2-player Terraforming Mars

I did a 2-player game of Terraforming Mars with Allen. I have played the game before, but this was my first time playing it with just two. It turned out to be decent. Allen's copy is a deluxe or improved version, so the components are nicer. 

We used the Prelude expansion, which is a simple one. You draw four bonus cards during setup and pick two. They give you bonuses so that you have a quicker start. I chose cards (top right) which gave me steel and titanium production, which were very handy. When playing building cards and space cards respectively, their costs could be reduced by spending steel and titanium respectively. This saved me a lot of money and allowed me to play some strong cards early in the game. 

When picking a company, one of my options was this one (top left) with a Chinese character in its logo. This character was similar to my Chinese name (same pronunciation, slightly different writing). I picked this company purely because of that. Its strength was in building construction, which worked well with my Prelude card - the steel production one. The company name Cheung Shing is likely based on Cantonese pronunciation, and it means The Great Wall of China. 

The player board is indented. The tracks for resource production are designed in such a way that the cubes used for tracking fit snugly and don't easily get knocked off the tracks. 

I played those high values cards (20+ and 30+ costs) quite early in the game. My steel and titanium production helped me tremendously. These cards were powerful. I continued to focus on steel and titanium production. I also boosted my energy and heat production. Terraforming Mars is ultimately about just three things - increasing oxygen, raising temperature, and creating oceans. The energy and heat I produced helped greatly in raising the temperature, which gave me both victory points and regular income. Every round, leftover energy was automatically converted to heat. I was hot hot hot! 

Oceans are created usually by playing specific cards. They can also be created by spending money. In fact all three terraforming actions can be performed by spending money, just that the costs are high. In the early game, you probably want to spend your money on improving your company, so that you can more efficiently perform the terraforming actions. 

The oxygen level is increased by planting forests. In our game, Allen specialised in this. His company was good at this, and he also focused his efforts on improving this capability. He was the green guy. 

At this point my steel production was 3, titanium 5, energy 6 and heat 11! I did not produce any trees though. 

I was green, and Allen red. On the board he had now planted three forests (green tiles). Our ocean making went fast. We already had six on the board out of a total of nine ocean tiles. We had reached halfway on the temperature track. Our oxygen level was still low though. I was hopeless in tree production so Allen was the only guy pumping oxygen into the atmosphere so far. 

Allen had grabbed the first milestone now (top left section). Each milestone is 5VP, which is significant. The milestone he won was the one requiring three forests. 

At this point we had placed all the ocean tiles and also achieved the temperature target of +8C. What was left was the oxygen level, and we were only halfway there. Three milestones had been claimed (upper left). Of the five available, only three can be claimed in any game. In our game, Allen claimed two and I claimed one. At the lower left, I had activated three awards. Similar to milestones, only 3 out of 5 awards can be activated in any one game. However, awards are not evaluated immediately. They are only evaluated at game end. Certainly when I decided to activate an award, I picked a category which I was strong in and would likely win by the time the game ended. Unfortunately I only managed to win 2 out of the 3 awards I activated. I tied with Allen on the third one. He managed to catch up before the game ended. However it was still worthwhile that I activated that award. Had I not done so, he might have activated a different one, which compared tile ownership on the board, and he would certainly win it. He had many more forests and cities than me. 

Normally you can't build cities adjacent to other cities. However Allen had a card which bypassed that rule, allowing him to create one clump of connected cities. At this time the game was near the end. Although the oxygen level was still 5 steps away from the goal, this would be covered very quickly because our companies were very powerful by this time. 

I had a strong advantage in the early game, being able to build a solid engine quickly. However, Allen's board position was much better than mine. In the end when we counted our scores, I won by a slim margin. I was lucky my cards scored me some extra points. Some cards do that. Allen had few cards worth points. In fact he had one card which cost him points. 

The last time I played Terraforming Mars, I remembered it being complicated. This time it didn't, and I don't think it was because I was now familiar with the game. I had actually forgotten most of the rules and had to reread. What helped was rereading my previous blog post. I had summarised for myself that ultimately the game was just about doing those three terraforming actions. So this seemingly complex game was not that intimidating after all. 

Two-player Terraforming Mars worked pretty well. I was a little worried whether it would be less fun. There is little direct player interaction. You do need to race to claim good spots on the board, but you don't often hurt your opponents. Most of the time you are coordinating your own company operations to upgrade yourself in order to terraform more efficiently. The game has same cooperative game vibes, because everyone is working on making Mars habitable together.