Out of the five only two can be used whenever you play Terraforming Mars, having no dependency on the rest of the expansion. It is a tiny extra step that one player can even do while the other deals out project cards for the research stage of the next round if necessary.įive new corporations are included in Terraforming Mars Colonies: Aridor, Stormcraft Incorporated, Poseidon, Arklight and Polyphemos. Thankfully, by the end of your first game with the expansion it will have fitted into the flow of what is needed to be done between rounds. It’s a short cleanup stage and it is easily forgotten in the first few rounds. Then, the colony markers, which determine the resource return, are advanced one step.
If you have an abundance of megacredit income it can be used to convert them into something helpful via sending off a fleet piece – and it also makes having energy more useful than before, being a great way to gain resources.Īt the end of each round all trade fleet tokens are returned to the main colony board, freeing up the locations.
Having the option to pick how to pay for sending a fleet off is extremely helpful for allowing the colonies to fit into different strategies. Players that have a colony built there then also receive a colony bonus – a lesser but still helpful gain. For this the player receives a trade income, indicated by the colony resource type and the individual colony’s tracker. Unsurprisingly, a range of the new cards also enable players to build colonies, including some that let players double up on a colony tile.įor 9 megacredits / 3 energy / 3 titanium a player can send one of their trade fleets to an empty colony tile. Building a colony gives the player an instant bonus, often a production of the resource type assigned to that location. On top of this, regardless of player count, a total of 3 colonies are allowed per location. The first new action enables players to pay 17 megacredits to construct a colony on any of the colony tiles, which doesn’t already feature one of their own colonies. An additional small action reminder tile can also be placed the other side of the board. The Trade Fleets tile which lists the two actions is placed next to these, with a trade fleet token for each player placed on it – made from a fleet piece and a player cube.
A number of colony tiles are randomly drawn and placed next to the main game board, the amount equal to the number of players plus two (apart from two player games where 5 are used). Starting the game the new corporations can be shuffled into the corp deck and the project cards into the draw deck. However, is this a must have expansion like Prelude or more of a Venus Next? Let’s find out!Ĭolonies adds in two additional actions and one small new step between rounds. Colonies are a great new source of resources with microbes, steel and more accessible via a mere trade fleet journey. Designed by Jacob Fryxelius and Jonathan Fryxelius, this time around a range of distant colony opportunities opens up to players from Jupiter’s moon Io to the outer edges of the Solar System, with the (dwarf) planet Pluto. So far, it appears to be receiving positive reviews.Colonies is the fourth expansion for the red planet themed engine builder Terraforming Mars, from FryxGames. The Terraforming Mars app adaptation is currently available on both the Apple and Google stores for £6.99. Other board games to get the app store treatment include Pandemic, Catan Classic and Ticket to Ride. Currently it has mixed reviews, predominantly related to bugs. Terraforming Mars had its first digital incarnation last year, when it hit Steam stores.
Whoever makes the most improvements - whether that’s building infrastructure, creating forests and oceans, or introducing oxygen into the atmosphere - wins. In the new app, you can play in single-player - in which you are pitted against an AI - or against your fellow humans in a five-person multiplayer mode.Īs well as the core campaign, there’s also a solo challenge set against a time limit to play.Įxactly like the board game, in Terraforming Mars you each play a corporation launching an ambitious terraforming project on the red planet. Popular sci-fi strategy board game Terraforming Mars has landed on mobile stores today, courtesy of publisher Asmodee Digital.