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@@ondrejlinhart4881 interesting idea for Point Luna that would also nerf it significantly, since it's not strong economically. For Teractor: I think many earth tags are really strong on their own and you don't really need to get a lot of them down to make the most out of them. A card like Large Convoy ist just always great.

@@solarupdraft hahaha yeah, I made a video about this, but I have to admit, I have never used any house rules as I am sadly not playing the game on the board very often. I moved for work last year and left my board gaming buddies behind...

They know, it has been removed by the developers temporarily for causing bugs. From the Terraforming Mars beta discord, February 27 2024: "For the first time we are temporarily removing a card (Sponsored Academies) that is causing issues when reloading saves. In our perspective, better having this card unavailable for now than making a large part of the games it was used in unavailable!"

Thank you very much!

@@sistoametrano4808 you already got your question answered, but I'd like to point out that Sponsored Academies is gone for months already, so hopefully it get's fixed at some point soon!

@@NightmareKid_VR I would be very careful with the phrase "better than nothing". With Security Fleet you need to decide really early on whether you want to invest one titanium every gen into this card for the rest of the game. If you have no other titanium target on hand, this might seem like the right decision and if you never draw an alternative then yes, that is indeed the case. But if you play Security Fleet gen 1, then draw onto Deimos, Imported Hydrogen, Large Convoy and GIA, then the titanium you spent on it was just a bad investment. So yeah, sometimes it's really worse than nothing...

Hi there! Thanks for letting me know...the video exists, it just wasn't part of the playlist. Added it to it just now :)

@@marsexpert4276 Thanks for the quick reply buddy, I am new player, just hit 200 rating on BGA, loving the game. Using your spreadsheet for the tier list, really helpful. Do you plan to or have already made a tier list for corporate cards? Looking forward to it!

@@prizmik I have one tier list for the base game corps, one for prelude corps and one for Venus Next corps and also one for the preludes. I have made new versions for each of these tier lists, so you can check them out on my channel :) thanks for your support!

Hi there :) sure we can play!

Round 1: Fight!

It changed a bit since I made this video over two years ago :D I still think it's a solid engine prelude, but whenever you're going for a rush, there are much better ones out there!

Hackers. Always bad. Never useful except for when you’re already dominating opponent(s) and want to rub it in that you’re willing to delay winning to make a meme play. At least almost every other bad card has niche use cases that are legitimately competitive, Hackers does not.

​@@jeffreyculbert2093 In most situations (solo, 3-5 players, 2 player late game) you're right, but in the early generations of a 2 player game, hackers is very good. Consider the math: 1 energy production should cost you 11MC at most, and the card costs you 6MC at most, for a maximum of 17MC to give you 2MC per gen and take 2MC/gen from your opponent - a difference of 4MC/gen. If you did that in gen 2 of a game that's going to last 12 generations, that's a 40MC-17MC = 23MC difference over the course of the game. Now, would you pay 23MC for a single victory point? Considering at the end of the game you could easily be paying 23-25MC for 2 VP with standard project greeneries/cities (and should probably have much more cash-efficient ways to get VPs), you'd rather have the 23MC than 1VP, meaning a difference of at least 23MC over the course of the game is well worth losing the victory point to play hackers in a 2 player game.

I think it's Underground Detonations. If I had to nominate an expansion card it would probably be Venus Soils.

I think Satellites, Space Station and Shuttles all have their niche and it's kinda similar: Engine with science and Jovs. In that strategy all of these cards can be really good, but if you're rushing or doing anything else, they are as you said mid.

Yeah, you're right. A lot of space tags aren't supposed to be played early on or are just to expensive to get down. But with just two of them, Satellites already yields the same development as Acquired Company which I placed in C tier. And in addition to that, it has the upside of being a Banker swing.

As Mars Expert mentioned, the issue with Security Fleet is its "opportunity cost." Spending 18MC to basically do nothing really sets you back, especially in the early-to-mid game when you want to be building your economy and increasing your combo potential. In contrast, large convoy gives you all of its points at once. Plus it draws you two cards and gives you value from the ocean tile placement. Also, it's a space event with an Earth tag, so it has tons of possible discounts and synergies.

In that scenario you spend a lot of the cost much earlier than with Large Convoy, which usually gets played last gen. It also draws you 2 cards and the ocean can let you convert or pick up other bonuses. Security Fleet is a HUGE investment for "just" points. And a big part of it needs to be paid early on, where you could use that money and titanium to develop your engine.

Security fleet is garbage , 12+3mc to draw it , 15 with no points , then +3 cause a titanium is 3 useally worth , so 18 for 1points , its terrible , 21 for 2points , 24 for 3points , and the badge isnt helping , its not a joviens or science tag . foor 3 points over 24mc , u could get 9mc form that titanium for way better use , this cripple you on productions purpose

@@illumina91 I think your jokes detector is not working.

hahaha point well made...It's actually quite interesting to just add the price of the titanium prod to see what you're really paying. It's just shit, yeah :D

You can definitely send them to me! My twitter is linked in the description, it's probably easiest to connect there :)

Don't know whether I wanna give specific values to the cards I'm reviewing in this series, but I'll try to give my opinion on balance and creativity more clearly for each card in the future :)

Yep...

Yes, the BGA version is great but not without bugs. For example there is one that prevents you from drawing cards before exercising both Mars U and Olympus Conference effects (if you have both down) which can be really gamebreaking. But yeah, it only seems logical to me that a game with a simple layout such as that on BGA would be patched more quickly. The developers working on Terraforming Mars on steam are very passionate, but it's a small team working on very bad original code. I'm part of the beta discord server and I know their struggle... But of course if you want to stick to BGA that's fair game. I will continue playing both versions :)

@@marsexpert4276 I might understand that they are small team, but what I don't understand is why bugs continue to exist over year+ I've just had a reshuffle bug in bga, I'll submit a ticket and it'll be corrected in 2-3 days, maximum a week. This is a whole different approach

@@cw7665 I have no idea about coding or programming yo I really can't speak on this issue. From what I know the base code on the steam version is an absolute mess, partly because it needs to work with Asmodee Connect and that's why it takes so long to correct bugs. But again, I'm the wrong person to comment on this...

​​@@marsexpert4276That bug only affects Olympus and once you have resolved it you can take other actions before Mars U cycle (like draws from Research). Forces you to resolve the ordering manually, but apart from that works as you want it to. If you click "Whatever" then yes, it resolves it the way you mentioned

Also I absolutely love games where you accumulate a truckload of cards and pop off with AGT, but man does it suck to be on the receiving end of that.

Sometimes I'm at the receiving end of the science combo and while it's not always fun, it can result in very interesting games! And regarding the thumbnail, thanks for letting me know! There has definitely been a mixup. I'll look into it when I get home from work...

Well, I hope we'll get the next season of OTML soon...

Maybe you should make your own tier list

You're right, I should've stuck to one definition of how I want to rank the tags and probably it would have made more sense to rank the tags based on "Does the tag alone improve the quality of the card?". That question influenced my rating of the event tag, but for example clearly not of the city tag. Thanks for your input!

@@peterblack_ don't see a point. He is right on most of the tags and in general I don't think knowing "the good tags" does much to advance knowledge. My tier list video is probably as much as I'll do on that topic

Luna Governor is one of my favourite cards because of that :D Anf thanks, I appreciate it! Glad you're enjoying the content :)

I definitely like it a lot. However, it changes the flow of the game quite a bit! So while I don't see a reason to play without Prelude and therefore play pretty much every game with it, I don't feel the same about Colonies. Sometimes I want to play with it, sometimes I don't. But that's not a bad thing! It increases replayability and introduces cool new mechanics, corps and projects - so definitely a top tier expansion in my opinion!

I think this tier list does have a problem as some others in the comments have already pointed out. I rated some tags based on the average card quality of that tag and some on the pure value of the tag itself. The event tag itself has negative value in total in my opinion, even though it has some combo potential, since it negates all other tags. That's why I put it in F tier. However I ranked the City tag for example based on average card quality. But that's what I get for just freestyling a tier list. At least we get some interesting discussions in the comments :D

Yes I think this tier list does indeed have a problem as some others in the comments have also pointed out. I rated some tags based on the average card quality of that tag and some on the pure value of the tag itself. So, yeah you're absolutely right. At least we get some interesting discussions in the comments :D

Honestly, yeah you could argue for that. The average card quality isn't great but the tag has quite some combo potential.

@@marsexpert4276 good tier list though my friend :).

All very valid points, especially the one about Jovians. I didn't even consider the fact that a lot of Jovians are introduced in the expansions that do not hold a space tag (and you're completely right about that) and how that would affect the strategy. Very good observation although it probably wouldn't influence my rating that much.

The Event Tag will have a use for the Spire corporation. It is counted as a second tag (in space, science or earth etc. events).

At least Hellas and Elysium add some utility for the City tag. I hope we get a city-oriented expansion someday. It would be nice for cities in general to be more useful. Hell, I would love a good reason to consider building a standard city in Gen 1.

@@sammysammyson Still other rare tags fill the same role for the Diversifier. And energy tag is earlier useful. But of course I would like to see more synergy between City and other tags.

Ah shesh I didn't know you made one already :D

@@marsexpert4276 No worries haha, I guess mine is a bit different cause I only took into account the value of the tag and not the average quality of the cards that have the tag. Also I really like earth and jovian tags XD

@@marsuniversity-tm I think your approach makes quite a bit more sense and a lot of people have pointed out the inconsistency in this video :D

@@marsexpert4276 There'svalue in both things, since you are going for synergy you always want to know how good the strategy that accompanies the tags is.

I think the plant tag really is that good, in my opinion on par with science but of course it's debatable.

@@marsexpert4276 But aren't Insects and NRA too diluted when playing with all expansions? The other green combo cards require microbes or animals while Jovian is more independent win condition.

@@tomaszvexling yes the green combo gets diluted, but so do the science and jovian combos as well. There are no new Jovian mults in the expansions and while there are some science combo pieces, most of them (except Warp Drive) reach the level of the best base game cards. The green combo only gets two really good new additions: GMO Contract and Topsoil Contract. But that's not nothing.

@@marsexpert4276 Ok but Topsoil buffs microbes, not plants. Jovian multipliers get diluted but you have better titan options for them and many good floater cards. I think they're stronger than before or just the same level while plant tag is less significant. The power of plant tag was split between them and other green tags. Science is I think still quite universal.

True, that award definitely makes the tag more valueable, you're absolutely right. Probably could've bumped it into B tier then...

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoy the content and thanks for the support! I actually own very little fan-made content. I bought a map randomization expansion that basically consists of different map pieces that you can slide together, an expansion that let's you randomize milestones and awards (which we will get with Prelude 2 anyways) and a set of fan made preludes. These preludes actually have a different back, but I don't think that matters that much in comparison to project cards having a different back. So I actually own no expansion that adds new project cards, but my advice would be to sleeve the cards with card sleeves that are not look-through on the back. Then you cannot distinguish fan made cards from real ones no matter how they look. And in terms of having played fan-made content - I can only speak about High Orbit which I have played maybe two times on Tabletop Simulator - definitely well made and interesting although a bit unbalanced.

Liebs

Thanks for the support! And the webcam thing: I'll fix that in future streams! Thanks for letting me know :) (just know that the next few gameplay vids are already prerecorded so if you're only watching on TH-cam it will take a while until it's changed :D )

I appreciate the discussion points! I absolutely agree to you that Supply Drop would have been the superior pick to Turbines here. I don't need to rush Planner and Point Luna really lacks starting capital so the MC differential between those two preludes is even more prevalent. Huge Asteroid is a top tier prelude for sure, but I think with this start it's less great, since the alternatives are so great. Allied Banks is enhanced because of PL and Supply Drop is just what we need as one of the poorest corps in the game. I was a little weaker as a player back then, so my inability to see Supply Drop as the right pick was just a straight up misplay.

Yes it's pretty good but I was pretty cash poor and had AI Central, so I don't think I really needed it.

I think the fantasia corporation is supposed to tempt people to be the 3$ by offering you a mid card

Yes, the fact that it doesn't require you to have steel prod definitely helps making the card more playable!

Could've definitely gone for Tharsis yeah. The line sounds reasonable, I think I was just afraid of using Space Mirrors :D

Clearly one of the best outlets for Enceladus yes!

Actually, that's a very interesting idea. I haven't found too many instances where Head Start is that amazing, but for Fuyuki Conglomerate, it could be a great way to set you up economically!

Yeah it's way too strong 😅

Yeah, for some reason I thought you could only play cards with global requirements, but a quick rules check proved me wrong. I mean you still get two useful tags and a plant prod out of the prelude, but still...Bad value.

True! Didn't think about that...that's a very niche but useful strategy!

I agree that Pluto is better. It's gamechanging as it grants everyone access to card draw at all times... that changes the value of cards and the flow of the game dramatically

​@@marsexpert4276Have you changed anything else in the order inside the tiers?

​@@tomaszvexling I didn't really order the colonies within the tiers, but with regards to Pluto, I even said during the video that I think it's better than Pluto :D And no, atm I think this tier list still reflects my opinion on the strength of the colonies perfectly!

@@marsexpert4276 Ok. But how would you order the colony tiles in the tiers?

@@tomaszvexling Maybe like this (but don't consider this set in stone): 1. Pluto 2. Luna 3. Ceres 4. Triton 5. Miranda 6. Titan 7. Callisto 8. Ganymede 9. Enceladus 10. Europa 11. Io

Classic :D

oh you just figured it out lol :D Too late ofc :D

@@pauliusmatonis1492 Yeah and I only figured it out because my opponent played a city :D sometimes man...

@pauliusmantonis1492 That SP ocean with 7 oceans while being 3 heat bumps from free ocean with one heat bump from heat on hand too and heat being the primary factor to for closing out the game… le oof. Was a sloppy one, for sure. Seen plenty of cleaner MarsExpert matches, seems like a bit of an off game this time to me.

Gen 2 draft hits imp hydro. Feels really punishing not taking Dome and instead taking allies already, Gen 3 ocean convert and the game already feels pretty won if opponent doesn’t drop global discounts or Econ plus per turn card draw by the end of Gen 3 in a quick race.

Hard punished further in Gen 3 draft. Only buy imp hydro and stockpile Gen 2, open and fp Nitro Moss, wheel great dam, get passed algae, open on imp hydro convert for 2 plants, play nitro, play adapt tech, play algae with Psychro, great damn is free if it can be afforded. You have control over all tracks, a huge lead in points, Gardner locked, terraforming incoming, a legit 8 fund of landlord, and a 100 in 9 gens or 115-120 in 10 line of play here.

Yeah Dome Farming over Allied Banks seems obvious and I don't know why I kept Worms...weird.

@@jeffreyculbert2093 yes, Dome would have been much much better.

Just take your time in the openers more. Since there’s no draft for it on Steam it’s the most critical point of the game and heavily influences the outcomes. Don’t be in a rush, work through all the options, understand which lines are aiming to do what and have a good feel for the timing of when plays will be made in those lines and THEN settle on what you’re going to open on. This might be the area of your game that needs the most work, not rushing your opening choices and finding the optimal set up in blind since you’ll have no information about opponent’s set up without draft mode.

It’s a good habit to play without the score tracker from time to time so you learn to count and calculate without mod assistance that you won’t have in an IRL tournament. Score tracker is nice and all, but over reliance on it can become a crutch. There’s really no need for it, though it is a nifty and convenient feature.

A lot of good points! Yes, I can not do math and routinely do missplays because of that. Yes, I sometimes overvalue awards in the end and this was a case of that - the card count alone should have been an argument not to worry about it. And yes, I need the score mod!