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Terraforming Mars
Board Games 2611
Trash the Next Planet
(Updated: January 04, 2020)
Rating 
 
4.0
When the first wind-blown fast food wrapper slapped across a faceplate they knew they were making real progress.

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If you're stumbling in here because you read some reports of this game taking five hours and are currently speechless with apoplexy (like I was) then know that the game actually has a clock—it's just that it's hand cranked by the players themselves. Or not. So... with 5p, a hefty dose of AP, and no one interested in turning the crank, yeah, you're looking down the barrel of an epic-game game day burned to play a mild, engine-building, tile-placement euro. (MAXIMUM SHUDDER)

So play with three (four max) who play quickly and understand that moving the game forward at a good clip toward a satisfactory end is playing well (rather than stalling it out and gumming it up) and it's a pretty good time.

With the right people who play snappy I dig it pretty hard as an emergent narrative / storytelling engine.

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Here's the deal: Every game is only interesting for so long; good games tend to finish inside this time limit while bad games tend to ignore it (and routinely blow well past it). And so we play with:

- no drafting
- no Corporate Era cards
+ everyone starting at 1 production in all areas
+ Prelude cards
+ "World Government Terraforming" from Venus Next (at the end of each generation the 1st player advances one of the global parameters one step, ignoring all bonuses)

to keep the game peppy, and to leave us wanting more.
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