Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Terraforming Mars: Turmoil on Kickstarter now!
Judging from my blog traffic in the last couple of days, you’d think there is something pretty cool coming out on Kickstarter today.
I couldn’t imagine what it might be.
What’s that? Check my email?
Oh yeah!
Terraforming Mars: Turmoil just dropped on the crowdfunding platform this morning!
It’s designed by Jacob Fryxelius with art by Isaac Fryxelius and published by Stronghold Games in North America.
I know people were holding their breath to see how it would do when it arrived, and they needn’t have worried about passing out. I’m sure they hit the target in probably 30 seconds or so. As I write this, it’s currently at $181,000 of the $20,000 goal, probably about 3-4 hours after landing.
I think people kind of want this expansion.
It’s easy to see why.
It’s a great game, and what we’ve seen of the expansion so far looks like it’s going to add a ton of great stuff.
Now that the campaign has launched, we’re seeing even more of that great stuff than we were led to believe.
No, this wasn’t a bait and switch with the real campaign being a full deluxe version (somebody on BGG actually seemed to think that), but there are some really neat things in it.
Let’s do the basics, first. What does this expansion contain?
There is, of course, the actual expansion content with the Terraforming Committee board where players vie for control of the various parties to increase their strength and get bonuses.
Each party will have their own award, as well as policy in place when they are in power. Having delegates in those parties can be quite lucrative if you play your cards right.
There are the Global Events that will pop up, but they’ll be in the distance a bit so you can prepare for them before they arrive.
The 16 new project cards look to interact with the Terraforming Committee in some way. Not a lot of project card expansion, but there’s so much other stuff in this one that it’s not surprising.
Finally, there are five new corporations. It looks like, as with previous expansions, one or two of them get their strength from stuff in the expansion while others don’t necessarily require it. Lakefront Resorts, for instance, gives extra bonuses for building near oceans but doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the Committee.
I know what you’re thinking.
Yes, yes there is.
As a Kickstarter exclusive, there are five new dual-layer player boards.
What????
Yes, no more of these scary things (assuming you haven’t already gone the 3rd party route anyway).
These look really cool.
They won’t be available in the retail version of the expansion.
You know what else won’t be available in the retail version?
Each day, a new Promo card is going to be announced. So far, they’ve announced today’s (a project card called Dusk Laser Mining) and tomorrow’s is a new corporation card called Mons Insurance. You start out increasing your megacredit production by 4 and decreasing everybody else’s by 2. Then, during the game, when you decrease anybody else’s production of anything, you pay them 3 megacredits (or as much as you can).
Pretty interesting effects!
I’m excited to see what else may be coming, and none of these will be in the retail version.
What are the pledge levels?
For $34, you get the expansion by itself.
For $79, you get the expansion and the base game. Basically, that’s $45 for the base game, which isn’t bad.
Are you brand new to the Terraforming Mars experience?
You can spend $139 and get everything.
Yes, everything.
That’s a pretty good deal!
Since I have two friends who have everything for this game, I won’t be getting this. But at least one of them is backing it, and I did back it for $1 to get the updates.
I heartily recommend picking this up if you can, though. The game is great (it’s #6 in my top games played!) and I’ll never turn down a game of it unless I just don’t have time.
The campaign closes on May 2, so check it out while you can.
Dude! Take Your Turn! 