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So after way too long, we finally had a group game day back on the 28th, and we even had a full spread of all five of us. I had been thinking of giving Charioteer a a second try, but I got a copy of Terraforming Mars for Christmas, and we tried that out instead.

I’ve been aware of the game… which made me the second-most knowledgeable about it. Patch has actually played it a few times, so I didn’t have to study all the rules. We went with the basic standard game, and the Beginner Corporations (they really should have been called Starter Corporations), even Patch, since he’s never actually played without any of the expansions before.

Physically, the biggest problem is cube management. Instead of writing things down, you have cubes on tracks to show what your current production in a number of different items. Patch’s group has some 3D-printed overlays to hold these cubes in position. Without it, you have to be a bit careful that nothing gets bumped while using bunches of other cubes to keep track of your current stocks. I’m thinking dry-erase might be more efficient… if it wasn’t for all the currency cubes flying about. Separate cube types for the six different commodities would increase the overall number needed, and be more fiddly to work with. There’s no great solutions for it all. (Having all the player tokens be translucent is a nice touch, though.)

I lucked into Research Outpost in my opening hand, which gave a -1 to all other purchases for the rest of the game. I then set up a number of cities with cards, dropping my energy production to zero for a while before it picked up again late game. Patch put a nuke in the middle of my city park to prevent a later forest getting me points for the end. Dave had gotten Pets and a similar card early, which gave him nice bonuses from my city building. Jason and Mark mostly ended up building a bit around the developing sea.

I managed to grab a number of the track bonuses (extra power generation from rising temperature, etc), but my actual terraforming score stayed static for the initial game, and I was worried about it until that started moving me up.

Midway through, a bit short of lunch break. I’m green, Patch is blue, Mark is grey, Dave is red, and Jason is yellow.

The game ended with generation 6, as everything tipped over into final position in fairly close sequence. There’d only been one award funded (Banker, by Patch) and no milestones. Patch figured I’d probably go after Mayor or Builder, but I never felt like I had the money to spare for them. I felt pretty cash-strapped for the second half of the game, with iron and titanium partially making up for it.

Final standings: Patch won with 46 VPs (31 TR), me and Jason tied at 39 (30 and 31 TR respectively), Mark had 38 (29 TR), and Dave had 35 (27 TR).

After that, we had some spare time, and played a couple rounds of Braggart. Patch hadn’t been here for that before, but certainly enjoyed it. I did well in the first round, generally getting some good brags off and avoiding most of the problems. I also got a Bar Fight off near the end to boost a low-points brag. I’d hoped for more chaos, but only had one other brag out there. Both of us just had the minimum two cards, and I kept one and traded one in the random shuffle. I won that round with 49 points; Dave had 31, Patch and Jason 30 each, and Mark had 12.

The second round was far more even, and I think we all suffered from just not being able to get good sets together. Patch won at 30 points; Jason and Mark tied at 29, and then me and Dave tied at 28.

Overall, it was a great day, and way too long since the last time we got together. Everyone enjoyed Terraforming Mars, and it needs to get back to the table.