progress the game in a super natural way. There is no designated number of turns that this game will last. There's no timer. There's no countdown. Instead, you are progressing towards making Mars into a "viable planet" to live on. You do this by increasing temperature of the planet, increasing the number of oceans, and increasing the percentage of Oxygen. The actions you take throughout the game may do any of these 3 things, either directly or indirectly. Sometimes, there are even moments where by increasing the temperature you increase the Oxygen level. Another really interesting aspect is the concept of a "generation". A generation is more or less a round of the game. Within each generation, every players takes turns. Each turn consists of up to 2 actions per player. Players continue going in a circle taking their actions until they have no further actions that they want to take, and they "pass". Once every player passes, the generation is complete. One dynamic I noticed is that the early generations of the game take quite awhile. People are figuring out their strategy, and are building the economy. However as the game progresses, the generations start to move very quickly and the game's resources start to increase at a must faster rate. Overall, the game probably took at least 2 hours to play. REPLAYABILITY What made this game so interesting, was the 2nd time I played. The first time was certainly fun, but was generally learning the mechanics and the basic strategies. For the 2nd time playing, though, we understood the main goals, but more importantly, we used the more advanced corporations. These corporations offer even more variation and customization about how you want to win the game. This type of strategizing is what really sold me on this game. CONCLUSION Ultimately, this game is quite complicated with a hefty instruction manual and a steep learning curve. But with the endless possibilities of how you want to play the game, the level of strategizing really outweighs the upfront cost, making this a really rewarding game to learn and to play.

Terraforming Mars is a game where the players are taking the role of corporations tasked with terraforming the planet Mars for future colonization. Players produce resources and income that allow them to take actions and play cards raise the temperature, create oceans, and add oxygen to the atmosphere. While players are working together to terraform the planet, players are scored based on their contributions to the terraforming efforts (and some other scoring mechanisms) to declare an overall winner. It looks complicated, but it’s actually pretty easy once you understand the rules. The challenge is using your resources most effectively while anticipating what other players are planning so you can play off their terraforming efforts. Because different corporations and certain cards have a theming effect (certain corporations being better at construction or mining, for instance) players tend to specialize in what type of activities they are doing, which means it’s important to make sure you are able to match their increased efficiency. The game is very thematic. The map is an accurate topographical map of Mars with volcanoes, places for oceans, etc. Playing the cards allows you to genetic engineer plants, crash asteroids, use space mirrors etc. There’s also algae. The cards might be just changing how many cubes you have, but it’s still pretty cool. The only complaint I have is that the resource system is very cheaply done. There’s a sheet where you place cubes to keep up with your income, but they literally just lay on the sheet, there’s no holders for the cubes. Therefore, if you accidentally bump the table or someone’s hand scrapes across these, congratulations, you probably have ruined the game. My group got in the habit of periodically taking pictures of our sheets just in case. Overall, Terraforming Mars is a fantastic addition to any board gamers shelf.