I understand that the comment section can get wild and this a new area for my channel, but I hope to make more videos like this for general boardgaming topics (I have a few planned already). Let me know how can I make the watching experience better for you! :)
"Imagine playing 7 Wonders if all the cards were just shuffled in one deck together" There is a game like that, it's called "It's A Wonderful World", and I find it inferior to 7 Wonder in part for this specific reason.
not the video I was expecting today but really nice one. I don't know this game but video format is good and I would be glad to see more videos like this also about other games. Presentation was really nice. I would also like some videos where you show other board games you like (I think you made something like this for "race for the galaxy"). Well done
I've kinda driven myself nuts thinking about TM over the years, because it should have been a home run for me, but its like it is designed specifically to annoy *just* me. It's a game with all my favorite things - cards, public objectives, tiles on a map - and I don't like any part of it. It's wild.
Really interesting and well thought out analysis. I would love to hear your thoughts on Gemwielders, given you seem to enjoy many of my favorite games. Even though it isn't very obvious at first, Seven Wonders was a big inspiration for me when designing Gemwielders.
Hi, Wonderful Plays. I agree with almost everything you said and I understand your arguments very well. I still like this game a lot with all that said and I think that people that like and love this game have this opinion, because they want all of these solitarie features. That's exactaly why most of them hate the new expansion Turmoil, because adds a lot of interactivity between players and you need to strategize around the politcs that starts with the changes of this new expansion. I think a lot about playing all the fan made expansions like 'Terrafoming Mars Giga Expansion' and maybe create something new for me and my friends in the future. I don't know, maybe even develop a new game from there.
First of all, everyone has different tastes (for exemple I love TM art 'style'), and it is normal to sometimes dislike what is the more popular. Also, nice video, especially for a game you didn't enjoy. I have a weird relationship with the game, I first loved it, then after tens and tens of games, I finally ended feeling less interested by it. I think it happens when the meta I played in shifted from racing the terraformation to collect a maximum of points quickly, to pure engine building war. During my first games, Mars was actually quickly terraformed (having only base game and higher player count help), meaning than engines were still viable, but they had to be on rail quickly to be a net positive in the end. You couldn't just create a very powerful engine in the first turns and expect to win this way, as your engine return's will be limited by the coming end of the game. You had to be opportunistic, take awards/milestones/good places on the board quickly before the others and building quick-return rather than efficient engines. However, after much more games and adding extensions, it was realized that if a majority of the players don't terraform that much, engines became kings. A big culprit to that shift was the last extension, Turnoil, with the 'red' party who taxes terraformation + help corporations not terraforming and the scientific party who help engines going even more out of hand with the extra draw + the money for scientist symbols (typical of the slow but powerful engines). As you said, the engine building part of this game is pretty limited after few turns (generally when money is no longer a problem), what people can do is just limited by their card draw. At this point, the game can become boring, especially if you didn't got your engine going (usually because didn't drafted interesting cards when your opponents did). It rejoins what you said about pacing. It is particularly frustrating when your opponents snowball heavily and you can't do anything about it because they have good repeatable card draw and you don't have any. The runaway leader is also a big problem. There is actually little ways to handicap a leading player (especially when he/she has good card draw) even if multiple other players them up. I had multiple games where it was agreed from a common accord to just stop there because someone has a way better engine. My first games were short enough that it was difficult to not to be near the end of the game when those problems really became apparent. I never feeled the game was worst at higher player count, it may even be better. Hate cards are not efficient (high cost and/or negative points) at 4+ player unless you have a meaningful combo with them/desperately need what they provide. Having enemies is never a good thing. Usually, only a few will be played, at whoever they can be a target (not always the winning player, he/she may not have the required ressources). In the end I still like the game, but I can totally see why people don't like beyond the art style and the bad quality components.
i could never see what the hype was about with this dud of a game. (i find stronghold games all suffered from very similar problems actually. bad production, poor play-testing, and no payoff) when your group loves a game and you don't, it's the worst, i feel for ya man. it's happened to me more times than i can count. i've switched gaming groups a couple of times because of it.
Thanks for sharing this story. That makes me a little sad that you had to switch gaming group. It is not really an option for me, as we are very close and we are friends for almost 14 years now. We just have to compromise some time :)
haha...ok you guys. i'm sure you'll stay friends despite having to play games you don't like every now and then. i didn't really know the guys in the first group i left, and it basically turned into a Magic the Gathering group with no hard feelings from me...but I'm sure it's not a similar situation. Have fun!
It sounds more like this game just isn't for you because you have a short attention span and you don't like math. And that you dont like games that have restrictions on your combos because you just want to combo off so easily and feel like you actually did something because you drew the whole deck in one turn. Congratulations. You like simple games that make you feel smart. This game forces you to pick and buy your cards smartly. It rewards you for choosing for buying the correct amount of cards and not being greedy. I disagree with no interaction. The whole board is full of interaction and fighting for areas to place your cities and stopping others from placing forests near their cities with special tiles. That's a massive interaction that helps stop others from steam rolling you in the forests department. Forests are literally the best point production in the game. They literally can give you on average 2 points per forest and up to 5 points per forest drop if you smartly place it around 3 of your cities. If you play with people that aren't using forests to gain points and are only playing the engine then they will get steamrolled. You have to focus on the board. It sounds like you didnt play enough games with experienced players to notice the interactions. Also drafting has interactions. Seeing what other peoples engines are and taking the cards to stop them or taking cards for yourself is a difficult choice. Also side note the base game is just fine but prelude is something they should have included in the original game. I will give you that. But it lowere down time significantly. Also if you play with the lunar phase that the venus next expansion gives it can make the game an hour quicker.
Thanks for the comment! I do have a shorter attention span, but I do love math. I do like simple games, I do like harder games, the argument about restrictions was about the options that the game give you. With so few cards that you see (without drafting variant) you simply might not find anything particulary interesting. There are of course interactions on the board, but they are very simplistic, not to use the word boring. With the amount of experience I have in similar games I can quickly navigate the choices and narrow the paths to find close enough to optimal plays and anticipate the moves of my opponents. The argument about playing with not good enough players is very odd, there is no way for me to prove this, but I'd say it's not true and even more importantly it is misguided. This is not a critique of high level play, this is a critique of amount of fun the game provides. I'm still glad people are enjoying TM, it's one of the most obvious successes in the industry in the recent years. I just wish I could join the fun, sadly it really wasn't for me despite repeated tries.
I find this game very boring as well and not socially engaging. My brain felt melted by the end of each one. It’s a thinking persons game, but I found the strategy to be kinda random and unenjoyable.
I feel Underwater Cities sort of fixes my issues with Terraforming Mars. Solitaire wise I do not enjoy Terraforming Mars much (unless you use fan made or homebrew rules). I felt like I quickly get into a solo rut of ignoring MANY cards especially in the end game. Compared to something like Agricola where I always feel challenged to calculate the best moves and is different every time.
I agree, solo was very dissapointing, but I think that is not the "main" mode people play so I decided to not comment on that in the main material. Underwater Cities for me was much better, but I still thought like the game is a little too long. I think it could have fewer turns.
I was really interested why someone would dislike this game, but I still have no clue. I merely strongly disagree with all points about the game being boring and “just a pile of cards”. The only thing that made sense was 20 seconds from the end.
I really like this game and fortunately there are people in my gaming group with the same opinion! I'm sorry that you have to endure this torture from time to time :) I actually disagree on the game starting to become unfunny after turn1. Yes, there is a possibility for lackluster turns after the start, but me and my peers discover that we become very excited when the endgame approaches and without resource or money limitation we can pull off amazing combos :) I also love the theme of the game and that maybe elevates my enjoyment! I can see some of your points though. Especially the downtime can be frustrating (I imagine even more frustrating if you don't like the game) and yes, there's a chance for uneven starting hands with one player pulling off magnificient combos and the start and the other one suffers. Because of this we always play with prelude and more corporations in the starting hand to alleviate this. Prelude helps with the pacing also, because you tend to do stuff earlier - which starts the excitement.
Terraforming Mars is clearly a game with problems (graphics being one of them) but there's something about this game that makes it appealing to the TONS of players. In cases like that I'm trying to understand what people do love about it, try playing it again and again :) I share some of your points about TM though. You didn't mention the runaway leader problem that I personally experience a lot. But I still don't cross TM off my list, hoping I'll find a gaming group and possibility to learn it better. It's a Wonderful World in the meantime is a game I really like. It's only slightly similar to 7W (draft and civ-building theme), the core is creating links of production-construction-production, brain works on that task differently.
Yeah the aspect of it being so popular was why I decided to explore it and explore it. Runaway leader can be a problem at 2, but propably at 3 and more people will just gang on you.
I dont really get your criticism about cards having restrictions. Without restrictions many of the powerful cards in the game couldnt be as powerful. The point of the restriction is that you get a good effect but you have to put effort to get that effect. Cards like kelp farming and NRA make the game more interesting imo
I think they could definately work, but not in one single common deck. That's the cardinal sin that spawns problem with the rest of the design. For example in a computer game where automatically all cards that can't be played are removed from the deck, this could maybe also work. But having both economic cards and end game cards in one single deck is very hard to do right, when you don't let your players draw many, many cards (like for a example Race for the galaxy).
I think I discovered this game too late. Terraforming disappointed me in the tiles aspect ( poorer compare to ark nova ), the decks combos is nice but like a lot of games now. I really liked the “engine building” but managing those cubes are a pain.. they’re all the same colours ( old game ) and they’re same for ressources. You need to buy the premium player board. Now I’m searching a game with the same engine building feeling but more consistent maybe.. if someone have suggestions 😄 And I’m glad to have ark nova, thematic didn’t appeal me first but.. one box, everything run well, long but not too long. Tiles placement is great we love manage place for our zoo. And the river maybe is more strategic.. but it’s a draft mod for TF ( even if it extend the game length in a stratospheric way I think ).
TM is only fun when the engine is working for you. Otherwise, just playing-to-play is extremely mind numbing and you can tell who is stream-rolling somewhat early on.
Thanks for taking your time to write the comment. I would argue that there is nothing clickbaity about the title - it precisely describes the content of the video. For me clickbait would be: "You need to watch this video to find out this harsh truth about Terraforming Mars" or something comparably ridicolous. As for negativity - from the start of the video I state that I am not trying to convince or diminish anyone's enjoyment of the game - I made it to precisely explain why certain people don't like this hugely succesful (I would argue this is one of the biggest stories in the last 10 years in boardgaming) and popular game. Why? Because there is hardly any quality constructive criticism for game. Not many (if any) reviewers play a game even 20 times, because of the rush to publish the review soon and be 1st. Here you have a material that has been in the making for weeks, had several overhauls and ended up like this, because I thought this gives the best insight to why I feel like this about TM. I can't judge if I it is any good, but I think discrediting it as "clickbait" and "negative" is actually more negative than the video itself.
I understand that the comment section can get wild and this a new area for my channel, but I hope to make more videos like this for general boardgaming topics (I have a few planned already). Let me know how can I make the watching experience better for you! :)
A breath of fresh air from your usual videos. Keep it up.
Thank you, I definately will try to do more general videos, as I had a lot of fun writing a script for this.
"Imagine playing 7 Wonders if all the cards were just shuffled in one deck together"
There is a game like that, it's called "It's A Wonderful World", and I find it inferior to 7 Wonder in part for this specific reason.
I couldn't agree more! That game fell completely flat for me, but I haven't played it enough to properly criticise it yet.
not the video I was expecting today but really nice one. I don't know this game but video format is good and I would be glad to see more videos like this also about other games. Presentation was really nice. I would also like some videos where you show other board games you like (I think you made something like this for "race for the galaxy"). Well done
Thanks for the valuable input :)
I've kinda driven myself nuts thinking about TM over the years, because it should have been a home run for me, but its like it is designed specifically to annoy *just* me. It's a game with all my favorite things - cards, public objectives, tiles on a map - and I don't like any part of it. It's wild.
I kinda had the same feeling, before I realised, why precisely I don't like it.
Really interesting and well thought out analysis. I would love to hear your thoughts on Gemwielders, given you seem to enjoy many of my favorite games. Even though it isn't very obvious at first, Seven Wonders was a big inspiration for me when designing Gemwielders.
Thanks, I'll take a look
@@WonderfulPlays That's awesome, thank you!
Hi, Wonderful Plays. I agree with almost everything you said and I understand your arguments very well. I still like this game a lot with all that said and I think that people that like and love this game have this opinion, because they want all of these solitarie features. That's exactaly why most of them hate the new expansion Turmoil, because adds a lot of interactivity between players and you need to strategize around the politcs that starts with the changes of this new expansion. I think a lot about playing all the fan made expansions like 'Terrafoming Mars Giga Expansion' and maybe create something new for me and my friends in the future. I don't know, maybe even develop a new game from there.
I can see that you can still love the game even when hearing my arguments. In the end this is just my opinion. thanks for sharing your thoughts!
First of all, everyone has different tastes (for exemple I love TM art 'style'),
and it is normal to sometimes dislike what is the more popular.
Also, nice video, especially for a game you didn't enjoy.
I have a weird relationship with the game, I first loved it, then after tens and tens of games,
I finally ended feeling less interested by it. I think it happens when the meta I played in shifted from racing the terraformation to collect a maximum of points quickly, to pure engine building war.
During my first games, Mars was actually quickly terraformed (having only base game and higher player count help), meaning than engines were still viable, but they had to be on rail quickly to be a net positive in the end. You couldn't just create a very powerful engine in the first turns and expect to win this way, as your engine return's will be limited by the coming end of the game. You had to be opportunistic, take awards/milestones/good places on the board quickly before the others and building quick-return rather than efficient engines.
However, after much more games and adding extensions, it was realized that if a majority of the players don't terraform that much, engines became kings. A big culprit to that shift was the last extension, Turnoil, with the 'red' party who taxes terraformation + help corporations not terraforming and the scientific party who help engines going even more out of hand with the extra draw + the money for scientist symbols (typical of the slow but powerful engines).
As you said, the engine building part of this game is pretty limited after few turns (generally when money is no longer a problem), what people can do is just limited by their card draw. At this point, the game can become boring, especially if you didn't got your engine going (usually because didn't drafted interesting cards when your opponents did). It rejoins what you said about pacing. It is particularly frustrating when your opponents snowball heavily and you can't do anything about it because they have good repeatable card draw and you don't have any. The runaway leader is also a big problem. There is actually little ways to handicap a leading player (especially when he/she has good card draw) even if multiple other players them up. I had multiple games where it was agreed from a common accord to just stop there because someone has a way better engine.
My first games were short enough that it was difficult to not to be near the end of the game when those problems really became apparent.
I never feeled the game was worst at higher player count, it may even be better. Hate cards are not efficient (high cost and/or negative points) at 4+ player unless you have a meaningful combo with them/desperately need what they provide. Having enemies is never a good thing. Usually, only a few will be played, at whoever they can be a target (not always the winning player, he/she may not have the required ressources).
In the end I still like the game, but I can totally see why people don't like beyond the art style and the bad quality components.
Thanks, for writing this. Very interesting read.
i could never see what the hype was about with this dud of a game. (i find stronghold games all suffered from very similar problems actually. bad production, poor play-testing, and no payoff)
when your group loves a game and you don't, it's the worst, i feel for ya man. it's happened to me more times than i can count. i've switched gaming groups a couple of times because of it.
Thanks for sharing this story. That makes me a little sad that you had to switch gaming group. It is not really an option for me, as we are very close and we are friends for almost 14 years now. We just have to compromise some time :)
haha...ok you guys. i'm sure you'll stay friends despite having to play games you don't like every now and then.
i didn't really know the guys in the first group i left, and it basically turned into a Magic the Gathering group with no hard feelings from me...but I'm sure it's not a similar situation.
Have fun!
I totally agree, no tension in the Game.
I thought my opinion will be less popular, but I am pleasently suprised :)
I really liked this video, and you should make one about Catan!
Thanks, but I actually like Catan :)
It sounds more like this game just isn't for you because you have a short attention span and you don't like math. And that you dont like games that have restrictions on your combos because you just want to combo off so easily and feel like you actually did something because you drew the whole deck in one turn. Congratulations. You like simple games that make you feel smart. This game forces you to pick and buy your cards smartly. It rewards you for choosing for buying the correct amount of cards and not being greedy.
I disagree with no interaction. The whole board is full of interaction and fighting for areas to place your cities and stopping others from placing forests near their cities with special tiles. That's a massive interaction that helps stop others from steam rolling you in the forests department. Forests are literally the best point production in the game. They literally can give you on average 2 points per forest and up to 5 points per forest drop if you smartly place it around 3 of your cities. If you play with people that aren't using forests to gain points and are only playing the engine then they will get steamrolled. You have to focus on the board. It sounds like you didnt play enough games with experienced players to notice the interactions. Also drafting has interactions. Seeing what other peoples engines are and taking the cards to stop them or taking cards for yourself is a difficult choice.
Also side note the base game is just fine but prelude is something they should have included in the original game. I will give you that. But it lowere down time significantly. Also if you play with the lunar phase that the venus next expansion gives it can make the game an hour quicker.
Thanks for the comment! I do have a shorter attention span, but I do love math. I do like simple games, I do like harder games, the argument about restrictions was about the options that the game give you. With so few cards that you see (without drafting variant) you simply might not find anything particulary interesting.
There are of course interactions on the board, but they are very simplistic, not to use the word boring. With the amount of experience I have in similar games I can quickly navigate the choices and narrow the paths to find close enough to optimal plays and anticipate the moves of my opponents. The argument about playing with not good enough players is very odd, there is no way for me to prove this, but I'd say it's not true and even more importantly it is misguided. This is not a critique of high level play, this is a critique of amount of fun the game provides.
I'm still glad people are enjoying TM, it's one of the most obvious successes in the industry in the recent years. I just wish I could join the fun, sadly it really wasn't for me despite repeated tries.
I find this game very boring as well and not socially engaging. My brain felt melted by the end of each one. It’s a thinking persons game, but I found the strategy to be kinda random and unenjoyable.
I feel Underwater Cities sort of fixes my issues with Terraforming Mars.
Solitaire wise I do not enjoy Terraforming Mars much (unless you use fan made or homebrew rules). I felt like I quickly get into a solo rut of ignoring MANY cards especially in the end game. Compared to something like Agricola where I always feel challenged to calculate the best moves and is different every time.
I agree, solo was very dissapointing, but I think that is not the "main" mode people play so I decided to not comment on that in the main material. Underwater Cities for me was much better, but I still thought like the game is a little too long. I think it could have fewer turns.
I was really interested why someone would dislike this game, but I still have no clue. I merely strongly disagree with all points about the game being boring and “just a pile of cards”. The only thing that made sense was 20 seconds from the end.
Thanks for the opinion. It seems I wasn't clear enough, next time I'll try to do better.
I really like this game and fortunately there are people in my gaming group with the same opinion! I'm sorry that you have to endure this torture from time to time :) I actually disagree on the game starting to become unfunny after turn1. Yes, there is a possibility for lackluster turns after the start, but me and my peers discover that we become very excited when the endgame approaches and without resource or money limitation we can pull off amazing combos :) I also love the theme of the game and that maybe elevates my enjoyment!
I can see some of your points though. Especially the downtime can be frustrating (I imagine even more frustrating if you don't like the game) and yes, there's a chance for uneven starting hands with one player pulling off magnificient combos and the start and the other one suffers. Because of this we always play with prelude and more corporations in the starting hand to alleviate this. Prelude helps with the pacing also, because you tend to do stuff earlier - which starts the excitement.
Yeah I agree prelude helps, but for me the pacing even with the prelude and non-corporate era and no draft is still too slow, unfortunately.
Terraforming Mars is clearly a game with problems (graphics being one of them) but there's something about this game that makes it appealing to the TONS of players. In cases like that I'm trying to understand what people do love about it, try playing it again and again :)
I share some of your points about TM though. You didn't mention the runaway leader problem that I personally experience a lot. But I still don't cross TM off my list, hoping I'll find a gaming group and possibility to learn it better.
It's a Wonderful World in the meantime is a game I really like. It's only slightly similar to 7W (draft and civ-building theme), the core is creating links of production-construction-production, brain works on that task differently.
Yeah the aspect of it being so popular was why I decided to explore it and explore it. Runaway leader can be a problem at 2, but propably at 3 and more people will just gang on you.
I dont really get your criticism about cards having restrictions. Without restrictions many of the powerful cards in the game couldnt be as powerful. The point of the restriction is that you get a good effect but you have to put effort to get that effect. Cards like kelp farming and NRA make the game more interesting imo
I think they could definately work, but not in one single common deck. That's the cardinal sin that spawns problem with the rest of the design. For example in a computer game where automatically all cards that can't be played are removed from the deck, this could maybe also work. But having both economic cards and end game cards in one single deck is very hard to do right, when you don't let your players draw many, many cards (like for a example Race for the galaxy).
I think I discovered this game too late. Terraforming disappointed me in the tiles aspect ( poorer compare to ark nova ), the decks combos is nice but like a lot of games now. I really liked the “engine building” but managing those cubes are a pain.. they’re all the same colours ( old game ) and they’re same for ressources. You need to buy the premium player board. Now I’m searching a game with the same engine building feeling but more consistent maybe.. if someone have suggestions 😄
And I’m glad to have ark nova, thematic didn’t appeal me first but.. one box, everything run well, long but not too long. Tiles placement is great we love manage place for our zoo. And the river maybe is more strategic.. but it’s a draft mod for TF ( even if it extend the game length in a stratospheric way I think ).
I can’t get into this game
TM is only fun when the engine is working for you. Otherwise, just playing-to-play is extremely mind numbing and you can tell who is stream-rolling somewhat early on.
I agree.
I hate race for the galaxy. Hopefully that's another game that you hate!
I actually like that one a lot ;)
i hate that one too. what a stinker ;)
Clickbait title. We don't need more negativity on the internet
Thanks for taking your time to write the comment. I would argue that there is nothing clickbaity about the title - it precisely describes the content of the video. For me clickbait would be: "You need to watch this video to find out this harsh truth about Terraforming Mars" or something comparably ridicolous. As for negativity - from the start of the video I state that I am not trying to convince or diminish anyone's enjoyment of the game - I made it to precisely explain why certain people don't like this hugely succesful (I would argue this is one of the biggest stories in the last 10 years in boardgaming) and popular game. Why? Because there is hardly any quality constructive criticism for game. Not many (if any) reviewers play a game even 20 times, because of the rush to publish the review soon and be 1st. Here you have a material that has been in the making for weeks, had several overhauls and ended up like this, because I thought this gives the best insight to why I feel like this about TM. I can't judge if I it is any good, but I think discrediting it as "clickbait" and "negative" is actually more negative than the video itself.