Previous COTD

Today's card is Sponsored Mohole (#T13):

Automated card (Green) | Turmoil expansion

Cost: 5 | Requirements: Kelvinists ruling/2 delegates | Tags: Building

Increase your heat production 2 steps.

In my group's curated set of 18 corporations, we use two custom corporations: Eladon-AI and Hermes Colony.

Hermes Colony
Hermes Colony has assumed a key role in inter-colony commerce.
Starting: Earth + Space tag. 50MC.
You start with 2 Animals (Green cubes), 2 Microbes (red), 2 Floaters (yellow), 2 Asteroids (black) and 2 Science (blue).

*Action: You may move 1 or 2 resources from Hermes Colony to any card, as long as that card depicts that resource in an Action or on a VP icon.

*5 VP, minus the number of resources on Hermes Colony.

The corp makes, Animal, Microbe, Floater, Asteroid and "Science" cards more appealing, but you need to get rid of all of your 10 resources before the game ends.

Eladon-AI
The company AI has seized contol of Eladon Analytics.
Starting: Wild tag. 40MC.
You start with 8 Energy and 2 Energy-Production

*Effect: You may only ever pay for cards with Energy. For this 1 Energy is worth 2 MC.

This is sort of a spin on Polyphemos and Terralabs.
In my experience, it is stronger than it looks.
Basically, you should buy a Power Plant on turn 1 (or play an Energy-Prod card, if you have one).
With that, you get half of the 10 starting cards and half of the 4 start-of-turn cards dor "free".

So, that's a lot like having 29MC, but 15MC worth of cards (i.e. 44MC) plus 6 MC-prod (the cost of 2 cards), but with the penalty that you can not get the other half of the cards (unless you eventually increase your E-prod further)

We've had a lot of fun with these 🎉
Cheers
Martin

Hi all,
I really want to make proper mock-ups for our two custom corporations: Eladon-AI and Hermes Colony. I tried some sort of card maker at one point, but I really struggled with it.
I'm fairly decent with Photoshop, as long as I'm working with a template.

Has anyone in the fandom created such a template?

Kind regards
Martin

Previous COTD

Today's card is Flooding (#188):

Event card (Red) | Base game

Cost: 7 | Requirements: None | Tags: Event

Place an ocean tile. Remove up to 4 MC FROM THE OWNER OF A TILE ADJACTENT TO THIS OCEAN TILE. -1 VP

Previous COTD

Today's card is Lichen (#159):

Automated card (Green) | Base game

Cost: 7 | Requirements: -24°C | Tags: Plant

Increase your plant production 1 step.

This is the Delta Project, a fan-made expansion designed for the Terraforming Mars Dutch Open. It's not available for purchase, it was only made for the tournament.

Rules are at https://terraformingmars.nl/delta-project/

Hopefully the fan-made 3d printed board will become available soon. (https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraformingMarsGame/comments/1w2e6jv/3d_printable_board_for_the_dutch_open_2026_delta/)

My group plays mainly 3 player, sometimes 4 player. Base game with just 1 prelude each.
We're using a curated deck of corporations, and we're trying to buff the weaker ones to get a reasonably level playing field. No nerfs to the top, as nerfs just leave a sour taste.

Drawing on the 3P stats from this site: Terraforming Mars Stats, these are the corps and buffs that we went with:
1. (40%) Interplanetary Cinematics
2. (39%) Tharsis Republic
3. (39%) Credicor
4. (38%) Saturn Systems
5. (36%) Cheung Shing Mars
6. (35%) Ecoline
7. (??%) EcoTec
8. (??%) Palladin Shapping
9. (33%) Teractor
10. (32%) Mining Guild
-
11. (26%) Inventrix: -1MC to play a card with a requirement
12. (26%) Robinson Industries: +1 MC-Prod
13. (24%) Helion: 7 Heat converts to +1 Temperature
14. (24%?) Arklight: Action: Discard 3 cards to +1 Oxygen
15. (22%) Thorgate: May pay 2 Energy to ignore instruction to lose an Energy-Prod
16. (??%) Nirgal: +1 Heat-Prod and +1 MC-Prod
17. (18%) UNMI: Gain 1 MC when you gain a TR
-
18. Eladon-AI: Polyphemos-Inspired corp that acquires cards through special means
19. Hermes Trade Colony: Interacts well with cards the generate special ressources.

My question is: Do you think that the buffs are enough?

Cheers
Martin

Previous COTD

Today's card is Kelp Farming (#055):

Automated card (Green) | Base game

Cost: 17 | Requirements: 6 ocean tiles | Tags: Plant

Increase your MC production 2 steps and your plant production 3 steps. Gain 2 plants. 1 VP

We found the files and printed everything we could. The paint job on the tiles employed the “slap-chop” method, which was actually very quick and easy. The game board itself “ the planet” was the two-piece print and I use magnets to keep it together during game play. It was a lot of fun to do and every time we invite someone over to play it they always love it.

Ever since I started playing Terraforming Mars in 2016, I've thought, "This game should have a 3D board."

Last year, I finally made it happen!

Introducing Terraforming Mars: Planetary Edition, a fully playable Mars globe that replaces the traditional flat board while preserving the familiar gameplay.

A few features:

• Real Martian topography, with raised terrain and surface imagery from NASA's Mars maps. I even flipped Mars upside down because the southern hemisphere offers more playable land!
• Magnetic cities, greenery, oceans, and special tiles that stay attached as the planet rotates.
• Rotating orbital platforms for the off-world locations.
• An integrated base with the game's tracks, global parameters, milestones, and awards.
• An optional Embassy Expansion that makes use of the globe's pentagonal spaces, plus a new location called the Thalassan Republic.
• Five-player and seven-player versions.

The best part is how little the actual gameplay changes. The number of playable spaces is comparable to the original board, and most of the established mechanics work as usual. There are some differences in adjacency, but the goal was always to make the physical experience of terraforming Mars more engaging, not to reinvent the game.

And it's pretty satisfying to watch the entire planet gradually turn green and blue as you play!

I've posted more photos and details on BoardGameGeek:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3779156/i-built-a-playable-3d-mars-globe-for-terraforming

I personally think Planetary Edition would make a fantastic official Terraforming Mars expansion. What do you think?

Base game on steam, solo challenge play, corporation: IC.
No cities placed. Only 3 greeneries [bought 1 or two] and oceans were only tiles placed.
Early strip mine draw got me fast production.
Early Ironworks draw got me fast oxygen production.
Early electro catapult draw got me +7 mc per turn [spending 1 steel, which I started out with plenty]

Standard technology cheapened up buying temperature and oceans

Hi everyone!

I'm a first-year university student studying design. For a class project, I'm building a mobile website that helps complete beginners learn and start their first game of Terraforming Mars at a glance.

To be honest, I've never played it myself. I know how popular it is, but I only play board games casually with friends at board game cafés, so I don't have much insight into the game beyond the rulebook.

So I'd love to ask fans of the game:

If a first-time player used a site like this, what elements or interactive features would actually help them?

For example:

• What do new players usually get confused about?
• What do they really need to know in their first game, and what can they skip?

Any advice is welcome, even short comments. Thank you!

Hi all,
Roughly 12 months ago I asked about the power of the Prelude 2 corps. Back then the P2 corps were fairly new, but by now I hope that a lot more people have tried them out.

From the responses I did get, I guesstimated these power rankings:
Ecotec: 8/10
Kuiper: 2/10
Nirgal: 4/10
Palladin: 3/10
Sagitta: 7/10
Spire: 8/10
Tycho: 7/10

So - from a scale from 0-10, where 5 is average, 0 is useless and 10 is Manutech, where do you see the Prelude 2 corporations.

Cheers
Martin

Previous SHOTW

Useful Links

For information on how SHOTW works, please refer to the SHOTW Helper

Screenshot of starting hand

Pre-game information

Expansions: None

Board details

Board: Hellas

Milestones: Diversifier (8 different tags), Tactician (5 cards played with requirements), Polar Explorer (3 tiles placed on bottom 2 rows), Energizer (6 energy production), Rim Settler (3 Jovian tags)

Awards: Cultivator (Greenery tiles), Magnate (Green cards played), Space Baron (Space tags), Excentric (Resources on cards), Contractor (Building tags)

Starting hand

Cards drawn

• Corporations: Inventrix, Tharsis Republic
• Project cards: Archaebacteria, Magnetic Field Generators, Natural Preserve, Wave Power, Search for Life, GHG Factories, Mining Rights, Nitrite Reducing Bacteria, Great Escarpment Consortium, Hackers

Extra project cards

Card draws for specific tags: - Microbe tags: Ants, GHG Producing Bacteria, Decomposers, Symbiotic Fungus, Industrial Microbes

Gen 2 drafting hand: Aerobraked Ammonia Asteroid, Space Station, Acquired Company, Virus

I'm new to the game, I couldn't figure out this starting hand on Tharsis.

I ended up trying to rush with Teractor taking Flooding, Release of IG, GIA, Capital, Biolabs and Mohole. Biolabs didn't draw me anything good, I managed to get decent plant prod and took Gardener and Terraformer. I did manage to get standard tech which helped me to SP greenery/asteroid out of the game but by that stage it was all rover.

Opponent was Point Luna into ATG and card draw and hit me with heat trappers (into robo force heat trappers), small animals, birds, livestock. In the last two gens it was like a 50 point swing, I got demolished. The opponent was 400s elo and I'm 250.

any other better lines I could have gone?

bga replay: https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=930125995

(OP is hie_papi)

Previous COTD

Today's card is Ice Asteroid (#078):

Event card (Red) | Base game

Cost: 23 | Requirements: None | Tags: Space, Event

Place 2 ocean tiles.

Hi Terraforming fans, we're currently training an AI for 1v1 Terraforming! If anyone would like to help out, feel free to play a few games.

THX

New Terraforming Mars. New Design! New opponent AI 🤖. Can you smash it? 🚀

→ https://terraforming-mars.baiz.org · Preview: https://tm.baiz.org/showcase-gallery

Help us improve the AI even further – simply by beating it! 🙌

Previous COTD

Sorry that I'm a bit late today. Today's card is Adaptation Technology (#153):

Active card (Blue) | Base game

Cost: 12 | Requirements: None | Tags: Science

Effect: Your global requirements (temperature, oxygen, ocean, and Venus) are modified by +2 or -2 steps (your choice in each case).

1 VP

First time holding a tourny on BGA, made the mistake of setting minimum number of participants to 256! Will need some help filling the gaps!

https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=606166

Players of all levels are welcomed!

Over time, I've collected a lot of custom tiles, pieces, and extras, including printing some myself, getting custom paint jobs, etc. All of them are here on this board (which should correspond roughly to a legal TM game, except for the Automa Local Neural Instance Tile and the Venus Colony Tile).

Overall board, close up on t'Martian Parliament, close up on colonies and first turn marker, close up on Venus, the next stop, close up on some milestones, and close up on the trade fleets.

My fiancée and I can’t log in and play online. Are the servers down right now? Is there a way to check normally?

Previous COTD

Who said we can't put lakes on hills? Today's card is Artificial Lake (#116):

Automated card (Green) | Base game

Cost: 15 | Requirements: -6°C | Tags: Building

Place an ocean tile ON AN AREA NOT RESERVED FOR OCEAN, disregarding normal placement restrictions. 1 VP

This is part 3 of 6 of a second dump of Turmoil related material. It's meant to go with the 3 sets of Turmoil cards I posted earlier, but you can choose to ignore any or all of it, of course. I have all the files here (and in the other sets) in my Dropbox. There are subfolders for each party.

Giving credit where it's due: The idea for alternate policies and ruling bonuses for the parties originated with Christian Zoli's Political Agenda expansion on BoardGameGeek. I tweaked some of his original material and added additional Ruling Policies for each party, but it is otherwise the same as his original idea. Jim Burr, another prolific fan contributor on BGG, adopted my version and came up with some new policies of his own. The 6 sets of images I will be posting here are the final version I came up with after seeing what Jim had done.

Each political party now has EIGHT different Ruling Policies (A-H) and TWO different Ruling Bonuses (A&B), instead of the standard one each in the official game. You may choose not to use all the policies! In fact, some of them REQUIRE you have certain expansions or fan expansions, so they can be tossed if you're not using those particular expansions. I have tried to make the most esoteric of the policies tile H, for convenience. Tile A (on both policies and ruling bonuses) is the original official version from Turmoil.

PRINTING: You don't have to print these things double-sided, but the Ruling Bonuses are intended to be on opposite sides of the same tile, so you can just flip it from A to B or vice versa. The Policies should all be printed on separate tiles; if you don't like leaving the reverse blank, an image for the back side of the tile is provided, showing the colors and icon of that party.

GAME RULES: During Set Up, when Greens are made the first Ruling Party, assign them a random policy tile from their stack. Place the Ruling Bonuses for each party with their respective policy tiles, randomly setting either the A or B side face-up.

Thereafter, during the Solar Phase, when a new ruling party comes to power and a player’s delegate becomes the new Chairman, that player chooses whether to leave that party’s Ruling Bonus tile as is, or flip it to the other side, BEFORE resolving the Ruling Bonus for all players. That player also selects which of the Ruling Policies for that party will be used this generation.

If the new Chairman is NEUTRAL, the Ruling Bonus tile is not changed, and one of the Ruling party’s policy tiles is chosen at random.

OTHER: This text will be included on each of the 6 posts (one for each party). The last one (Unity) will also include a few project cards that should be played if you are using these alternate policies and bonuses. After posting the images, I will make a post below that describes the effect of each one (in case it's not clear from the iconography).