Let's Terraform: MARS

Great recap, thanks. I passed on the pre order but will probably pick it up at some point. I got Colonies but never played with it, after reading the rules it looked like an expansion too far, mind of like Race for the Galaxy's final expansion that added the Prestige mechanic that really unhinged the game IMO. The idea of pairing it with just the base game makes a lot of sense vs the throwing the entire shebang out and see what unfolds. Does it expand the playing time once you get the hang of it ? Sounds like it might.

Msample wrote: Does it expand the playing time once you get the hang of it ? Sounds like it might.

Colonies? Yes, very much so.
Turmoil? I want to say yes but tbh the handful of games we have played have been in the same time range as before. Caveat is that we only play with two, I can imagine Turmoil becoming more complex with more players due to an increased number of competing stakeholders in the committee.

I would recommend adding Prelude before or alongside any other expansion as it gives you a fast start and allows you to form a strategy before the game even begins.

The dual layer boards stretch goal(?) made backing Turmoil worth it even if the expansion itself wasn't. I'm ambivalent about Colonies. I like the idea, and think it would probably work better with more rather than fewer players, but the jury's still out for me as far as whether Colonies is a distraction or I'm just distracted by it. Turmoil was sold as an expert expansion, and I wasn't in the dark about what I'd be getting with this (and I like "political"-type games).

My wife and I did end up playing Turmoil (and all the other expansions) this weekend. I think Colonies and Turmoil are a pretty good pair, actually, since Colonies does help push in a particular strategic direction by making more resources available, but I think both are fairly nonessential expansions that arguably detract from the experience rather than enhance it, or at least alter it to the pint where it's largely a different game than the one that first attracted me. Turmoil also extended our play time by a fair amount since we kept having to look up the sequence of play (and why that couldn't have been on the back of the Turmoil manual instead of on the inside is unclear). The dual-layer boards are an improvement over the flat sheets of yore, but they almost immediately started to show the bends that sometimes shows up with dual-layer (e.g., Endeavor: Age of Sail being the worst offender IME) because of the differing materials of the cardboard components and how they react to climate. The projects deck--or, really, multiple decks for us now--has gotten fairly unwieldy and also increasingly unreliable to one or another particular strategy as more, more, more has been added, but it's also a PITA to weed out if, say, we decided not to play with any one or more of the expansions. On the plus side, I've managed to fit it all into the base game box, with some lift but with cards premium sleeved, though it's not pretty.

Yep, big PRELUDE fan here. It's like THE REAPER in TALISMAN or the Injury/Madness cards in ARKHAM HORROR. The base game is fun, but this expansion makes it all that and better. PRELUDE lets you skip like three or four "bad" generations when you are trying to get going on something. You can just jump right into doing cool stuff.

We have the different boards (ELYSIUM and HELLAS) and VENUS NEXT and that's plenty. Not a ton more rules, if any, and just richer enough to make a good game better for us. More options, more viable strategies, and they can be there or not and the game is still solid (PRELUDE is always mixed in, but we do separate VN out at the end of games).

Moved up to all the advanced basic cards. We'll play for a while from there and then add something else, maybe prelude.

I wouldn't hesitate to put in prelude ASAP it just jumpstarts the opening rounds in an great way. Esp if anyone feels the game lasts a bit too long.

Seconded.