Terraforming Mars: A new life in the off-world colonies

Some day his descent into the solar system may be told. He saw Kynarth and Yuggoth on the rim, passed close to Neptune and glimpsed the hellish white fungi that spot it, learned an untellable secret from the close-glimpsed mists of Jupiter and saw the horror on one of the satellites, and gazed at the Cyclopean ruins that sprawl over Mars’ ruddy disc.

- H.P. Lovecraft: Through the Gates of the Silver Key

Back in 2019, we had the distinct pleasure of being introduced to one of the best board games in the world: Terraforming Mars. We also tried the Prelude expansion, which we quite liked and would recommend. Back then, though, table space limited our experiments with other expansions. We did get to try the double-sided Hellas and Elysium board, which I'd also recommend, but now that we've moved and have a larger table, it was time to try some more stuff. And then, of course, the pandemic happened, meaning an enforced break from board games. But we did eventually get around to trying out a couple more expansions!

Venus Next

First up, Venus. This expansion adds a small Venus board, a new award and milestone, and some new corporations and project cards, which mostly center on terraforming Venus. A couple of the cards can just be added to the base game, but most of the Venus cards focus on an unfortunately named new resource type: floaters. Basically, terraforming Venus is just like terraforming Mars, but instead of three different variables, there's just an overall terraforming percentage. You can invest resources into increasing it, which gets you terraform rating but isn't necessary to finish the game.

Here's the setup for our first game with Venus Next; you can see the Venus board near the top of the image.

We didn't use the "solar phase" rule that speeds up the game, and even with one player who was new to the game, we spent a little over four hours, which is pretty much the same as our average non-Venus game. Also, now that our board game collection is more easily accessible, we finally got to use some proper counters for the Security Fleet card.

All in all, Venus Next is perhaps a surprisingly anodyne expansion. It doesn't detract from the base game or make it particularly longer; you can pretty much just ignore it if you're not doing anything with floaters or Venus tags. But it doesn't really add much to the game either. Nobody in our gaming group actively disliked it, and now that I own it, I'm probably going to set it up with the base game in the future; but I think most of us wouldn't actually bother with buying it.

So I don't know; if you feel like you might like a Venus expansion to Terraforming Mars, it won't hurt the game, but to be honest I think I'd be fine without it.

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Colonies

Much later, we were able to try Colonies. 

Colonies adds a whole bunch of, well, space colonies. Each player gets a trade fleet, which they can send to trade with the colonies for resources. Resources pile uo in the colonies over time, and reset when a trade fleet arrives. You can also establish colonies of your own, which means you get a cut whenever someone else trades there. Here's the colonies in our game, right above the Venus board.

Colonies adds additional complexity but provides extra resources, and again the two seem to even out pretty well in terms of game length. Most of our table liked it, but I have to be honest: I didn't.

The colonies make a difference to the whole game, because they can substantially accelerate your resource production. Whereas you can pretty much ignore the Venus board, as we did in our game, you ignore the colonies at your peril. I think this is a bad thing, because Colonies detracts from the attractive simplicity of Terraforming Mars, especially in the early game.

It also wreaks havoc with the theme; whereas without it, you can still have the feeling of a sort of bare-bones start on a barely inhabited planet, with Colonies your first moves include sending your interplanetary trading fleet to Titan or whatever.

So I think that both thematically and through the added complexity, Colonies actually detracts from the base game. I wouldn't recommend it.

Colonies also comes with a lot of cards that you can use with the base game, and with Venus Next as well, so even if, like me, you end up not liking the colonies, there's still something here for you.

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There's one more expansion left that we haven't tried: Turmoil. It brings party politics to Terraforming Mars in the form of a council, and to be honest, no-one in our gaming group is really interested in it. So I think that means we've arrived at our Terraforming Mars setup: corporate era, Prelude, optional Venus Next.

Finally, I just want to repeat myself: Terraforming Mars is probably the best board game I have ever played. If you've never tried it, do.