Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition
September 11, 2021 | ≈ 569 words | Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition
Thoughts on Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition (DRAFT)
i tried terraforming mars the card game.
they took every aspect i enjoyed of the original and removed them. there is no tension in any aspect of the game because everyone can get as much TR as they want from increasing the tracks as long as at the start of the turn it was not maxed.
it creates a situation where if someone doesn’t max out a track all at once, the next turn someone will be able to take advantage of the fact that there’s still 1 space left on the track and raise it by 5 or 6 to get even more points from it.
it’s so silly and irredeemable that i house ruled that in cases like those we will take 2 actions at a time raising the tracks until it’s maxed.
also the rules say that if you are somehow able to play a card that will let you meet the requirements of a second card you are able to play in the same phase, you are not allowed to play that card because you did not meet the requirements at the beginning of the phase. this is incredibly stupid.
also the game came down to a tie and even the thought of how tie breakers works is incredibly silly. the rules say that the total count of money, plants, and heat is the tie breaker but you can convert cards in hand to 3 money each at any time in the game so tie breaker is actually how many cards you had in your hand before the game ended, which could theoretically be infinite because there’s no limit to your hand size during the round. the game is a farce.
oh right, the worst part of the transition was that they removed the awards and milestones, removing all aspects of the race for awards, and the goals for end game scoring
the game fixed no issues. the only real thing it did was make it very similar in flow to race for the galaxy since a major part of scoring was removed, a lot of cards have points on them now
the real issues i have are that to win you need the end game scoring cards, and the player who drew more of them wins
in race for the galaxy you would make concessions for what 6 cost end game scoring card to keep because the game is too short to play them all
but in the game you can choose to ignore terraforming mars and just keep building up end game scoring cards and let other players end the game without your help at all
this may be interesting in another game, because I definitely did not find it engaging here
but, i can definitely see that this game is taking the “good” part of terraforming mars and having a “streamlined” version of that game. you’ll still have people trying to make an “engine” and spending every turn “running engines” and also have people holding 10 cards in their hand trying to play them all. you can still play this game exactly the same as you did in the original and have a mediocre time.
But the full art cards in this game a fantastic change so it’s pretty much better than the original in every single way.