Today I wanna talk about Terraforming Mars, a board game where you hurl asteroids into our celestial neighbor until it's habitable. This somehow works because science.
But I'm not going to talk about the game's fun mechanics, diverse strategic depth, or clever thematic congruity. I don't want to discuss its enthusiastic faithfulness to actual scientific research about the Red Planet. I just want to talk about how crappy the game looks.
Terrafying Mars retails for $69.95, but a diligent shopper will easily find a copy for around $50. That said, this does not look or feel like a $50 game. In fact, you might find the contents of the box a bit lacking.
 |
| Mars is made of cubes. |
There's no mold to keep the various components organized. There are bags for keeping the plastic cubes of varying colors and sizes nice and separated, and you can arguably jam the cardboard punch-outs into some of those bags, but there's nothing to hold the 200+ cards that make up a major component of the game.
I know the budget for space exploration's been reduced, but would it kill them to make a divided box with a section just for the cards? I'd even settle for a couple of cheap plastic Ultra PRO deck boxes.
------
Moving on, the little plastic cubes are the prettiest components of Terrorizing Mars, but also the least necessary. Clear, colored cubes mark and track player ownership, which works fine, but there are also opaque bronze, silver, and gold cubes (representing 1, 5, and 10 units of something, respectively) to track your stock of resources on your individual player board.
 |
| Can this board look any more Euro? |
The player board itself, however, is made of light card stock--It's very easy to accidentally shift or move it, along with everything on top of it. Any bump on the table, fat fingers, or a stiff breeze might cause you to lose track of not only how much of each of the six resources you have, but also how much you're supposed to produce each turn.
The board game Scythe knows how to handle plastic cubes-on-cardboard action, and this is no Scythe. You're better off using dice to track your resources.
Also, your mileage may vary, but the copy of Tantalizing Mars I played came with a special, stabby surprise:
 |
| Surprise! |
------
Lastly, I want to talk about the art. Actually, no I don't. I'll just let these crappy smartphone camera photos do the talking.
 |
| Realistic photos! Also, isn't Insulation supposed to be that pink foamy stuff? |
 |
| More stock photos! Well, some of them look staged. And I'm pretty sure those Hackers are an eSports team and/or a WoW gold farm. |
|
|
|
 |
| These were the most bad-ass pictures I could find. Those astronauts have guns. In space. |
All said, Tara-Stronging Mars is a great game that you should definitely play. If you have the same gripes I do about its presentation, then you should strongly consider dropping another $50 for The Broken Token's
Terraforming Mars Organizer. Unfortunately, it won't solve the science-textbook-quality art on the cards, but one problem at a time.
Comments
Post a Comment