Stronghold Games | Terraforming Mars: Prelude Expansion | Board Game | Ages 14+ | 1-5 Players | 90- 120 Minute Playing Time

This game does require a bit of rule reading and YouTube watching on your 1st playthrough. But once you've played 1 game, the rules are really easy going forward.Games typically can go on for a few hours, but it's utterly engrossing, and you're always wanting 1 more turn.Great theme with fantastic board design and engineering aspects. There is so much replayability to this game.

Terraforming Mars is a "Pringles" game; once you've played once, you keep coming back to it. I was first introduced to it by a friend, and soon after bought my own so that I could keep playing. It is very well-balanced and well-made, and provides plenty of fun on an evening which otherwise might have been quite dull.The box comes with a board, 5 player sheets, 5 bags of player cubes (red, yellow, blue, green, and black), 3 bags of metallic cubes for currency, around 200 project cards, and various tiles which indicate forests, cities, oceans, and other structures. All of these are of a decent quality, and so far we have seen no wear and tear to any of them. The board sometimes doesn't lie completely flat, but this doesn't significantly affect gameplay in any way. It is worth bearing in mind that the game takes up a large amount of space, so having a large table or section of floor space clear is a must.It also comes with a much needed instruction booklet; Terraforming Mars has a steep but not long-lasting learning curve which can seem daunting, but is well worth giving a go. After playing only one game, the whole family had gotten a firm grasp of the basic rules, and we're now playing near expertly, able to plan ahead and strategise based on our knowledge of the game. Each game takes between 2 and 4 hours, depending on how long it takes indidivuals to decide on their turn. This doesn't mean the game is boring though; far from it! The gameplay is interesting and even addictive, with none of us noticing how much time has passed while we've been playing. You can also never tell who has won the game until the final scoring happens, leading to some tense moments and unexpected winners. This also contributes to constantly wanting to go back for more, so you can improve on your previous score or try different approaches.Since owning the game, we have also bought 2 expansions; the "Preludes" expansion and the "Colonies" expansion. The Preludes expansion adds a huge amount to the game, and I view it as a necessity as it not only decreases play time (due to providing more resources) but also allows for more focused strategies; the Colonies expansion is also a great addition as it gives players more options within the game.Overall, Terraforming Mars is a brilliant board game which is well worth the money. Due to the plenty of combinations of cards and strategies, the game has endless replayability, and will make sure you never have a dull board games night again!

For my board game, that persists of 5 family members and have gone through many of the usual German style resource management and zonal strategy game through the years, plus many other genres. This has become our end game. With one or 2 expansion the game has now reached a level where after 100s of games, every game is still unique. Perfect pacing, perfect level balance. The skill gap is perfectly balanced where the better players usually win but anyone in the group can still win and still enjoy games. Every player looks forward to a TM games night and that includes my 57 and 70yr old parents who are fully competent and competitive. It's actually been an amazing tool to keep in regular contact with my brother and his family and my parents, socialise, a few dricks and some classic brotherly British banter.The best board game ever created IMO.

My wife and I are keen board gamers (though perhaps more so me than my ever-patient wife) with a firm preference for two-player co-operative games of varying degrees of complexity. We even play competitive games (we don’t have many, but Carcassonne is an obvious example) non-aggressively as it is just nicer.This game looks complicated with loads of cards, piles of little plastic tokens and busy player boards, but it really isn’t complicated at all. The rulebook is well laid out and after the first faltering play-through we have not referred to it since. Played in rounds playing two of the five available phases you play cards (two phases), initiate actions, produce terraforming factors or draw cards. With a hand limit of ten cards there is very little of the dreaded analysis paralysis trying to decide which cards to play so rounds rattle along at a cracking pace, especially as players can execute phases simultaneously. It would be nice if the game board was a bit bigger and had indented areas like the player boards as it is easy to dislodge the little tokens on their tracks but it is a minor gripe.We chose this game over the more daunting and competitive original ‘Terraforming Mars’ game (complicated and games can go on for ages) as it was advertised as having a two-player co-op mode. As it happens, this mode is a bit feeble as it simply limits the number of rounds to fifteen in which time you have to have completely terraformed the planet. Without the right cards in hand, this is pretty much impossible. As is often the case, we have adopted our own house rules where, basically, the object is to complete the terraforming in the smallest number of rounds keeping track of how many times each of us has incremented a terraforming factor. A bit like reading a really good book, the speed of the rounds makes for quite addictive gameplay and a really pleasant way to while away a few idle winter afternoons. With the vast number of project cards (209) and a good selection of corporations to choose, no two games are the same.I have just ordered the ‘Ares Expedition Crisis’ as this offers a more fully developed co-op mode and introduces some interesting new game elements. Once it has arrived in a few weeks and we have played through a few times, I will pen an appropriate review when I have time.EDIT: If you are looking for a well-rounded & fulfilling bit of co-operative gameplay, then the ‘Crisis’ expansion is well worth considering. Needless to say, there is a detailed review:https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3VUHO9IOR2ULH/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8Complexity: 4/10 Component quality: 8/10 Replayability: 10/10 Gameplay pace: 10/10

My favourite game of all time!!Takes a while to understand the rules but once you do you are flying, I'd advise watching videos online.