How to play Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars is a card-driven engine-builder by Jacob Fryxelius in which each player represents a corporation pouring resources into making the red planet habitable. Over a series of generations you raise the temperature, fill the oceans, and enrich the atmosphere — each improvement nudging your Terraform Rating upward and bringing the end of the game one step closer.

The depth lives in the project cards. Hundreds of them let you build power plants, seed forests, herd animals, and engineer asteroids — each one unlocking synergies with the cards already in front of you. Managing the tension between spending now to build your engine and spending now to raise parameters (and thus your income) is the central puzzle of every session.

The game is played over generations, each with three phases:

Research — at the start of each generation (except the very first, which uses your initial card selection), each player draws 4 project cards and may buy any of them for 3 megacredits each; discard the rest face-down without showing them. You are never forced to buy any cards.

Player turns — starting with the first player, everyone takes turns in order. On your turn you take 1 or 2 actions from this list, then play passes to your left: - Play a project card — pay its megacredit cost (meeting any stated requirements) and resolve its effects - Use a standard project — spend a fixed price printed on the board to place a city or greenery tile, raise a global parameter, or sell cards - Claim a milestone — pay 8 megacredits to score 5 VP immediately if you meet its condition; only 3 milestones can be claimed per game - Fund an award — pay the increasing cost to back a scoring category scored at game end; only 3 awards can be funded - Use a blue card action — each played blue card with an action symbol may be used once per generation - Convert plants or heat — spend 8 plant resources to place a greenery tile, or 8 heat resources to raise the temperature one step

A player who doesn't want to act passes and sits out the rest of the generation's player turns. Play continues until everyone has passed.

Production — once all players have passed, income is collected. Each player gains megacredits equal to their Terraform Rating plus their money production track, then gains resources from each of their other production tracks (steel, titanium, plants, energy, heat). All leftover energy converts to heat.

After production, pass the first-player marker one seat to the left and begin the next generation.

The game ends immediately after the generation in which all three global parameters — temperature, oxygen, and ocean — reach their maximum values. Then players total their scores:

• Terraform Rating — your TR marker value
• Board points — 1 VP per city tile for each adjacent greenery, plus 1 VP per greenery tile you placed
• Card victory points — green, blue, and red cards with VP icons
• Milestones and awards — claimed milestones are worth 5 VP each; funded awards pay out to top scorers

The player with the highest total wins. Keep one strategic truth front of mind: your Terraform Rating is simultaneously your per-generation income and your base end-game score, so every parameter you raise pays you twice — once now, once at final scoring.