Terraforming Mars: Reaching the End Game Condition

Making Mars Habitable

The first step to understanding Terraforming Mars is understanding the Terraform Rating (TR). There are three basic ways to increasing the TR of a player:

• Increasing Oxygen from 0% to 14% (each Step is 1%)
• Increasing the Temperature 2 degrees from -30°C to +8°C (each Step is 2°C)
• Placing an Ocean tile onto an Ocean space (each Ocean is a Step)

Each increase of a Step increase of one of the above increases the player's Terraforming Rating 1 step. Terraforming provides two things for a player. First, it is the player's base "score". Second, at the start of a Generation (a round of Terraforming Mars) it provides the player with some base income. Unlike most games, a player's Terraform Rating begins at 20.

Breaking Down the Steps

Ocean Steps

There are 9 Ocean tiles which need to be placed on the board. Placing an Ocean tile on the board typically grants some other benefit based on where the Ocean is placed. The Standard Project to add an Ocean costs 18MC.

Temperature Steps

Temperature increases along the track on the right hand size of the board. There are 19 Steps of Temperature, but three particular Steps provide additional bonus. At -24°C (Step 3) and at -20°C (Step 5), the player's Heat Production increases. At the 0°C mark (step 15) the player also gets to place a free Ocean tile, if there is an Ocean available.

There are two means of increasing Temperature, Heat and Standard Projects. The Standard Project cost for Temperature is 14MC.

The second way is to spend Heat. As the game progresses from Generation to Generation players gain Heat equal to their Heat production. Once a player has collected 8 Heat, they may trade that Heat into 1 Temperature increase.

Oxygen Steps

Oxygen is tracked along the top on the Oxygen track. There are 14 steps of Oxygen, but Step 8 grants a benefit of bumping up Temperature 1 Step as well, if available. Oxygen is typically increased by placing Greenery tiles. Every Greenery tile adds 1 Step when it is placed on the board. Greenery tiles are added either through the Standard Project (cost 23MC) or by trading in 8 'Plants'.

Plant production works similar to Heat. You gain Plants based on a player's Plant Production each generation. When a player has collected 8 plants, they may be traded in for a Greenery tile.

Greenery Tiles

Despite their expense, Greenery tiles offer an additional benefit. Every Greenery tile on the board gives the player who placed it an additional VP at the End of Game Scoring. Thus, although they cost 23 MC, they provide the player with 2 VP: one for the Oxygen increase and one for End Game Scoring.

Bringing It Together

Terraforming Mars ends once all the above Steps are met. Thus, in a game, there is a minimum number of VP available to the players:

Item	Number	Points each	Ind. Cost(MC)	Total Cost(MC)
Ocean	9	1	9	162
Temperature	19	1	14	266
Oxygen	14	2	23 (with greenery)	322
Totals	42	56		750

Yes, there are 42 Steps to Terraform Mars (which answers some questions). Using just Standard Projects, this gives us 750MC to put them into play, and will yield a total of 56 VP to be divided among the players.

This is the starting point for analysis of the game's economy, which we will perform in our next post.