Editing Terraforming Mars (section)

=Gameplay=

The game is a tile placement/engine building game that emphasizes maximizing the efficiency of scarce resources and balancing the need to grow your economy with the need to score victory points and race your opponents towards awards, milestones, and the best tile placement spots.

First, the players collectively agree on whether to play the "normal" game (actually a mode for noobs and filthy casuals) or Corporate Era (the real game for real dudes). Then they must agree on whether the Research Phase will use standard draw rules (for noobs and filthy casuals) or draft mode (for real dudes). Each player then decides whether to use a Beginner Corporation (guess who for) or to be dealt two specialist corporations. The players are then dealt ten cards from the project deck, choose which of their corporations to take (if they didn't pick Beginner), and choose which cards from their starting draw they want to keep for $3 each (unless they picked Beginner, which keeps all of them for free).

Mars has three parameters which need to be maxed out before it is considered suitably terraformed: Temperature, Oxygen, and Oceans. Increasing a parameter grants a point of Terraformer Rating to the current player, which provides several benefits: it increases their income, their endgame score, and their progress towards the Terraformer milestone. Placing Oceans can also provide tile placement bonuses, and raising Temperature or Oxygen past certain thresholds can provide free heat production or provide the player a free temperature boost or ocean placement. Also, since there's a limit to how many times a parameter can be increased, each time you increase it means one less time that your opponents can increase it. In short, it never hurts to do some terraforming. Once all three parameters are maxed out, the game will end after the current round is over.

The game is played in rounds (called "generations"). Each generation consists of the following phases:

'''1. Player order.''' The "first player" token is passed clockwise. This determines who gets the first pick in draft mode and who takes the first action during the action phase. This phase is skipped for the first round of the game.

'''2. Research.''' Each player draws four cards from the deck, pays $3 for each he wants to add to his hand, and discards the rest. In draft mode there is a single hand of four cards that gets passed around as each player takes it in turn to choose one card from the hand and then replace it with one from the deck; this adds an extra layer of interactivity and strategy to the game as you must often choose between drafting a card because you need it and drafting a different card because you're afraid of an opponent getting it (known as "hate drafting" or "spite drafting"). The research phrase is skipped for the first round of the game.

'''3. Action.''' In turn order, each player can either do one action, two actions, or pass. Once you choose to pass you cannot take any more actions for the rest of the round. An action is either playing a card, using a standard project, claiming a milestone, funding an award, spending plants, spending heat, or activating the special ability of a blue card or corporation card. The action phase repeats itself until all players have passed.

'''4. Production.''' Players collect income and resources and unspent energy is converted into heat.

'''Special: Endgame plants.''' Once Mars is fully terraformed, players finish up the current round. Then, after the Production phase, anyone who has enough plants to convert to greenery may do so in turn order. Then the game is over and everything is scored.

==Resources==

'''Megacredits:''' AKA money, cash, dollarydoos, spacebux, dough, gold, etc. You need this for just about everything you do. In addition to the production indicated on your production track, you also get megacredits equal to your Terraformer Rating during the Production phase.

'''Steel:''' Can be used in place of megacredits when playing any card that has a brown "Building" tag. Each steel is worth $2.

'''Titanium:''' Like steel, but for black "Space" tags and is worth $3 each.

'''Plants:''' Spend 8 plants to place a greenery tile. Whenever greenery is placed you raise the Oxygen one step, if it isn't already maxed out.

'''Energy:''' The only way to spend Energy is to have certain blue cards in play that you can spend it on. Otherwise, energy production is mostly use as a prerequisite for playing certain cards. Any unspent energy is converted into heat during the Production phase.

'''Heat:''' Spend 8 heat to raise the Temperature one step.

==Standard Projects==

You can always do a Standard Project, if you can afford it, so it's always an option if you didn't draw the cards you need. However, a Standard Project will always be more expensive/less efficient than playing a project card that has the same effect. For example: Power Plant, the standard project, costs $11 and doesn't have any tags, whereas Power Plant, the card, only costs $4 and gives you both a building tag and a power tag. Thus, use Standard Projects only when you really need to do something and you don't have a card for it.

'''Sell Patents:''' Discard any number of cards to get $1 per card discarded. "But wait, if it costs me $3 to buy cards in the first place, why would I ever want to do this"? Good question. Sometimes, you can draw cards for free as a result of playing or activating cards or placing tiles in certain spots, and they might be trash. Sometimes, you want to wait to see what other players will do before you do anything big, so you need to stall for time without passing. And sometimes, it's just because you miscalculated and find yourself $1 or $2 short of being able to play something that you really need to play right now.

'''Power Plant:''' Increase your energy production by one step.

'''Asteroid:''' Throw a huge fuckin' rock at the planet, raising the temperature one step.

'''Aquifer:''' Place an ocean tile.

'''Greenery:''' Place a greenery tile. Remember that you get to raise the oxygen whenever you place a greenery.

'''City:''' Place a city tile. Also increase your megacredit production one step.

==Project Cards==

Each card you can play has several properties: base cost, color/type, tags, prerequisites, effects, and endgame victory points.

'''Base Cost:''' The gold credit symbol in the top-left shows how much the card costs to play.

'''Color/Type:''' Green, blue, and red. Green cards resolve their effects when they are played, and then their tags remain in play for the rest of the game. Blue cards are like green cards, but they also provide either passive ongoing effects or provide you with a new type of action you can take. Actions on blue cards can only be used once per generation. Red cards are called "Events", and unlike green and blue cards, their tags only apply when playing them: once they've been played, their tags no longer count for anything.

'''Tags:''' You'll see these symbols in the upper-right corner. There's a bunch of different tags cards can have, and what they do often depends on what other cards are out there. For example, you might have a blue card that says "every time you play a card with a microbe tag, gain 1 plant". Or you might have a green card that says "gain 1 income for every space tag you have". Of particular note are the brown "Building" tag (you can spend Steel when playing them, and they contribute towards the Builder milestone), the black "Space" tag (you can spend Titanium to play them, and there are many blue cards that discount them), the white "Science" tag (contributes towards the Scientist award, and the most powerful cards in the deck all have science tag prerequisites), and the "Jovian" tag that looks like Jupiter (several cards in the deck grant 1 VP per Jovian tag while also having Jovian tags themselves, giving these cards a unique snowball potential).

'''Prerequisites:''' You'll see symbols for these in the upper-left corner, and a more detailed description written in parentheses in the card's text. You must meet the prerequisite to be able to play the card. Prerequisites are usually either: have temperature/oxygen/oceans above or below a certain level, or have a certain number of a certain type of tag in play.

'''Effects:''' Cards do what they say they do, which can be all sorts of things. Some cards require you to spend either resources or resource production as part of the action of playing them. For instance, Electro-Catapult requires you to reduce your energy production 1 step as part of playing the card. If you are unable to do so, you can't play the card yet.

'''Endgame victory points:''' If a card has these, it'll be in the bottom right inside of a little Mars symbol. These are added to your score at the end of the game. Some cards provide a fixed number, other time it will be variable based on certain conditions (for example, Immigration Shuttles gives 1 VP for every 3 cities in play).

==Endgame scoring==

'''Terraformer Rating:''' This forms your base score.

'''Greenery:''' At the end of the game you'll score one VP for each greenery tile you own.

'''Cities:''' Each city you own scores one point for each adjacent greenery, regardless of who owns that greenery. The same greenery tile can be scored by multiple cities.

'''Milestones:''' During play, you can spend $8 as your action to claim a milestone, if you meet its prerequisites. Each milestone is worth 5 VP. Each milestone can be claimed only once, and only three milestones total can be claimed, making it a race to get these. The five in the base game are Terraformer (have a TR of at least 35), Mayor (have at least 3 cities), Gardener (have at least 3 greenery), Builder (have at least 8 Building tags in play), and Planner (have at least 16 cards in your hand).

'''Awards:''' During play, you can use an action to fund an award. Funding the first award costs $8. Once one award is funded, funding the second costs $14. Funding the third costs $20, and no more can be funded after that. You can fund an award at any time, but unlike Milestones you aren't necessarily guaranteed to win it just because you funded it, so be careful about it. The winner and runner-up for each funded award is determined at the end of the game. The five to choose from are Landlord (whoever has the most tiles on the board), Banker (whoever has the most megacredit income on the income track (terraformer rating doesn't count)), Scientist (whoever has the most science tags in play), Miner (whoever has the most total steel and titanium in stock), and Thermalist (whoever has the most heat in stock). First place winner for each award scores 5 points, seconds place gets 2. Ties are friendly, but if multiple players take first place then no points are given for second.

'''Card VPs:''' Add up the VPs of all the cards you have played, including events. Some cards are negative.