Terraforming Mars – Automa Coming to Kickstarter Soon(ish)

Exciting news yesterday! (I would have posted it yesterday, but too many posts for a Friday already).

Even though Terraforming Mars: Prelude 2 has not even seen a hint of Kickstarter yet (maybe later in the Summer is the last I heard), they’ve already announced another expansion for Kickstarter…kind of.

I saw on Boardgame Geek (which posted this from a Facebook post) that Terraforming Mars: Automa is going to be hitting Kickstarter at some point (presumably after the Prelude expansion?).

Terraforming Mars: Automa is essentially a new solo system for this venerable classic (ok, 7 years isn’t “venerable,” but it feels like it).

Designed by Nick Shaw and David Turczi (Turczi is especially well-known for designing solo systems for popular games, but he says that Shaw designed it and that Turczi just made it better), this will replace the solo mode that came in the base game.

Never having played it solo, I’m not sure how well that worked, but this system will essentially interact with the card deck. The automa will be able to achieve milestones and awards and it won’t be so focused on Terraforming at the speed of light in order to win.

Instead of racing against time, you are playing against actual corporations, which sounds much better.

BGG user “odditie” (who apparently helped playtest it) chimed in to explain a little of how it works.

“The core of it is the bot flips over cards and takes actions based on the tags the card has on it by advancing on tracks that have different actions on them. The bot scores points just like a player. It will claim milestones and fund awards as well.

It will definitely add to the playtime for a solo game since the bot has a decent amount of admin and upkeep for it, but I found it very satisfying both when it was the original bot Nick created and during the playtesting period.”

Shaw also confirmed that it will work with all expansions, though wouldn’t say how.

Also nothing regarding what will be in the box, except presumably the tracks and such. Hard to say if there would be any new cards (probably not, unless they are cards that will enhance the solo play, as I hope Stronghold Games and Fryx Games wouldn’t do that to people who have the base game but have no desire to play it solo).

Exciting news for owners of the game. Probably not enough to get me to buy the whole thing since I have multiple friends who have it.

But I will suggest it to them!

Stay tuned for more news as it develops.

Are you excited about this?

Or are you not a solo gamer and don’t care?

Let me know in the comments.