Wrobel Repeats In Terraforming!

Terraforming Mars drew 167 different participants and 337 player starts. Players generally liked the heat formats and the flexibility to choose whether to play with or without expansions. Despite the option to use Turmoil in the Heats, no table chose to do so. 38 Heat winners advanced to the Quarterfinal, with the 10 winners and two second place finishers advancing to the Semifinal. The Semifinal had one close game and 2 blowouts, as previously undefeated Akihisa Tabei was defeated by Ricky Boyes, who eked out a 4 point victory over Drew Doughan (whose tiebreaker gave him second place and a seat at the finals) and Paul Sampson, with Eric Wrobel and Sid Ventakesh winning by 23 and 17, respectively.

Here’s how the Final played out. Ricky was player 1 and played Interplanetary Cinematics, with Preludes Metal Rich Asteroid and Mining Operations. Drew was player 2 and played Point Luna, with Preludes Galilean Mining and Self-Sufficient Settlement. Eric was player 3 and played Valley Trust, with starting Preludes Allied Bank and Acquired Space Agency plus Research Network. Sid was player 4 and played Vitor, with Preludes Power Generation and Supply Drop. All of the expansions except Turmoil and promo cards were used. The colonies were Ganymede, Io, Callisto, Pluto, Triton, Europa.

All of the expansions except Turmoil and Promo cards were used.

Early Game

Ricky starts the game with TWENTY EIGHT steel and then adds on Advanced Alloys. This is effectively 94 mega credits worth of building tags and Contractor is one of the awards. Some might say that's a "strong start". Nothing less than excellence to begin the final table. If Ricky is able to spend all the steel it will be impossible to stop him. Given how difficult it is to spend that much, the other players at the table are breathing easy. Then Ricky drops Aquifer Pumping. The perfect way to convert all that steel into TR. Fantastic!

Drew is Piloting Point Luna which can be a difficult open as they start off with low money. He expertly selects to start with a colony on Triton to build his economy. He knows he's holding many earth tags and will have card draw in spades as long as he can afford them all.

Eric has chosen the high variance strategy. And who said there's no dice in Terraforming Mars? Valley Trust draws 3 random preludes and Acquired Space Agency draws 2 random titanium tag cards. An odd choice for someone who hates die rolling games. Lucky Eric picks up Research Colony and that's an A+ for his position as its -2 cost with Valley Trust and allows him to snag 2 quick colonies on Triton.

While Drew and Eric were groaning about Ricky's start, Sid is ecstatic! Why? He's holding Arctic Algae, Algae, and Kelp Farming and Aquifer Pumping ensures there will be a lot of oceans built early and often. Playing Vitor, he opts for an early Pluto colony to try and find as many cards as possible with victory points on them. His Power Generation Prelude means he's the only one able to trade with energy and it nets him a lot of extra cards from Pluto trades. As Vitor his free Award selection is scientist because he's holding 3 science tags. Investors in the Valley Trust fund approve this move.

Mid Game

Ricky doubles down, or maybe even triples his metals game. Steel and titanium both skyrocket up to 6! Earth Elevator is a great contributor to this and allows the funding of even more powerful and cheap titanium projects like Space Port Colony. It's a strong continuation from his rocket ship start. He looks to be in a dominant position in terms of income.

Drew struggles to get his economy off the ground. Can't get up to 3 energy production to trade. He plays a bunch of earth tag cards and keeps drawing. Pets is always strong and also pockets him an extra card. Unfortunately, he isn't able to locate a coveted, yet illusive, earth tag multiplier card.

Eric continues his non-traditional play by scarfing Milestones. Titan Shuttles fuels Hoverlord. Lucking into third seat + Pluto gives him the cards for Planner. Research Network wild tag allows him to toss down additional notches for Tactician. It's a rarely seen full sweep on the Milestones and puts Eric in a strong position if the game ends early (7 or 8 generations). Mass converter provides cheap energy and Quantum Communications a sugary sweet income spike. The science lifestyle that every Valley Trust player dreams of.

Sid plays a finely crafted mix of engine building supplemented with a hyper efficient terraforming ground game. Vitor loves stacking cost discount cards on top of the +3 mega credit rebate for point cards. Sid lands a Research Outpost which perfectly supports his engine building and gives his ground game space for points. Skydocks bumps his discount up to -2 off all cards and gives him a second trade fleet at the perfect time in the game to grab 10 heat from Io and 5 plants from Ganymede. Slick.

Late Game

Ricky hesitates during a count of the awards. He's up 12 to 6 for Contractor but is afraid of Eric's 26ish cards. A heavy sigh and he pulls the trigger. Ricky drops 20 mega bucks for the award that he will go on to win vs scant competition. Spending steel has been a persistent thorn for him. He's able to use most of it by constantly overpaying on steel tags, but it's not as efficient. Both Drew and Eric dropped Oceans as the world governor and Sid flung an Ice Asteroid (Normal sized, not giant) at Mars so the Aquifer Pumping ran dry faster than expected. A payoff card like Space Elevator or Electro Catapult would have propped up Ricky's game - Giving an effective way to spend steel and boosting up the rest of his economy. Lack of card draw meant he wasn't able to find some key synergy pieces.

Ricky's large Titanium production allowed him to throw down quite a few Jovian tags. This could have resulted in some big points in the end game. However, in his fervor to spend the glut of early game steel, he drafted Medical lab while passing on the highly desirable Terraforming Ganymede. Looking at the pile of played event cards for Ricky is not the happy story you'd hope for from Interplanetary Cinematics. Their +2 MC rebate is quite powerful, but he's only managed to land 5ish events.

Drew is eventually able to get up some energy production and his engine starts rolling. Unfortunately, it's too little too late. The other players have dwarfed his income and passed him on the terraforming track. Lunar Mining appears in the draft on round 7. It's a powerful card but looking at the terraforming track there's only 4 heat bumps left. Drew sadly passes on the card that could have led him to victory earlier in the game. He's left wondering where it all went wrong and why the other players have dedicated thousands of hours of their lives to the Terraforming Mars boardgame?

Eric-land is a brighter story. He scores Warp Drive to go along with the Mass Converter for some super synergy on space tags. Valley Trust corp with Olympus Conference fuels an efficient card draw engine that also puts a lot of points into play. Later he ramps up the discounts to an absurd level by adding Earth Catapult and Optimal Aerobreaking. Working through his gigantic stack of cards is helped by a last turn Molecular Printing and Media Archives. It's still not enough cash and discounts to play out the entire hand, but enough to score big.

Sid has a fantastically strong end game. Which isn't a surprise given how methodical his play was through and through. Most players have relatively ignored plant production. In addition to draining 9 hits from Arctic Algae, he's added Nitrogen Rich Asteroid. Sid has like 15 plant production. Totally ridiculous. You should already be impressed. Oh, but there's more. He also throws down some Jovian tags with Ganymede Colony AND Terraforming Ganymede. A difficult maneuver to pull off for someone who's been terraforming all game.

Final Scores

It's no surprise this game ended after only 8 generations! Ricky pumped the oceans, Sid grew trees. Having Io and Callisto made the heat move faster than normal. Ending the game is Eric with the Asteroid card followed by a heat bump from Optimal Aerobraking. Perhaps a questionable play given the strength of his engine, but a player who gets 3 milestones generally wants a shorter game, not to mention he picked up 12 points in awards in addition to 15 from Milestones for a record 27 points from the bottom of the board, allowing him to cruise home in a romp! Final scores were Eric Wrobel 103, Sid Ventakesh 84, Ricky Boyes 72, and Drew Doughan 62.