Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is the title of the new card game that authors Sydney Engelstein, Jacob Fryxelius and Nick Little have come up with as a spin-off of the popular strategic board game. The publisher Stronghold Games has a corresponding one Kickstarterpage has already been published, which means that the title will be crowdfunded. A new artwork meets a fundamentally familiar mechanic in the card game spin-off for one to four players.
It has not yet been determined when the financing campaign will start. However, it shouldn't be long before the crowdfunding for the card game Terraforming Mars: Area Expedition starts - after all, there is already a preview page on Kickstarter, through which Stronghold Games collects subscribers in order to inform them about the launch. Terraforming Mars: Area Expedition is also about the red planet, which was already the focus of the strategic board game Terraforming Mars, with the author Jacob Fryxelius a real coup. For a long time, the sci-fi board game stayed at the top of many popular lists - and the basic game is still a regular theme now.
Terraforming Mars: Area Expedition contains over 200 maps
Little is known about the card game Terraforming Mars: Area Expedition, which is said to contain over 200 illustrated cards. Only the number of players - the spin-off is aimed at up to four players, but can optionally also be played solo - and the basic mechanism are known; again it's about engine building. Players slip into the roles of interplanetary corporations who strive to make Mars habitable in order to make a profit.
The illustrator William Bricker is responsible for the optics; he previously worked on games such as Tiny Epic Galaxies and Kingdoms, as well as Kanban. Other illustrators may be involved, but if so, they are not yet known. Stronghold Games already mentions the quality of the illustrations on the Kickstarter preview page, which can be seen as an indication that the focus is more clearly this time on the optics than on the more sober presentation of the original.
The Ares expedition should last around an hour per game. The design is again by author Jacob Fryxelius, who has brought in the co-designers Sydney Engelstein (including Space Cadets and Aeon's End: Outcasts) and Nick Little (Aeon's End and Kodama). The card game takes up the basic theme of the original, but should be a noticeably independent title, with a faster gameplay.
Terraforming Mars has grown to become one of the most popular board games since it came out in 2016. In the ranking on Boardgamegeek, the strategic sci-fi game ranks fourth. The card game Terraforming Mars: Area Expedition is not the only currently known decoupling from the original version: Fryxelius also unveiled a dice game last year.
Terraforming Mars was nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2017, won first place at the German Game Award and was awarded the MinD Game Award 2018 due to its in-depth game mechanism. The board game was published in this country in a localized version by Schwerkraft Verlag, as were several expansions.
Source: Kickstarter
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