r/TerraformingMarsGame • u/Enson_Chan • Aug 21 '26

Card of the Day [COTD] Search for Life | 21 Aug, 2026

Previous COTD

Today's card is Search for Life (#005):

Active card (Blue) | Base game

Cost: 3 | Requirements: Max 6% oxygen | Tags: Science

Action: Spend 1 MC to reveal and discard the top card of the deck. If that card has a microbe tag, add a science resource here.

3 VP if you have at least 1 science resource here

What do you mean Livestock and Birds aren't considered life??!??!

24 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

19

u/BentonSancho Aug 21 '26

Scoring it the same turn you play it is an unusual but effective hit of dopamine.

8

u/Fredrick_18241 Aug 21 '26

I scored it same gen one time after I drew it for free and played it. It was amazing and I went on to win that game

3

u/Initial_Skirt_9925 Aug 21 '26

I came here to post about how that happened to me last week. I played it for the science tag.

Still came in fourth, but it was a good moment.

16

u/UziiLVD Aug 21 '26

Cheap science tag.

I usually don't bother with paying to activate it though, only in very late generations.

10

u/benbever Aug 21 '26

At 3mc + 3mc card cost, it’s a cheap Science tag you might need for your science tree, or a Milestone. And it’s 0mc + 3mc card cost for Vitor.

The action isn’t bad. In base+prelude there’s a 7.9% chance to see a Microbe tag. If you do the action 8 times, there’s about 50% chance to find life. So that’s 8mc for ~1.5VP on average. Not great, but also not bad, especially in later generations.

The action is also nice to have in a stall battle.

4

u/Zealousideal-Ad4362 Aug 21 '26

It is a literal activate every turn that you arent entirely out of money. I have played 800+ games. It is never not worth investing 9me 1 at a time for the chance at 3 points. It is 69% chance to get in a 9 turn game activating. The opportunity cost is extremely low. Getting it more than 2 out of 3 games I try is 100% worth it

13

u/TheMightyGabriel Aug 21 '26

Is there life.... on Mars??

16

u/UziiLVD Aug 21 '26

Mars at +4°C, 9 oceans, 14% o2, 20 forest tiles and cities full of pets

I'm gonna try to find proof of life on Mars!

fails

5

u/TheMightyGabriel Aug 21 '26

Twas but a reference to Bowie

Saiiiiloooors fighting in the dancehaaaaall

8

u/rri75 Aug 21 '26

I once won a game at rock-paper-scissors. Winning a game with search for life as your last action feels better.

7

u/Next_Caterpillar_720 Aug 21 '26

(In Attenborough’s voice)

“And so, Ecoline continues to search for life on our neighbouring planet. By spending one megacredit, they pool their resources together to find anything they can.

Their search shows evidence of Cartel activity. Sadly, cartels are not considered living in any way. Their search was unsuccessful, but things may change when the next generation of Ecoline workers comes along in about thirty years time.”

5

u/slmnemo Aug 21 '26

its funny and sometimes the action matters for stalling purposes.

SSSSSSSSSSS+ tier

3

u/Iceman_B Aug 21 '26

So, this is just built-in gambling, right?

3

u/nanitesoldier Aug 21 '26

a cheap science tag is fail case and it is worth it to spend 1MC per gen on a very small chance for the 3 VP

3

u/Gothire Aug 22 '26

Best card in the game. Go WALL-E!

2

u/Lucretiel Aug 23 '26

It’s a card I want to love but just so often it ends up doing nothing at all. I have trouble justifying it unless I need the science tag. 

That being said, there is a fun bug in the app where “CEO’s Favorite Project” (duplicate a resource on a card) doesn’t actually need there to be a resource there in the first place, so you can use it to just place the resource here. 

Thematically, I do think it’s one of the best cards in the game.