The long-awaited Terraforming Mars: Legacy of Mars has just launched on Gamefound.
Designed by Jacob Fryxelius, this 1–5 player game expands on Terraforming Mars themes and mechanics, taking players across the solar system in a multi-game campaign.
I’ll only describe differences between this and Terraforming Mars, but if you’re new to that game, you can find out more at this how to play article.
Each individual game—or mission as it’s termed here—does seem to play a lot like the good old Terraforming Mars we all know and love. Some of the game changes are pretty much quality of life updates, such as tidying up components, e.g., tweaking the card layout and artwork, along with dual-layer player boards, and I like the nice touch of splitting the ocean concept into glaciers (when the temperature is below freezing) and oceans proper, such that you get rewarded for placing an ocean/glacier tile and also for thawing a glacier when the temperature is high enough.
Larger changes include:
- The notion of population, implemented as tokens you can add to cities and some other tiles by ‘spending’ worker resources, an additional production space on the familiar player mats. The population tokens contribute towards scoring.
- The addition of Innovation Cards, which you draw if you have sufficient Science Tags. These appear to be more powerful Project cards, as far as I can tell.
- As well as the usual starting Corporations, players take Development Cards, which appear to provide a similar function to the Prelude Cards in Terraforming Mars: Prelude.
- When the end of a game is triggered, besides the usual final round of placing greenery, players can also convert remaining workers to population and heat to temperature (which doesn’t directly result in points, but can trigger a glacial melt, leading to more greenery and thus more points).
- The top three players at the end of any particular mission gain Title Points (which contribute to scoring) and money, which are carried across missions, by being designated Governor, Administrator or Prefect. Players can also choose to keep a pair of cards from their hand to use in the next mission, along with their Corporation and Development cards.
Each individual mission has a specific set of cards to be added to the base deck (kept in envelopes, not to be revealed until you start the mission), and (mostly) removed at the end of that game.
The rulebook specifies a solo mode, which is a similar beat your own score race to terraform as in Terraforming Mars (i.e., no automa), with a few campaign tweaks.
Crowdfunding Campaign
The Gamefound campaign launched only a few hours ago at time of writing, and has already shot well past its funding target (it hit that before 4 minutes were up).
The first mission is set on Mars, and apart from the changes outlined above, feels a lot like Terraforming Mars. The second is set on Ganymede, but it’s not at all clear what differences that brings, apart from a note that the temperature starts a lot lower. (According to the campaign page, each new world ‘comes with its own board, rules and strategic challenges’ and ‘expands what terraforming means in surprising ways.’)
Missions 3 and 4 are currently totally hidden, and it’s not clear if that’s a feature of the game itself or if more information will be revealed when certain crowdfunding milestones are reached. However, based on the trade fleet minis appearing in one of the campaign pictures, there seems to be something akin to Terraforming Mars: Colonies in the game, and at a guess, some of the ideas from Venus Next will put in an appearance, too. In fact, the only thing that seems to be totally missing at the moment is the Automa!
It would be nice to know more about how the game evolves across missions, and I’m not overly keen on buying a pig in a poke.
While a draft rulebook is available, there is little further information about the game: as yet no reviews or playthroughs.
The cost of the basic 4-mission game is not too unreasonable, though as always, shipping and tax is a pain. In this campaign, the number under shipping seems excessively high, until you read the note below stating that all applicable duties and fees have been included for the UK and a few other locations. Still the total amount is enough to make you gulp, but there should be no surprises later on.
For close to triple the price, you can get a heap of 3d tiles (which are not to my pedestrian tastes at all), and for yet more, you can bling the game further, with metal resource cubes, etc. (And let’s pass quickly over the Mars Rover plushie.)
There are a few odd little campaign add-ons: various promo cards for Terraforming Mars and expansions, as well as an intriguing small expansion of sorts to add a 2v2 mode to the original Terraforming Mars. Sadly, no further details are available for this as yet.
Should You Back This?
There are a few separate questions here. First, the easy one: crowdfunding projects tend to have exclusives not available at retail, so if you ‘need’ those, back it. However, the limited information available about gameplay suggests waiting a while before jumping.
Next, what should you do if you have Terraforming Mars already? As far as I can tell, the changes here are not huge, and you might as well stick with what you’ve got. However, if you’re new to all this, it could be that Legacy is better starting point than the original game—as I said above, it looks like most aspects of the original and its expansions (apart from Automa) are being carried over into this game, but in an updated, more polished form. A reminder, though, this is speculation on my part, and I suggest waiting to see more.
So, I guess the answer to the question about backing this is: unless you want the exclusives, wait for retail.
Controversies
If you look at the comments on the campaign, even those from even way before the project launched, three separate issues seem to be upsetting a number of folk.
First, the use of the term ‘legacy.’ I was surprised to discover that ‘legacy’ means destroying or otherwise irrevocably changing game components, at least to a remarkably vocal subset of boardgamers. When it was announced that Legacy of Mars would be replayable, there was outrage that it wasn’t a legacy game, and how dare they use that word in the title, as it’s merely a campaign game. I suppose I could say there’s a distinction between a game called Legacy of Mars and one called Terraforming Mars: The Legacy Game, but each to their own. If you would prefer to destroy the game as you play it, you do you. (Actually, this isn’t the only name confusion: a fair few people seem to have difficulty in separating this game from the original Terraforming Mars, asking about how the two games interoperate; though some of that reads like entitlement, as in ‘can I use my existing blinged up components with this game?’ Am I’m just too jaded and cynical?)
Second, the game was announced in the dim and distant past as being a 7-scenario campaign game, but from the start of the campaign (as in crowdfunding campaign, not game campaign) preview, it was stated that only parts 1–4 would be offered here. Cue angry posting about what a cheat this was, making people pay twice for the full game. True, there is some aspect of that, but there’s no need to anyone to buy ‘half a game’ if they don’t want to. Wait for the final 3 missions before getting your wallet out.
The final biggie is a fuss about the use of AI art, even before any art was revealed, and despite the counter-statement that appropriate rights were obtained. One of the campaign’s FAQs explains how and where AI has been used, in particular: ‘FryxGames works exclusively with Adobe Firefly, an AI-tool that is only trained on public domain or artwork used by permission. Firefly also has a model for compensating illustrators that contribute to the training of their models. Firefly also [has] features that safeguard artist and trademarks from being abused.’ (Maybe that should have been made more prominent, instead of hidden in the FAQ page.)
I can’t deny there’s a fourth issue that’s triggering folk: accusations of transphobia. I won’t rehash the conversation, but suggest that readers do their own investigation and decide for themselves how it influences any decision to purchase FryxGames’ products.
These protests have also made their way to BGG, to the extent that the game has an incredibly low rating, even through almost no one has played it.
I see a lot of knee-jerk reactions and posturing (again, am I just too cynical?), and I’m not sure that all of the disapproval is warranted—everything has messy tinges of grey and isn’t a simple black and white. If what FryxGames is offering doesn’t meet with your approval for whatever reason, just walk away.
Conclusion
Legacy of Mars is a cool-looking game, and the lightweight campaign mechanism offers a nice bit of longevity with minimal effort, while at the same time, you can just play one of the parts (multiple times, if you like) without worrying too much about the rest. Having said that, is it different enough to the original Terraforming Mars to be worth your money? Without more information on missions 2–4 (and beyond), it’s impossible to tell.
On that particular note, the crowdfunding campaign is somewhat disappointing. Given all the experience FryxGames has, I expected a more polished campaign, with detailed descriptions of play and a few playthrough videos (though I grant that might be tricky without giving too much away). Here’s hoping there will be a flurry of updates filling in the gaps before the short (less than 3 weeks) campaign ends.
To wrap up, while I’m a fan of Terraforming Mars, I’m definitely waiting for retail for this one, if only to learn from other people’s experiences with the game.
About the author
When not playing boardgames or blogging about them, L.N. Hunter keeps himself occupied writing fiction: a comic fantasy novel, The Feather and the Lamp, sits alongside close to 100 short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and on websites and podcasts (see https://linktr.ee/L.N.Hunter for a full list). L.N. occasionally masquerades as a software developer or can be found unwinding in a disorganised home in Carlisle, UK, along with two cats and a soulmate.
