Editing Terraforming Mars

[[Category:Board Games]]

Terraforming Mars is a game in which you terraform Mars.

[[Image:1280px-Terraforming Mars spelplan vid slutet av en spelomgång.jpg|thumb|right|400px|Elon Musk's wet dream.]]

=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.

=Corporations=

You play as one of several corporations competing to amass the most prestige, political influence, Good Boy Points, or whatever the fuck victory points are supposed to represent in-universe, I dunno. The corporation you choose determines your starting resources and what special ability you get for the game. You'll want to take a good hard look at your starting draw before you choose; if there's no space tags or titanium production and yet you go with PhoboLog anyway then you get what's coming to you.

'''Beginner Corporation:''' NoobCorp doesn't have any ongoing special abilities, but they get to keep their entire starting draw for free--a $30 value. This gives them immense flexibility, hence why it's good for beginners. Players always have the option of taking one of the Beginner Corporations instead of the two others they were dealt, though this choice must be made before looking at your starting draw.

'''Teractor:''' Their special ability gives them a discount when playing cards with Earth tags, but perhaps the better reason for picking them is simply that they have the highest starting credits of any corporation in the game, and thus can build up a strong economy right at the outset if their starting draw has the cards to do so. The Earth tag discount is just a nice secondary bonus. Earth tag cards generally help you to get even more credits and save even more money, making Teractor a strong jack-of-all-trades corp that can pursue just about any kind of build or strategy. Want to get lots of cities and greenery on the ground? Teractor can do that. Want to focus instead on getting lots of heat and do rapid terraforming? Teractor can do that too.

'''Saturn Systems:''' Start with 1 production each on the megacredit and titanium tracks, and their ability increases their income further every time any player plays a Jovian tag. The obvious play for these guys is to build up a strong space infrastructure and then go for victory via Jovian tag VPs, putting themselves in the running for Banker and Miner in the process. Of course, you may also want some card-draw tools such as Restricted Area and Inventor's Guild to ensure you actually get the necessary cards into your hand, which will also put you in the running for Scientist. As for milestones, you're kinda fucked in that department, unless you get a strong enough titanium/discount-on-space-tags engine going that you can just spam space events until you qualify for Terraformer.

'''Interplanetary Cinematics:''' IC actually has the most starting wealth of any corporation in the game--$70 worth. However, over half that wealth is in steel rather than liquid cash, so if your starting draw doesn't have any building tags then good luck actually being able to spend any of it. Their special ability gives them a small refund whenever playing an event (red) card. Since event cards do all sorts of stuff--everything from terraforming to card-draws to adding VP tokens to animal cards--they aren't really pigeonholed into any particular strategy (other than that they'll probably want to be gunning for the Builder milestone), so play them however you like.

'''Thorgate:''' Starts with a respectable amount of cash as well as one energy production, and they get a discount whenever playing any card that has a power tag or when using the Power Plant standard project. They're very much dependent on drawing the right cards, but if they do they are quite "power"ful indeed. You can play a good cities build with them if you drew those cards, or go for rapid terraforming with cards like Water Splitting Plant and GHG Factories. Or Lady Luck might REALLY smile on you and give you a starting draw that includes Nuclear Power, Fusion Power, and Physics Complex, in which case your opponents might as well forfeit immediately.

'''[[Druid|Ecoline:]]''' Tree-hugging hippies that start with plants and plant production, and their hippie druid powers let them plant forests for only 7 plants instead of the usual 8. You want cards that help you get even more plants (since they're effectively more valuable to you than to other corps). You also want cards that build cities so you can maximize the VPs you get from all the greenery you'll be placing, and for that you'll obviously need some power as well. Ecoline's ground game is unrivaled; you WILL be going for Gardener and Landlord, and all of your opponents know it. Their predictability is something of a drawback, but the sheer strength of this corporation's abilities makes up for that.

'''PhobOLog:''' A high-risk, high-reward pick. These guys start with next to nothing in terms of liquid cash, but what they do start with is a fat stack of super-high-grade titanium. Any titanium they spend is worth 4 instead of the usual 3. So they can get a powerful space program going right from Turn 1, but this of course is entirely dependent on having the right starting draw. And of course, if they don't draw anything that gives titanium production, their special ability will become completely useless once they've shot their initial wad--which is bad, because their starting wealth even with the titanium factored in only totals $63, which is just slightly more than Teractor. On the other hand, if you were lucky enough to get dealt, say, Io Mining Industries and Vesta Shipyards, you can coast to an easy win as the sheer weight of your economic advantage will overpower anything your opponents can hope to do.

'''[[Techpriest|Inventrix:]]''' These nerds start with a science tag and draw three cards for free as their first action. What's more, they can treat the planet's temperature, oxygen, and water as being 2 points higher or lower when playing cards that have prerequisites related to those parameters. If Ecoline has the most predictable game of any of the corporations, then Inventrix is perhaps the least predictable. Your opponents have no idea what the hell's in your hand or what the fuck you're going to do, which makes it rather difficult for them to foil your [[Just as planned|keikakus]]. Go for whatever strategy you like; their abilities don't inherently favor any particular gameplan over any other, though you might want to take advantage of that free science tag by playing a few more.

'''CrediCor:''' According to the flavor text, this company is run by Not!Elon Musk. Appropriately, you start out filthy rich and your special ability encourages you to do big, expensive, flashy projects. Make the most of your starting wealth and get the ball rolling with an expensive-but-powerful card or two that'll leave you with a strong economy or early terraforming engine. It is worth noting that CrediCor's "get a refund when playing expensive projects" ability also applies to the Greenery and City standard projects, and if you can get the Standard Technology card, which their ability stacks with, then standard projects can actually become a viable alternative to getting cities/greenery from cards. Of course you're free to pursue other strategies as well; their ability works with anything, as long as it's expensive.

'''Mining Guild:''' Start off on the poor side, but they've got steel, steel production, and an ability to get even more steel production whenever they place a tile anywhere there's metal deposits. You start with TWO building tags, and all that steel is just encouraging you to play even more. Take a wild guess what milestone you're aiming for. You want to place lots of tiles which in turn means that you will be getting lots of steel production. Take a wild guess what awards you're aiming for. That said, you aren't necessarily locked into playing a cities-and-greenery game like you might initially think: there are plenty of other types of tiles you can place, and many of the cards with building tags are great for a rapid terraforming strategy, like Aquifer Pumping and Mohole Area. Really, it all depends on what cards you draw.

'''Tharsis Republic:''' Gets to place a free city at the start of the game, and any time ANY player places a city (except for Phobos Space Haven and Ganymede Colony) their income increases. They also get cash back if they're the one who placed the city. This corporation's mere presence in the game causes a shift in the entire meta. They're going to place lots of cities, obviously. So other players want to get cards like Pets and Rover Construction to take advantage of that. Then they see that Tharsis Republic is putting down some greenery to make his cities worth more points, so other players decide "well I've already got Pets and Rover Construction, and if I build my own city next to his greenery I can take advantage of it and block him off at the same time". Suddenly everyone's in a race to get the best real estate, the Landlord award is funded by the second generation, and the efforts to terraform Mars end up covering it in concrete and smog. But Tharsis Republic stands at the top at the end of it all, because now they're richer than God, have secured Mayor and Banker, and they just bought every victory point card in the game. Many players consider them overpowered, and even if you don't agree you can certainly understand why one would think that.

'''Helion:''' Starts with heat production, and their special ability lets them spend heat as money. How does one turn heat into money exactly? [[Wizard|Magic]], obviously. This wizardry presents the Helion player with a unique dilemma: should I use my heat to increase the temperature, or use it as money to buy more cards? In any case, one thing is clear: you want all the heat production. All of it. You want Soletta. You want GHG Factories. You want Underground Detonations. You want to fund Thermalist before someone else funds an award first. Steel and titanium production are also useful, since most of the cards that produce heat have either building or space tags. Energy production also works since that turns into heat. For milestones, you can go for whatever you want. Use your heat as heat to progress towards Terraformer, or use it as money to get the other milestones. Foil your opponents' plans by using your vast reserves of alchemy-produced wealth to beat them at their own awards. Win every single point tally from TR to cities/greenery to card VPs. Jump on the table and dab. Have all your friends swear to never play with you again.

'''United Nations Mars Initiative:''' Technically not a corporation but rather the agency of Earth's world government tasked with overseeing the entire terraforming effort. They start with average funds and an Earth tag. Their ability lets them spend a small sum to raise their Terraformer Rating provided they previously did something else during the same generation that raised their TR as well. Naturally, maximizing the utility of this means you want to do something that raises your TR at least once per generation. This is harder than it sounds, especially if you aren't drawing any good cards. You may find yourself using Standard Projects more often than you'd like to. One option is to build up a card-drawing engine with things like Business Contacts and Development Center to increase the chances you'll get what you need. TR translates to income during the production phase, so once you hit your stride you'll become pretty wealthy, but it will take some doing to get to that point. If you're fortunate, you'll draw Aquifer Pumping or Equatorial Magnetizer and some power tags.