Game Review: Terraforming Mars

In a bit of a lull right now from Armada and IA, in part because my gaming group has been playing a lot of Terraforming Mars. Terraforming is a combination game of machine building and some small area control elements. In it, each player takes control of a corporation that is attempting to be the greatest Teraforming group on the Red Planet. In the base game, all of the corps are the same. We skipped playing that version, instead using the corporations that each have different starting money and abilities. All players are attempting to gather resources (Space Bucks, Steel, Titanium, Plants, Energy and Heat) to be able to play cards from their hands, or to perform terraforming actions on the planet.  Everyone is trying to raise the temperature, oxygen level, and place ocean tiles onto the planet.  Each turn a player can perform up to two actions, like playing cards, raising the temp with heat resources, or buying a forest to raise the oxygen level.  They can perform one action and then let the next player go, but if they pass they are done for that round (called a Generation in the game).  At the end of the game, the player with the most Victory Points is the winner.

The board is really nice

What we Liked:

The gameplay is pretty smooth.  Limiting things to two actions keeps the pace moving,and noone is sitting for long periods of time as happens far too often in machine building games.  Players are also kept engaged by the fact that they need to know the board state to know when they need to spend on upping one of the terraforming requirements this action phase before someone else can do so and gain an advantage.  Many of the cards also allow you to interact with other players, typically by destroying their resources or inhibiting their resource production.  The rules are also straightforward, and after a round or two everyone we've played with has picked it up and run with it.  It always makes it nice to be able to quickly explain what's going on in a game, and not need to spend several hours pointing out possible edge cases so a new player doesn't get tripped up.  The board art and the cards were another big plus to our group.  While not everyone might enjoy some of the goofier pictures, I found it added a bit of levity to the game.  The flavor text is also quite funny.

What we didnt like:
As well as the board is made, the player tableaus are pretty bad.  The issue is that the cubes that you use to track your production and the amount of each resource you have slide way too easily.  I cannot recount the times we slightly bumped a tableau reaching to place a tile that you're entire economy would be wrecked because you swept it all away.  We did solve this problem by purchasing the Broken Token's insert.  Its a beautiful set of inserts that make it much easier to track and keep the game organized.   It also struck several of us that some of the cards themselves were just better versions of several of the corporations.  Phoblog is one an example, as their ability to have Titanium count as one extra Space Buck is nice, except that the advanced alloys card does that, and allows your steel to also count as one extra.  It also was a little disappointing how quickly your machine can get de-railed in the game due to the card draw.  If youve managed to pump out Steel, but you dont draw any Building Tag cards, its completely worthless.  Some sort of galactic trade hub or the like would be nice, to sell off resources for some cost.

Overall Impression:
This has quickly become a favorite of our group.  Its fast enough to play within a couple hours with 3-4 people chatting and playing, but also has some very deep strategy behind it.  I do hope the exansion will help to even out some of the machine flow issues, but this game on its own is a winner.