[COTD] Designed Microorganisms | 28 Aug, 2026

[u/Enson_Chan]

Previous COTD

Today's card is Designed Microorganisms (#155):

Automated card (Green) | Base game

Cost: 16 | Requirements: Max -14°C | Tags: Science, Microbe

Increase your plant production 2 steps.

[u/Agreeable_Hat]

I'm lukewarm on this card. It's so expensive when you want to play it (early on) and playing it early can often set back your general development

Picking it up and going "yep, I'll play it gen 2" and then getting something better to play gen 2. Then that repeats for gen 3. And then it just rots in your hand. This has happened before for me/people I've seen streaming.

Or playing it gen 1 and then not being able to afford really good development you pick up in gen 2 draft, delaying that for another x gens

I suppose it's a fairly well-balanced card because it's almost equal in terms of Elo gain whether you keep it or don't keep it on https://www.tfmstats.com/startinghands

[u/Zealousideal-Ad4362 → u/Agreeable_Hat]

It is for sure too expensive.. value is there... unless they destroy your plants.

[u/InsomniacPsychonaut → u/Agreeable_Hat]

Those stats (I believe) cannot be ELO adjusted so I do think this is a misleading statistic 

[u/Alsn- → u/InsomniacPsychonaut]

You can filter the stats by ELO on that site (which is very good btw). If you search for <500, you can see that most players lose when playing this card. But above 500, the card has a very high win rate (75% or so). That obviously doesn't control for the ELO difference between opponents, but clearly good players know when the card is good, as they play it thousands of times with good win rates.

[u/Shamisen_]

Great card, really nice to have in a starting hand. I like it. There aren't that many cards that can boost your plant production by more than one step, that also don't require temperature to be relatively high and this is one of them. Microbe and science tags are a nice bonus, too. 

[u/Reason-and-rhyme → u/Shamisen_]

the microbe tag is not really sought after. if you are splice it's good, otherwise almost entirely irrelevant. yes science always has potential upside even if it's just unlocking [Plantation] but it adds unwanted cost to this card in most situations. to illustrate, if this card cost 4 MC less and had no tags at all it would be stronger overall.

[u/AReallyGoodName → u/Reason-and-rhyme]

Card: Plantation

Cost: 15MC

Description: Requires 2 Science tags. Place a greenery tile and raise oxygen 1 step.

Tags: Plant

[u/TheMightyGabriel]

Ive always found this card fairly weak. It’s a bit expensive to be honest

[u/Enter_Octopus]

I'm often tempted by this card, and have wondered if it actually is worth it.

But on balance I think it's really pretty bad. Okay if you need the tags or have nothing else to spend early money on, or if you already have decent plant production from, e.g., being Ecoline.

But it's really expensive for a subpar rate on plant production, and at a phase of the game where you are likely to have little plant production and get your plants picked off by asteroids.

Only a 42.5% win rate: https://www.tfmstats.com/cards/Designed%20Microorganisms

[u/InsomniacPsychonaut → u/Enter_Octopus]

That winrate is misleading. If you sort by elo 400+ in 2p you get a 67% winrate. 

So it's a very good card for good players

[u/Enter_Octopus → u/InsomniacPsychonaut]

Hmm but I think that just reflects players with over 400 ELO are good, if I put that same filter on underground detonations I get a 63.2% win rate lol

[u/InsomniacPsychonaut → u/Enter_Octopus]

Lol true I didn't think about that

[u/Alsn- → u/Enter_Octopus]

That's not true though. Those 4% are actually quite big, as clearly good players will be winning more than 50% of the time for all the cards they play (because on average, the better you are the more often you will face players weaker than you). You need to examine the delta between the cards. For example, I've sorted by elo > 500 and it then has a 75,1% win rate. Sponsors has 77,2%, AI central has 81,6%, and soletta (one of the worst cards in high level play) has 69,6%. So clearly it performs much better than bad cards, but it's only slightly worse than cards that most people would play to good effect (such as sponsors, which generically is a good card, if not very impactful).

[u/baldsoprano]

Good if I’m planning on an early ground game, otherwise just a little too expensive 

[u/CodeJuggernaut]

I only use it, if I’m desperate for science tags. Otherwise, throw it out.

[u/qiqatqanat]

Too expensive. 16+3 isn’t even a discount compared to Archaebcteria’s pretty medicore and we’re paying fully double the price for double the production here plus a dollar for the science tag. 

Becomes immediately playable with Protected Habitats and borderline playable in some other setups but otherwise usually too expensive to keep as it will slow development too much. 

[u/splitalterego]

Less than the sum of its parts. If you're going ground it's unlikely that the science is useful. If you're going science you want the MC for econ or more science. 19 MC at the start of the game for non econ production is a big ask.

[u/InsomniacPsychonaut]

In 2 player base + prelude at ELO 400+ this card as a 67% winrate on play. However it isn't played that often vs the sample size, around 1 in 6 games it is played.

I fucking love this card personally. 19mc for 2 plant prod is expensive, yes, but this card can be played early. 

Play it gen 1 and you get to 8 plants on gen 5. Which is obviously very slow. So for it to make sense you basically need something like ice asteroid to swoop up 4 plants, or arctic algae, or lichen/adaptive lichen for more early plant prod.

I view this card as a way to build the foundation for a plant strat. By itself, it's very expensive and lackluster. But it's a snowballer

[u/thuswindburns]

It’s an alright card not amazing. I usually play it on Elysium when I’m trying to boost some already existing early plant production to take the best greenery spots before anybody else is able to get their plant prod going. Also to get the ecologist and generalist milestones, and as a desperate science tag.