Terraforming the Kitchen Table

On Friday just gone, the plan was for Andrew and I (Saxons) to face off against Steve and Ian (Danes) in the great 878 Vikings rematch - we enjoyed our last sally so much - but covid complications harpooned Steve's involvement, and try as I might my black market boardgamer connections came up with nothing in terms of a Replacement Steve. Come 8pm, we were a trio, and forewent dice-chucking in the distant past in favour of terraforming in the distant future - rather than the 3+ hour epic of Terraforming Mars, it was the more recent card-based version: the snappily-titled Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition. 

Mars, floating in dots

Mars begins unterraformed, and everyone's goal is to be Best Terraformer as we collaborate, but also compete, to push up the ambient temperature, oxygen levels, and establish oceans and life for human habitat and probable inevitable destruction. 

The basics are simple: five phases are available in each round and each player selects - secretly - one to activate. All players do all active phases, but if you chose it you get a little benefit into the bargain. I can summarise them neatly here:

1 Play green cards

2 Play blue or red cards

3 Activate previously-played blue cards

4 Run production on green cards to get stuff

5 Get more cards into your hand

Admittedly, this isn't how the game itself terms them, but it's the easiest way to learn. The nub of it is neat, simple, but glommed onto the basic terms and icons is a veritable smorgasboard of secondary icons and currencies that may or may not come into relevance, depending on what card you play. It was this stuff that smiled on me as I began with a hand of 'Earth' cards that seemed to synergise well, picked up more Earth cards, and also began ramping up my Titanium cards as well. Everything seemed to gel, and I took a convincing victory over the debutants (I'd previously played solo)

After shaking my victorious fist in their faces though, we all agreed that the absence of any meaningful player interaction and the enormous splurge of cards across the table didn't send TM:AE vaulting into the GNN Hall of Favourites: the engine building was fun, but the theme seemed like an irrelevance and the fact all players do all phases simultaneously was a bit of a death knell: it's necessary, as otherwise the game is going to be rather long, but the sum result was all of us mumbling to ourselves at the same times for an hour and 45 minutes. Maybe for two it'd be fun, if players took turns and actually paid attention to each other?

Anyway, after the damp squib of space Andrew took his leave, and Ian and I realised we still had more games in us. We bashed through Kingdomino, I retained the title of Mr Biblios, and then we wrapped up with a couple of cracks at two-player Cross Clues, which is pretty tricky if you hit a pair of dud combos: without others to take up the slack, the sweary mumblings brought Ares Expedition back to mind - but these pauses were never long, and somehow Ian kept making sense of the appallingly random shite I was clueing him. A fun way to end an evening that had felt just a little too exploratory for our liking!