Moonwalking Mars - a Terraforming Mars Board Game Review

Despite it's relative age, Terraforming Mars manages to stay atop...

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I remain one of the few that is... unimpressed. As you say, I've seen all this before, so there was nothing to really pique my interest to the point of saying: "Let's try that again." Despite the outer space trappings, the gameplay is still somewhere between dry and mechanical. That criticism gets leveled at Knizia designs quite often, too (i.e. theme being tacked on to an otherwise faceless engine.) But the difference with Knizia is that there are a lot of layers to be peeled back, even from initial plays. TM didn't give me that feeling. It's an engine builder and one not entirely dissimilar from many other engine builders. Given the choice, I'd play 51st State every time; mostly because there's more theme, there's more direct interaction between players, and it won't run one hour per player.

Caveat: I've only played TM three times and two of those were teaching games (one using the intro corps, another using regular), so it's possible I don't have enough experience with it to understand some of the more enjoyable nuances (I was just making this point on Reddit yesterday to people claiming that they didn't like CE after one(!) play) but then I think about sitting down to discover those nuances and I immediately think of a half-dozen other things that I'd rather spend three hours with. [shrug]

Not only am I unimpressed, I would go as far as to say it has completely fallen apart for me. It’s been a couple years since I parted with my copy, so it’s not quite so fresh for me to adequately explain/defend my points, but there were two reasons.

1). The appeal of the game is that you put these cards together that give you combos and that’s satisfying because it makes you feel smart. That’s cool if you enjoy that feeling, but know it’s an illusion. So much of it works together, and to be honest, it has to because the deck is so massive. It’s not like RftG where you have more agency over searching for specific cards that fit you engine. You’re not going to see everything, the game is too long and the deck too big for that to happen, it just comes down to what you get, what you decide to play and the order you play it in. Some of those choices will help, but none of them will actually break you. This is why I can’t shake the feeling of it being a farce and what it’s really satisfying is something much more shallow, and yet the hobby at large seems to be treating it like that’s not the case. It is, full stop.

2). The second reason kind of spins off of the first, and that’s that playing against the systems in place is really where the competition is. There’s some on the board, but it’s so insignificant to the card based engine building, which, as stated in reason one, isn’t actually as clever as the game would like you to think it is.

It’s also just...dull. For what it’s doing, I’d rather play OG RftG, even with that being a game I’ve moved on from.

Agreed with comments, not a fan of this one. Would much rather play RftG or a shorter tableau builder that doesn't take so much time and isn't so slow.

I'll pile on: played it once, even won the game, have zero interest in ever playing it again. Resounding meh.

Well, I still like although I haven't played it recently since a guy in my current game group hates it. I like the theme, and I like the gameplay angle of trying to make the most with the cards you have. The lack of control is a feature for me and I prefer not to play with drafting. It can have a lot of variance, but it's a medium-length game at most so it doesn't bug me.

im fine with a high variance card game of making lemonade from whatever bullshit you draw into. im less fine with that same concept spread across a 4-5+ hour game, which is what TM is every time i ever play it or see it played at a meetup.

All very valid points. A simple review at this point in its "lifetime" seemed a bit pointless. All gatherings seem to have that one person who hates it, a few others who always want to play it. I attempted to try to nail down the appeal while acknowledging the backlash. TM gets a fair share of "Nickleback" hate, where people seem to dislike it because it's cool to dislike it. I enjoy the discussion here with actual reasons for not wishing to play it.

Terraforming Mars is too damn long. Like it's a perfectly good card game, but it doesn't offer anything that RftG or its ilk can't do. Hell, I've played San Juan over 100 times and I'd rather keep adding to that tally than spend an indeterminate number of hours on TM and live in constant fear of that awful player board getting nudged.

I like it because it gives you a lot of potential strategies, and a lot of specialized corporations to implement the strategies. There's enough luck in the card draws to make them interesting, but not so much luck that it's all about drawing the good cards. Of course these qualities aren't unique to TM, but it seems to hit the sweet spot in a lot of them.

The in-game playmats suck - there's no getting around that.

The game can get long if you're new or if nobody wants to end the game. There's 226 (I think) cards in the game, and you'll have to read each one you draw until you play the game a few times. 2 hours is about average.

I've been playing it for 2 years now, and I'm not bored of it yet. The plan for tonight is to paint some miniatures, but I might drag TM out instead.

Ah_Pook wrote: im fine with a high variance card game of making lemonade from whatever bullshit you draw into. im less fine with that same concept spread across a 4-5+ hour game, which is what TM is every time i ever play it or see it played at a meetup.

That is way too long; our games clock in well under 3 hours.

I agree, which is why I don't ever want to play Terraforming Mars again. Also, 3 hours is still way longerr than I would want. If TM was
was a consistent 90 minute game it would be totally fine.

This is a game I never crave to play, but enjoy it when I do. I actually look at the card art and the capabilities my company generates and get a picture of how I'm contributing. None of that available in Race for the Galaxy or others in this ilk.

Don't mind the playtime now that the rest of my group is good with it as well.

I'm looking into prelude and, possibility, the 1st player bumps temp or oxygen one notch at the beginning of a generation variant to shorten game play time. But I need to research the latter.