Adventures in Terraforming

 The Flautist and I have been trying more Terraforming Mars experiments in our 2p games.  First we tried a powered up version of the game where every turn we got two prelude cards each and picked one to keep.  This would clearly generate a ridiculous game, so we started at only ten Terraform Rating each to keep our incomes more in line with the base game.  A new prelude each turn is a lot more powerful than ten money, and the game ended early at turn nine.  I got lucky and hit 30 bucks and 21 bucks as my last two preludes, which was certainly a lot better than random income on the final turns.

The Flautist isn't one for half measures though, so she wanted to try that again but with full income.  Naturally getting a free prelude every turn made the game silly fast, and we ended on turn 7.  The board was mostly empty as we had just taken as much pure terraform as possible, due to the rapid game end.  It was an amusing experiment, but didn't really make for a great game.  Much like playing with five players, playing with that much extra stuff ends the game so fast that much of the game no longer matters.  Income cards and things that generate points over turns don't work, and that cuts out too much of the play for my tastes.

Our next experiment was aimed at finding out how it would feel if there were no randomness in card draws.  I usually win the games, in part because I memorize the whole deck and she doesn't.  If we drew exactly the same cards would I find it an advantage because I can predict her plays, or a disadvantage because she doesn't have to worry about what I might have because she has it too?

We decided to do this by taking two separate TM sets and building two decks ordered identically.  Every time she would draw she would do so from her deck and me from mine.  With identical resources, would our games play out nearly the same?

Our games sure didn't play out the same.  We each got the same corporations and preludes, and I selected Inventrix over Helion.  I don't like Helion at the best of times, though admittedly it has some sweet endgame angles when the Thermalist award is in play, but the extra three cards granted by Inventrix seemed crucial so I wouldn't fall behind in information.  Between preludes and ocean cards in our opening hands we got to four oceans on turn 1, and I used Inventrix's special power to drop Kelp Farming.

Kelp Farming turn 1 is a hilarious smashing, and could easily have gotten me the game by itself.  However, I leveraged Inventrix into AI Central to draw tons of cards, and Earth Catapult, Anti Gravity, and Research Outpost to give me -5 cost on all those cards I was drawing.  Six cards a round at -5 cost is preposterous, and we ended the game on turn 11 with me 50 points ahead.

The Flautist likes Helion, and didn't quite realize how powerful the extra three starting cards from Inventrix would be.  She chose Helion, which meant that the entire game I knew exactly what cards she would draw each turn, and knew what to play around and what to ignore.  Not having the extra science symbol from Inventrix also meant that she couldn't get a science set up going, and while she did play Earth Catapult she couldn't abuse it nearly as badly as I abused my discount / card draw engine.

Inventrix kind of broke our format.  We were supposed to be drawing the same cards each turn and then planning around that, but instead I got new stuff each turn and knew what she was getting before she did.

The Flautist wanted to change the format for another go at this, but this time remove all card draw from the deck to ensure that we would get the same cards every turn.  That is one way to go about it, but I came up with another idea I like:  Build 4 decks.  2 of the decks, using half of each of our sets, would be our decks to draw our standard 4 cards a turn from.  They would be ordered identically, of course.  This way no matter what happens we get the same cards on each turn.  Then build 2 more decks with the rest of the cards, also ordered identically, and use those decks for all other card draw.  This way card draw remains in the game and works fine, and there is an advantage to drawing more as you know what your opponent has access to, but you cannot completely predict their draws because each turn they get 4 cards that you don't know about until you get the same ones.

I like this theory a lot.  I don't think it would make a good long term format but it should give an interesting experience and let us actually do the thing we intended to do in the first place - each draw the same cards every turn and try to outfox each other given that information.