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.

Star Wars Armada Corellian Conflict New Objectives!

Getting ready to travel with all the dogs and a pregnant wife following a birthday dinner/all day having folks over really eats up spare time. So, I hadn’t gotten a chance to really examine the new objectives Fantasy Flight spoiled with Corellian Conflict.  The fine folks over at the Concentrate Firepower blog have done a great job I think breaking down all of them, and I agree with a lot of their analysis.  I won’t break down each new objective, but go into a few spots of things I really like, and some areas where I do disagree a bit.

I’ll start off by saying I am a little disappointed so many of these objectives are so heavily tilted towards the second player.  I thought the core objectives were very well balanced in that second player would get a good boost but the first player would get something as well.  I’ve always hated the need to have a large bid in any game.  Bidding to ensure you’ve got first player in a DeMSU list is one thing.  Needing to bid high to make sure you aren’t constantly facing Planetary Ion Cannons or losing a huge amount of points to the other player I think limits builds quite a bit. On the other hand, I am excited that most of the objectives do help encourage folks to actually get into the middle and fight, rather than skirt the edges and play for a small win.

I do think the new objectives will add a big boost for the Interdictor though.  Grav Well projector is going to be huge for helping balance some of the objectives that stress positioning (Like Solar Corona and Navigational Hazards, as well as Blockade Run to either slow down or funnel those objective ships to you).  The Grav shift Reroute will also be nice to move possibly several obstacles to keep your opponent from getting to some objectives or in position to use Targeting Beacons effectively. 

Carrier fleets I think are going to love the Barrier objective, especially Rhymerball fleets.  It will allow you to keep your carriers in a safer spot until you’re ready to jump across and finish off ships after your bombers have softened them up for a turn or two.  It will also greatly help VSDs, in that you can place a large shield basically on one for their flanks.

A lot of folks have really disparaged the Fighter Ambush objective, and I agree to a point.  I think if you’re running an Imperial based bomber list it’s not going to be your choice.  You’ll lose too much deployment flexibility, and not gain enough of an advantage since TIE Bombers are fast anyways .  However, if you’re running YT-2400 spam this objective could potentially allow you to really put the hurt on a ship that is a bit isolated or deny an area right off the bat.  I can also see it being useful for B-Wings to get them further out to begin. 

Yetisburg

 Sometimes you see a game at the store and the name just begs you to buy it.  That game a couple weeks ago was Yetisburg, a civil war combat game with a fantasy setting twist.  The Union and the Confederacy square off with the aid of melee combat specialist Yetis and long range artillery Mastodons.  

Each player has access to identical armies, each with infantry and cavalry (regular and elite troopers, the elite being able to withstand more damage before needing to head to the hospital), Generals, Mastodons and Yetis.  Game play is pretty straightforward.  Each player has 5 columns of troops, 3 rows deep.  The first and second rows, the front and reserve lines, are face up and can make attacks or take advantage of abilities.  The third row is the supply line, face down cards that will be used to replenish the first two rows when when those cards are killed in combat.  Player's take turns attacking by playing a card from their hand, and ordering all troops of that card type to attack.  Results of the attack are created randomly, by drawing a meat token and flipping it over to see what direction the shot went, and what the range of the shot is.  Damage is dealt by counting the number of rows in the direction listed, according to the units ability. Regular troops all deal one damage while yetis and mastodons deal damage equal to the range. Killed troops are sent to the discard pile, and lines are replenished.  This goes back and forth until both players have either exhausted all their troops or both players pass their turn to attack. After that, players can use their Generals in the field to refresh troops for the next turn, swap positions, or bring troops back from the discard pile into the fight. The game continues on until someone cannot reinforce their lines from the supply line, or when drawing cards for their hand cant draw anymore.  

 Yeti combat is a little different from regular troops. They move to a row in between the players front lines called the trench.  Yetis crash through their own lines, killing friendly troops to get into the trench, and if their is an opposing Yeti in the trench for their column, they will knock them back to the opponents front lien, killing any troops that are there.  If a Yeti gets hit by friendly fire, they swap sides, going under control of your opponent until they get hit again.  Yetis only deal damage to the units directly next to them.

My game group has played this game now a few times and has come to a pretty much unanimous consensus: The game is a a fun, quickly paced short game, but the randomness doesn't leave you really wanting to play it again and again.  The combat mechanic makes it extremely likely you're going to on more than one occasion shoot your own troops, especially those at the left and right of them.  If there was a way to somehow get a little more strategic control of how units were shooting the game would be a bit better for replay value, especially since the artwork on the cards is so fantastic.