The Flautist and I have been playing lots of 1v1 Terraforming Mars over the last half year and we have taken to performing experiments with the game. The first experiment was to end the game only once the deck of cards ran out, and this resulted in a fun but silly game that we don't intend on repeating.
Our second attempt at new rulesets was born because we wanted to try a game where we both got *tons* of card draw. We figured the game would go really long because our early money would be invested in cards rather than heat / plants / ocean production, but it didn't quite work out that way. We set it up by choosing 10 great card draw cards, shuffling them, and dealing 5 of them to each of us. Then we dealt 5 other random cards to each of us and we played the basic corporation. This way we were both guaranteed to get an engine. We had 8 basic science symbols and 2 cards that required 3 science symbols to play.
The Flautist drew 6 science symbols. I drew 2 science symbols, and both of the cards that require 3 science. Unlikely, and quite a mess for me. She slammed down her engine and it was a tremendous success, though not because of all the card draw. She played the science payoff card that gives 4 energy on turn 2, the one that gives 6 energy on turn 3, and the other one that gives 4 energy on turn 4. By turn 5 she had 17 energy production, a steelworks to turn it into oxygen, and then dropped the top science payoff card Anti Gravity to top it all off, making all of her cards cheaper.
With her taking an oxygen and a heat every turn and me using a bunch of steel production to place an ocean every turn using Aquifer Pumping we ripped through the game and ended on turn 11.
My game went reasonably well too, with my turn 4 Advanced Alloys boosting 3 steel and 4 titanium per turn. I built a ton of cities and greeneries, notching 37 points just from greenery/city board points (pretty good for turn 11) and almost stole the terraforming lead on the last turn by grabbing 10 terraform. It wasn't enough, and 14 points of Jovian payoffs still left me behind, losing the game by a single point.
Our attempt to have a long game with lots of cards drawn didn't work. All it did was give one of us a ludicrous early science engine. We drew cards, sure, but I didn't get into card draw until halfway through the game, and The Flautist ended up tossing away a dozen cards at the end.
We had fun with it, but given how the card draw cards work it isn't that easy to have lots of cards without also making the science portion of the game kinda broken. Card draw without science symbols is kinda limited. If we had randomly not drawn the science payoffs for awhile I think it would have gone a lot more like we envisioned.
The next experiment we are going to do is one based on the colonies expansion. When we play a few colonies usually get put down, but they usually don't play a crucial part in the game. We plan on doing something similar to this last experiment where we take 10 trading / colony cards, deal 5 to each of us along with 5 random cards, and see where we end up. There will be a ton of extra resources in the game because of all the trading, but our other production will surely be miserable given that set up.
We shall see if she can notch another win against me with this weird setup. I suspect there will be some serious randomness in the cards - if one of us gets cheaper trading and better trading along with 4 energy production they are going to have an absurd early engine, particularly since there *will* be lots of colonies further boosting trades.
I will report back with the results. If you have any other odd rulesets that you would like to see me try out and report on, speak up.
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