‘Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game’ Review
There’s no denying the popularity of Terraforming Mars, and whilst there’s no way to prove it, I often wonder whether it might not be the most popular (and best selling) “heavy” game of all time. Few other games seem to appeal to so many people, and yet the weight and complexity of Jacob Fryxelius’ breakthrough title is undeniable. In a previous variant (Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition) Fryxelius softened the edges a little by making Terraforming Mars into a card game – but I found that almost as crunchy as the original. The last week or two however, I’ve been playing Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game and I finally think we have a Terraforming Mars game that I could play with anyone.
Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game – just like the original – is a game about transforming the surface of Mars over multiple generations until it becomes habitable. To do this, the players will add oceans, forests and cities, and use various actions to raise the temperature and oxygen levels. Points are awarded throughout the game for doing these things (as well as certain others) and also at the end upon completion of various milestones, awards and project cards. The scoring mechanism is linked to the theme – with those who perform terraforming actions or building projects that might enhance the future society scoring well.
Players begin the game with two corporations to choose from, and these will provide starting dice production and usually some bonuses such as wild tokens or one-off dice locked to a specific face. Everyone will also receive five project cards, and must weigh up the options on those cards to choose one corporation – discarding the other before play begins. The starting dice are then rolled and placed ready for the game to begin. An important note (highlighted in the rules) is that unlike in most other dice games, you’ll never (ever) reroll your dice in Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game, although you may change their face due to one of several effects.
On a standard turn, the player will take exactly two actions – one support action and one main action. For their support action, the player can take one die of any colour from the supply (regardless of their production) and roll it. They can discard one die to change the face of any other die to whatever they want, or they can discard a die to take two cards – and these support actions really are the lifeblood of Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game. For their main action, a player may take a second support action, play a project card, perform a standard action (such as swapping three Megacredit die faces for one city, or swapping four plant faces for a forest) and so on. Playing project cards is critical to expanding your tableau of actions and production, and to play a project you’ll need to spend die faces that match the cost of the card.
As an alternative to the standard turn I’ve just described, players may also take a Production Turn instead. When this happens, the player first discards any dice they have down until they have exactly three, and then looks at all the production cards in their tableau and takes dice, wild tokens and whatever else is shown in the brown production boxes. Any dice taken this way are rolled and set immediately alongside any that were leftover. The player may then choose to discard any number of project cards, and can then draw back up to exactly five. They will also reset any action cards that were used since the previous Production Turn. When this is done, their production turn is over and they will pass to the next player.
Project cards come in three flavours – red (instant effects), green (permanent production bonuses) and blue (action cards that provide additional, player specific actions.) You’ll very likely need to use all of these during a game of Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game, and when I first began to play I focussed perhaps a little too much on production projects because I felt that would be the best way to get dice. Actually, it’s not, and having played the game five or six times I now realise that you’ll often be able to cascade into new dice by playing red or blue cards that give you immediate (one-off) dice when played, and by managing your support actions carefully. Production turns should be kept to an absolute minimum – perhaps even as few as two or three in a whole game.
My initial thoughts about Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game were that it was incredibly random – with both dice and cards in the mix. This is partly true no matter which way you look at it, and bad die rolling will always result in a bit of frustration, but the more I played, the more ways I found to manage my own luck. For example, when playing Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game you must not be hesitant about chucking a dice away to draw two more cards, or even ditching your whole hand during a production turn to draw a completely new one. It’s also worth remembering that sometimes you’ll need to use one or both of your actions to simply take dice of a colour that you can’t generate with your own production – and this can often unlock new production of that type, or allow you to place a token (forest, lake, city or special tile) on the board and take yet more dice.
When you realise how quickly turns pass and how rapidly you can increase your dice pool by placing a tile here, taking dice, buying a project, using a special action card etc, you’ll soon realise that you can generate a lot of dice. Adding special actions such as the electro-catapult (which basically gives you a support action where you take three dice instead of two) or some of the others that allow die faces to be flipped, and your mid to late game engine will have a lot less luck involved in it than the one you start with. A focus on milestones (variable goals set up at the start of the game) and awards (randomised objectives built around how many die faces you’ve spent across all project cards) give some extra focus, but probably aren’t something you should worry about in your first game or two.
With all that said, Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game is an enjoyable dice game that does two things in my collection – it offers significantly more meat and complexity than any other dice game, whilst simultaneously offering a Terraforming Mars game that massively reduces the complexity of the original. The concept remains as it was – and remains simple to understand – but the way you do it is now more luck dependant, but much faster for players to process both on a turn-by-turn basis and overall due to the much shorter game length. The level of satisfaction is reduced a little bit versus the original Terraforming Mars, but then again it’s not really a comparable game – it just has precisely the same theme. For now, Terraforming Mars: The Dice Game will be staying in my collection to fill a particular niche, but I am not absolutely convinced that it has the long term appeal of the original.
