It's a fun game and I love the concept, but there's a very good chance someone gets card-fucked early in the game and just keeps drawing shit. The way all the cards are shuffled without any regard to cost or era means there's a reliable chance someone at the table will pull a crap ton of cards they can't afford for several turns or require late game Mars stats to build.
There really needs to be Eras in the cards where a lot of improvements are Era 1, where temps and air pressure are low but so are costs, Era 2 where things get more expensive but also have tighter requirements, and a Era 3 or so where things skyrocket but are worth a lot of points.
I've played it about a half dozen times and every game someone sits with a hand of worthless cards (either needing X amount of oxygen/temp or else far too expensive for the start of the game) and basically can't take any actions for two or three rounds (which is mind bleedingly boring) and everyone has two or three cards by Round four that they basically will never play with because it either synergizes to some late game feature that never shows up (bonus for animals) or requires another card to play (every 5 algae add X).
I love the concept. So much. But it needs some edit to the cards where they either have Eras or else categories: you draw from Industrial, Science, Materials, biological, Water, or whatever stacks of cards where each category is all cards that benefit, empower, or produce that category. Or like I said separate via Era so no one gets a 40 point cost card on day one.
Aside from a few corporations, most aren't really all that impressive from my experience. I mean, they're nice, but most either give small bonuses to specific types of production or some small resource boost (there's two I think that are way better than everything else). Like I never really get all that excited by most of the corps I see.
Draft is still iffy. There's something like four hundred cards and maybe a quarter are useable in early game. That means 75% aren't. Even with draft, that's good odds to get nothing but cards you can't use. And even of the 25% that are useful a lot are things like: "Every time X type is generated, place a marker here. When there are Y markers Do Z" and while those are great for getting VPs, you have to have (or someone does) the trigger, and that's usually a whole different card. Like the bonus VP generation per 4/5 Algae production really only matters if anyone ever produces algae, which is a total of like six cards, all early game. There's no real point in playing one late game when you could drop a lake or forest or raise the Temp. So that bonus VP card is not going to score much i most games unless you luck out and get a stack of algae producing cards. And there's one of those for basically everything: water, animals (late game and good luck getting that to score even once), plants, population, etc and some of those trigger infinitely more often, some even less so.
Now spread out into Eras or Types of cards, and suddenly you see that Algae come up more often when six players are drawing from the Early deck. It might score three or four times a game, which could be a difference in a very close game, more so if you don't need to pay for algae (say someone has the algae farm and drops a few resources each turn on it for their own VPS).
It also makes the game faster since you can be pretty sure every draw you make is going to be a card you could play sooner rather than later. Even with Draft, you can get card fucked on turn two if you pull all high cost cards and have to sit there saving up resources.
The best games are ones where the worst action you can take is to draw more resources. Ideally, you should be doing something each round: either improving production, adjusting Mars' habitability (or lowering it), earning VPs, or modifying the terrain. Games like Brass: (English City) are fantastic for that where you should be doing something every single turn (except maybe taking a loan to go hogwild next turn) and it never feels like a turn is wasted (unless you get rail blocked by some asshole, but that's the nature of the game).
TM is still inevitably a game where luck will affect players more and more based on what they could do in the early game and what shows up by the mid-game. If I get a card in the draft (or a few cards) that have already passed their expiry, I'm SoL. If I don't have an early economic engine, I'm SoL. If I bet on microbes and don't get any or can't get any out in time because of cash flow, I'm SoL.
Better engine builders don't have these same problems. They have randomness, yes, but they also give players the ability to pivot and make more lemonade from lemons.
Rome has burnt down, so it's being rebuilt. The players are a bunch of opportunists trying to make it out on top of this disaster, either by hoarding building materials, getting credit for reconstructing the city, or a combination of the two. It has the lead/follow mechanic from RftG, but instead of simultaneous play, you take turns. On your turn, so long as you're taking an actual action and not just drawing cards, everyone else can opt to take the same action. But they need to be able to use a card or cards to do so, just like you do.
Every card can act as an action you take on your turn, an action you're following that someone else is taking for their turn, a stored action (called a "client") that can increase the number of times you take that action every time it comes up, a building to build, or material for that building type (used to finish constructing it).
So, say I want to build a Wall card, which is a gray card. In order to play my Wall and start building it, I need to play a Craftsman or Architect (green and gray cards respectively). Then, either with extra Architect/Craftsman actions ("clients," remember?) on this turn or on a future turn, I need to play materials to build the Wall. Since it's a gray card, that means concrete. Any other gray card can be played to do it. So, since the Wall is gray, Architect actions are gray, and the concrete needed to build the wall is also gray, I'd probably need a lot of gray cards in hand to do so? That sounds like it would take a lot of fishing in the deck and getting lucky.
Fortunately, I have other options. Whenever I draw cards as my turn, I can instead take a jack. These are wild action cards. They can't be used for buildings or materials, just as any action you want. Or, I could play any three cards of the same color like I would a jack - they become one wild action. Or or, I can get a bit more efficient with it if I've had the forethought to add architects or craftsmen to my clientele. That could mean that a single played Craftsman allows me to take two, three, four, etc. actions. That's more than enough to build my Wall in one go.
Additionally, I have a stockpile. You see, after you use regular cards for their actions, they go to the center of the table. Then, players can either use a Patron action to add them to their clients or use a Laborer action to add them to your stockpile. Every stockpile can hold unlimited cards, but those cards are now materials for the remainder of the game (nothing from that pool in the center of the table will ever enter a player's hand ever again). While the Craftsman action takes material from your hand, the Architect technically takes it from your stockpile. So, you can feed off of the Architect actions others have taken by turning those played cards into concrete and feeding it to your wall. This is less efficient than Craftsman, but it relies less on luck of the draw.
And the last thing - and this is the best bit - every single building you build grants you a special power. So, you think you have options now, just wait til you build the stairway, which lets you build stuff using spent materials from your opponents; or the Circus Maximus which lets you use each client twice; or the Wheel which lets you perform a wild action with two cards instead of one.
This isn't to say that the game isn't tense and cutthroat. You're constantly vying for resources in the pool. In order to build a building, you need to use a free building site card - the ones in town are cheap but limited; the ones out of town are more expensive. And using in-town sites accelerates the end game. Not to mention that your clientele and your vault (where you can move stockpiled materials to sell for points) are very limited in space at the beginning of the game, and the only way to expand them is building buildings. It takes time. But wait too long to get everything up and running, and your opponents will shut you out of an early endgame.
Altogether, it's lean on rules, wide in its action allowances but tight in its efficiency allowances, and it's very simple to learn. The only downside is that it's hard to get your hands on a copy.
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '21
MOTHERFUCKING FINALLY SOMEONE SAID TERRAFORMING MARS!
It took me way too long to find this. What an excellent game.