Game moment
3
Terraforming Mars - Ares Expedition
New Expedition to Mars
🇩🇪 Original in German
Recently we headed to Mars again, but this time in the Ares Expedition. I'd read mixed opinions, but the gameplay feel is quite similar and thanks to the simultaneous actions it's also much faster - with four of us, including the explanation, we needed just under 2 hours. And of course it ends just as abruptly as the original :D
🇩🇪 Original in German
The material looks good. Is that a deluxe version?
🇩🇪 Original in German
Should be the normal version. If I'm seeing that right, though, the cards are sleeved.
🇩🇪 Original in German
Playground is right, it's the normal version with sleeved cards :)
🇩🇪 Original in German
What do you mean by abruptly over? Do you play by rounds or by objectives? I'm more the kind of player who builds something up long-term. That would probably not be so effective in this game then. 😁
🇩🇪 Original in German
This is a great place to build something! The goal is reached when the parameters "oxygen, temperature, and oceans" are met, which everyone works on during the game. Sure, it then stops very suddenly, but I still find it relatively predictable.
🇩🇪 Original in German
You play toward fulfilling three parameters and build up an engine. In the original game, it starts off rather slowly, and the moment your own engine finally feels good, it escalates quite a bit and the game ends shortly after. Many people like that, I find it a bit lame 😅 but up until then it's nice 😁
🇩🇪 Original in German
My favorite version of TM. I find the illustrations much nicer (the ones from the board game look so old-fashioned) and the downtime is much lower. Still, you can build wonderful symbioses! Unfortunately, though, the game board gives me the impression that Mars is just being flooded. That's where some of the flavor gets lost.
🇩🇪 Original in German
Yeah, it was definitely an adjustment. But the short wait times are so nice that this could become our new favorite 😊 I also thought it was a bit of a shame that you do get tree tiles, but they just kind of sit there.
🇩🇪 Original in German
Is the basic principle still the same as TM though? It's an expansion, right? What gets added?
🇩🇪 Original in German
Yeah, but as a shared board you only have the ocean tiles. Tree tiles still exist, but you just get them for free. The most important difference: everyone secretly plays a card with a phase, which are then revealed simultaneously (e.g. playing green cards, production, card draw phase), meaning you sort of guess what others will play in order to have as many phases as possible. ;-) As a result, for example, you don't automatically get a production phase either. The Foundations expansion for Ares allows up to 6 players (instead of 4 in the base game), there's a fourth global parameter (infrastructure), and a few new cards. The higher player count was the main priority, and because actions are executed simultaneously, it doesn't automatically take longer either 😁