Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition Makes A Comeback

hey i'm alex radcliffe from board game co and i'm keeping terraforming mars aries expedition which depending on if you've watched my prior content on this game or not is either a completely irrelevant nonsensical way to start a video or like wait a second what happened so let's go ahead and give some context here because i think some context is relevant and time stamps down below to anyone who wants to jump to any particular section in case you well want to jump to a particular section so terraforming mars areas expedition is a game that it basically combines the core aspects temporary mars along with the phases of race for the galaxy to bring you well aries expedition it brings you better artwork faster gameplay and the mechanisms of two different games together into one game ideally delivering an experience that comes in at close to the hour range roughly half the time of a game of terrifying mars perhaps even less depending on which expansions or modules you're playing with my own personal experience with terrifying marisa's position is going to be we played it a few times and we thought hey this is nice but it wasn't terrifying mars now full transparency myself and the people i played it with are all huge fans of terraforming mars that is a relevant piece of information like we love that game to me it's my favorite game of all time like absolutely my favorite game of all time and aries expedition delivered a lot of the general things i liked about terraforming mars but cut out enough of the things that i liked that i thought was a good game but not one that i'd love to play i put out a video together with a quack lope and shira covering terrifying mars exhibition play this not that terrifying mars versus aries expedition and we all drastically chose terrifying mars as our preferred game even take into account the play time meaning it's not just like oh it's a better game but this plays in an hour we're like no when we play this we kind of just want to play terrifying mars so we're not going to play this which was the conclusion at the time i doubled down that with a bit of a games leaving my collection video where once again i said i'm getting rid of terraforming mars but then something else happened i wasn't planning on it but effectively we have one more person in my game group who their favorite game of all time is also terraforming mars and before it left after i filmed that video but before it left i sat there and decided to pull it out and play a game with him but along the way i thought of the things that took away from the terrifying mars experience for me in aries expedition i thought of the things that made it so that i didn't want to play this game i gave it a three out of five it's a good game but not one i was in a rush to play and i tried thinking through the core aspects that that take away from the game experience to try to see if i could in any way improve upon those for myself to be very clear improve upon for myself those specific aspects and what i came up with is there's a few main reasons why i would rather play terraforming mars over terrifying mars aries expedition there's a lot of differences going on in the game there's gonna be a few core aspects that differentiate the two to begin with the area of control in aries expedition is incredibly lacking it's not present it's not lacking it's not present versus terrifying mars has a degree of area control a board that you're actually playing with in those exhibition you literally have these tiles that you're just flipping and they serve no purpose in the order they are it could be a random stack of tiles the ordering configuration is just a visual thing because hey hey we have a board why not use it a little bit it has no impact whatsoever you're just flipping nine ocean tiles there's no degree of area control in the game that's going to be the first core aspect the second is going to be the lack of drafting now to be very fair drafting interfering mars is a variant but it's a variant that i believe most people not everyone most people myself included consider it an essential aspect of the game and every suspicion takes away that drafting there is no phase where you simply draw cards rather you draw cards when somebody plays the research card and then those people draw cards and the person playing the card gets an additional bonus because of the way you have the phases in this game so again two is going to be the lack of drafting three is the tenseness of the card draw in terraforming mars you're going to draft your cards or even just draw your cards let's say you're playing the non-drafting variant you or you're playing a solo you draw four cards and then you have to sit there and say every card i want is going to cost me three money to keep and so you kind of want all these things these cards represent amazing opportunities ways to build your engine fun moments in the game things that are essential but they also cost you three money each and so you often have a frequent challenge of do i keep those cards so i can actually further build my engine but the more cars i keep the less cars that i can actually build your eyes are always bigger than your stomach in this game and it results in a tense fun little puzzle of what do i do which cards are essential enough to give up the ability to play something else this turn because i want to pay the three money to keep that card area's expedition does have the economy of card play but it does so differently in terror's exhibition you draw your four cards and then at any point you can sell a card for three money which does still have a degree of trade-off but that trade-off more comes with a degree of when you have better information around it doesn't come with the tenseness of having to decide on the spot before you know rather keep everything and if you need that three money just go ahead and sell it later it removes some of the trade-off that i otherwise love in terraforming mars and so that's going to be number three number four is going to be the general abstraction of some of the core mechanics your trees are reduced to point tokens you don't have any real goals to go for in this game there's no driving force terrified mars is going to give you two different sets of goals to drive your engine forward do i want to try to be the best at this this if you're playing with various maps you'll have even more variety on those goals and this takes away from those experiences past that it gives you most of the same aspects there are other differences i can point out other things the way you play cards the phases i can point to other changes in the game but those are going to be the four things that i primarily missed about terrafy mars and so i sat there and said okay let me try to house rule this game and this results in this resulted in a bit of a step-by-step process where i tried introducing different elements to address the things that i felt were lacking in terraforming mars and this video is going to be about me telling you which of those things worked for me which ones didn't and where terraforming mars ultimately ended up in my collection to be very clear this is a review and adjustment based on me changing the game to suit the things i wanted out of it this these may be things that are helpful irrelevant to yourself they may they may not be this is the first time i think this is the first time i'm doing a review that's like hey here's this game i like because it's not the game that was put out and it's a bit of a weird space to be in but at the end of the day i'm keeping aries expedition so i thought it was worth going over those things so number one the first thing i did this is the verse the first thing i did in the game with my friend is i just basically house ruled the game that when you draw a car as an aries expedition you have to decide on the spot if you want to sell it for three money otherwise you can sell it later for one money no different than terraforming our standard game so i draw i go ahead and i play research and i go ahead and i draw five cards let's say one two three four five and i look at those cards and i sit there and decide you know what i i want to keep this one this one's really good for me based on my engine but i don't know if i'm able to play it soon i have a choice i can keep this card and sell it later for a money or player or i can sell it right now and only right now for three money that was the first change that was introduced and i can tell you that for myself and for well not myself for all the people we played with we thought that change was it added a degree of tension back into the game it added a degree of trying to decide at the time and it doesn't really impact or change the game otherwise so that's going to be change number one that we introduced the ideal the idea that you pay for that you can only sell a car that has full value when you drop and at other times you have to basically sell it for one money instead change number two that unfortunately didn't really work for us which is a little disappointing because i love drafting but change number two was adjusting the research card we changed the research card to basically b instead of uh normally when you play research all players get to draw two cards and they get to keep one and the player who played it draws five cards and keeps two we change this so that you draw cards equal to the number of players plus two for example in a three player game the person playing this card is going to draw five cards they're going to draft pick one past the rest of the opposing players and come back around and then they get a second pick the other players get to pick one so it adds a little bit of an element of draft to the game and the only major change word differentiates from the balance of the game is going to be if multiple players play research then we all have them do it which would introduce a degree of multiple card draws on that turn you'd have multiple players drawing five cards and then passing them around i don't mind that change i just don't think i cared enough about what it did to include it in future games it does slow down the game a bit it's one of these games where terrifying martial's position is going to be giving you simultaneous play in all the other aspects of what it does and this did introduce a degree of slowdown that normally i'm happy to trade off the slowdown for drafting but because you didn't have all players drafting because of the fact that it wasn't like everyone picks cards it was rather you know you pick your cards and then you just kind of dropped around the table it introduced it it introduced a degree of slowdown to the game that i felt probably wasn't worth the little extra level of drafting you start to feel for you get a feel for it in the game so i don't mind it i wouldn't be averse to playing with it but it didn't necessarily improve the experience regarding the area control there's nothing i can really do about that without just basically just playing terraform mars instead the area of control and the removal of that game of that aspect to the game really is a big part of what makes error's expression easier to table and a shorter play time so i didn't try to do anything with area control i felt that any form of adjustment or change would be just way too drastic past trying to come up with house rules about how you manipulate the ocean tiles and trying to make this actual configuration matter more none of which i thought weren't necessarily inherently balanced or not i didn't try to mess with the area of control aspect and honestly area control while i love what it does in terrifying mars it is probably the aspect that i missed the least especially when i'm trying to balance that terrifying mars experience versus the play time i currently have and the last thing number four is what we did is we're going to introduce we did introduce goals i have a sheet over here just full of a whole bunch of various goals that we had goals that i just literally came up with on the spot i have no clue if they're balanced or not we've only played with them twice so far i i they could be balanced they're fun they're fun to go with and what we did with these goals is we have a variety of things we pick five randomly every single game you have you have to have six plant production have four jovian tags builds five trees flip four ocean tiles have six science tags the standard stuff you'd expect in terrifying mars when you're looking at the goals just a variety of different objectives to go for have 12 earth tags i don't know i'm just making them up at this point but whatever's on that list have zero cards in your hand that was a fun one a little bit of a challenge to go for and then all those goals what they do when you achieve them is they give you two tr which is not a huge amount it's enough to go for it it's enough to try to achieve it and that 2tr is going to give you income the earlier you get that goal the better but also to going to give you points at the end of the game and we we liked what those did as well that gave you some degree of something to strive for and similar to the other rules in aries expedition if two players achieve the goal in the same round they both get that rating they both get that tr bump and that i really enjoyed and like the card rule where it's just an easy wheel to go with that's pretty easy to implement granted unless and until i make it all pretty looking it's basically just a bunch of little tiles used with paper and text written on them but they did add a bit more direction to the game a bit more of a reason to pursue different strategies each time you play this game so those are going to be the four aspects of terraformars the three house rules we attempted and the two house rules that stuck a quick summary of those is we added the the element that you have to sell cards when you get them if you want the full three money otherwise you get one money we tried drafting with the research card and a little modification to how the resource card worked we found that it slowed down the game smoothness and the fact that all players are going simultaneously and it didn't add enough value to the game past that and then we added goals goals that we did enjoy because they gave us more of a direction easy to implement and they're random we have 15 different goals we pick five every round five every game randomly and those would give us a bit more direction in the game that's the experiences we tried now i will note before i go into my final thoughts and where terrifying marx is edition has ended up for me i will note i have a solo gameplay uh going up on the channel later today and crack lope has a two player gameplay going up on his channel not with the goals unfortunately we hadn't yet introduced the goals when we played those games but adding some of the elements so to begin with if you want to see terraforming mars i was exhibition played solo or two player you have that option on both his channel and my channel and if you want to see it with the minor modification that these cars will have to be sold right away then we have that rule in play uh it's a bit of a again it's been going through a bit of a process the past few weeks playing it every day every week with different rules or different adjustments and that those videos were filmed a few weeks ago they're just going up now so where does terrifying mars areas expedition land now so to begin with like i said beginning this video i am keeping this game now it has gone up for me i think that the initial rating of a three out of five i think even after the first score the first aspect of where you have to sell cards right away i think it still was a three out of five for me slightly higher but still a three out of five the introduction of the goals has pushed it to a four to five for me the introduction of both those mechanics given me a variety of different ways to play or reasons to play different play styles every single game as well as having something else to pursue to balance as you try to balance everything else you're going for in terraforming mars and air's expedition as well as the fact you have to sell the car as adding degree of tensions those rules have both pushed it to a four to five for me in which the way i play it and i will by the way in the description this video i'll throw a list of the 15 goals i put together keep in mind they're not playtested heavily they've had two games so far they're not balanced inherently at all they're just things i just came up with on the spot to try to get a feel for that aspect that it adds to the game as far as overall my conclusions or thoughts and errors exhibition so like i said already it's been bumped to a four to five i am keeping it in my collection i think ares expedition is currently my preferred way to play terraforming mars solo i like playing terra for my solo and i think terra farmer's solo in the full game is going to give me a better experience that trade-off of accessibility setup and time and everything else i think i would prefer to play areas exhibition solo for when i'm looking for that terraforming mars fix in 45 minutes to an hour and i'm playing it solo instead if i'm playing it two-player i think i prefer terrifying mars aries expedition as well one of the problems with terrifying mars 2 player is that the area control doesn't feel as as interesting in a two-player experience i really think three is the sweet spot for terrifying mario's errors expedition for terrifying mars regular when you're playing with three players or more and so playing a two-player i think i may prefer aries expedition playing terraforming mars three player which is my preferred way to play the game at four players starts to get a little longer two players locks a bit and solo i could pick either one but the play time trade-off is probably worth it for me three-player terrifying mars is still going to be terrifying mars there's still no real opportunity where i want to play area suspicion three player at that point i'd rather just play everything's expedition i'd rather play the original terrifying mars instead and so that's ultimately where i end up with this game it is one that i already i always liked to a degree but it always made me want more of the terrifying mars experience having added in some of that aspect of the terraformers experience it does get a little closer to what the feeling i was looking for and it does so with the trade-off of the time so there's still a degree of lack there's still major aspects of terrifying mars that i do not get that full feeling in this game but also this game does play shorter it's easier to set up it's easier to table it's easier it's not easier to teach these just to set up and table and all that overall i'm looking forward to the expansions for this game it's one that i i don't know if i was too hasty it's a weird thing i haven't even figured out the title for this video yet i don't know if what the like do i title a terrifying mar is i was wrong terrifying mars an apology a comeback tour i have no idea what to actually title this video i don't think i was wrong my opinion was based on playing terrifying mar's arrow's expedition the way it was designed and the way it was designed i think it's a really really good game that still just makes me want to play terrifying mars instead so i don't think i was wrong maybe i was hasty i don't really know how to uh reconcile those two things when you household a game to make it stay but overall the changes i have made are ultimately there to make terrifying mars areas exhibition more like terrifying mars which is always what i wanted from this game until next time i'm alex radcliffe from board game co like i said already later today on my channel and at some point on crackle channel perhaps even now there are gameplays of this game and until next time have a good one

Channel: BoardGameCo

Views: 8,036

Keywords: review

Id: 210PTrZujaU

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 18 2021