Board Gaming - Terraforming Mars

This week's gaming event I got to play Terraforming Mars again, and I also got to play 5 minute dungeon at the end of the night.

Terraforming Mars

I really enjoyed my first game and have been looking forward to being able to play this again. You are controlling one of the companies that are responsible for making Mars habitable with the main goals of increasing the temperature, oxygen percentage, and providing ocean areas for settlers.

At the start of the game you have some money and a hand of 10 cards each. Each card you play costs you some money to play, and will provide you with a wide variety of benefits, from providing you with some resources or increasing your production ability of one of the resources or directly allowing you to place something on the planet (board). Every card in the deck is different, and there are quite a few different combinations that you can work on depending on the cards you get.

I really like the resource cubes, which don't represent any single resource, but are more like unit counters and you use the same 3 denominations (1/5/10) for all 6 of the different resources, as well as the animals and microbes that may get generated during the game. I also really like that you don't automatically gain new cards. Each round you get to see 4 new cards, but if you want to keep any you have to pay for them. I find this an interesting mechanism to balance things out between some very cheap cards and some very expensive ones.

^{Nearing the end of our game}

I also like that each round is split up as each player takes turns to do 2 actions until everyone decides they're done (or just need their production to run), so some players may only do a couple of things and then have to wait while other players have a few more turns of doing actions. This may sound a bit unbalanced, but it's more reflective of what you've chosen to do. Some players buy a really expensive card (1 action) and that's all they can afford to do, while another player may have 4 really cheap cards to play (4 actions) so they'd only get to play 2 of them before others can do something. This is a really good way of reducing player down time in a game of this length, as well as allowing better ability to respond to other players.

I was very much responsible for the temperature, producing enough heat (one of the 6 resources) that I could increase it every round at least once. I also managed to generate enough plants to put some greenery onto the board and getting the oxygen level increased. The fact that all players work together to raise the 3 key things (temp, oxygen and oceans) is great and allowed me to ignore the oceans completely.

^{I got, and played, a lot of green cards. And lots of heat}

In the end, to win you need to score more points than the other corporations (players), and each of the key areas helps there. There are also points on some of the cards, cities to place, milestones and awards. These last 2 are another thing I find interesting in this game. They aren't always going to happen, as you have to use an action on one turn to either claim a milestone once you've completed it, or to fund an award making it active. There are 5 of each, but only 3 allowed to be used in each game.

If you like board games, this one is really worth giving a go.

5 Minute Dungeon

We filled in some time by giving this game a quick play.

As it's name suggests, it only takes 5 minutes to play.

Each player is a member of a raiding party with one of the 10 different classes. Each of them has a deck of cards and a special ability . In the middle there is a boss card (dungeon) with a deck of 20+ challenges on it. When the first challenge is turned over, a 5 minute timer needs to be started (phone timer is useful), and you have to defeat all the challenges and the boss before the timer runs out. There are no turns, and everyone needs to work together to achieve this as quickly as possible.

I didn't enjoy this, but I don't really enjoy games that play simultaneously like this, but it certainly could be fun for those that do. It's also really quick, so a good game to have a go at to see if you like the style.