Terraforming Mars: The Game, the Expansions and the Spin-Offs

What the Terraforming Mars board game is

Terraforming Mars is an engine-building strategy game. Each player runs a corporation in a future where Earth has decided to make Mars livable. You buy project cards, play them to build up your production, and place cities, greenery and oceans on a map of Mars.

The planet has three numbers to fix: temperature, oxygen and ocean coverage. Any player who raises one of them gets a step of terraform rating, or TR. Your TR is your basic income every round and your starting score at the end. So everyone is working on the same planet, but each player is also trying to profit the most from it.

The game ends when all three numbers reach their goals. Then you count victory points from your TR, the map, milestones, awards and cards. Most points wins.

"Engine building" means your early choices make your later turns stronger. A card that adds one steel a round looks small in round one. By round eight it has paid for itself several times. That slow build is the whole feel of this game.

The box facts for the base game, from the publishers' pages and the listing in our data:

• Players: 1 to 5
• Ages: 12+, per FryxGames and Stronghold Games
• Time: 120 minutes on the listing and Stronghold's page; 90 to 120 on FryxGames' page
• Mechanics: engine building, per the listing
• Competitive, with a solo mode in the rulebook

How Terraforming Mars plays

The rules below are in my own words, from the English Terraforming Mars rulebook posted on FryxGames' website. FryxGames is the Swedish family publisher that designed the game. Stronghold Games publishes it in the US. This is an overview, not every rule. The rulebook is long for a reason.

Setup in brief

1. Put the board in the middle. Stack the 9 ocean tiles on their space, and set the temperature and oxygen markers at their starts.
2. Shuffle the project deck. For a first game, take out the Corporate Era cards, which have a small red and white icon.
3. Each player takes a player board and starts at a TR of 20. In the standard game, everyone starts with 1 production of each resource.
4. New players take a beginner corporation card: 42 MegaCredits and 10 free project cards.
5. Other players get 2 corporations and 10 project cards each. Pick one corporation, then pay 3 MegaCredits for each project card you keep.

MegaCredits are the game's money. You'll be short of them for the first few rounds. The rulebook warns you about that, and it's right.

A generation

Each round is called a generation. It has four phases:

1. Player order: the first-player marker moves one seat clockwise, and the generation marker moves up.
2. Research: each player draws 4 cards and buys any of them for 3 MegaCredits each. The rest are discarded. There's no hand limit.
3. Actions: players take turns doing 1 or 2 actions, around the table, until everyone has passed.
4. Production: everyone collects resources at once. Leftover energy turns into heat. Income is your TR plus your MegaCredit production.

The first generation skips the first two phases, since setup already covered them.

Your actions

On your turn you can take 1 or 2 actions, in any mix, or pass. Once you pass, you're out until the next generation. The choices:

• Play a card from your hand, if you meet its requirement and can pay its cost
• Use a standard project printed on the board, like buying an ocean or a city
• Claim a milestone
• Fund an award
• Use the action on one of your blue cards
• Turn 8 plants into a greenery tile, which raises oxygen
• Spend 8 heat to raise the temperature one step

Cards come in three colors. Green cards are one-time builds that stay on the table for their tags. Blue cards have ongoing effects or once-per-generation actions. Red cards are events that happen once and then go face down.

Tiles on the map

The map is the Tharsis region of Mars. Oceans only go in the blue spaces. Greenery has to go next to a tile you own, if it can. Cities can't go next to other cities. Placing a tile next to an ocean pays you a small bonus, and some spaces give you steel, titanium, plants or cards.

At the end, each greenery is worth 1 point, and each city scores 1 point for every greenery next to it, no matter who owns the greenery. So your neighbor's forest can be your city's best friend.

Marisol's take: "The rulebook says the map is the real Tharsis region, with the big volcanoes and Valles Marineris. That's the first game board I've wanted to check against a survey." She means it as a compliment.

Milestones and awards

The board lists 5 milestones and 5 awards. Only 3 of each can be claimed or funded in a game.

• Milestones cost 8 MegaCredits to claim, if you meet the goal first, like owning 3 cities. Each is worth 5 points.
• Awards get funded at 8, 14 and then 20 MegaCredits. Anyone can fund one. At the end, first place in that category gets 5 points and second gets 2, no matter who paid.

That second detail starts a lot of table talk. Funding an award you then lose is a gift to someone else.

How the game ends

Temperature goes from -30 to +8 degrees Celsius, 2 degrees a step. Oxygen goes from 0 to 14 percent, 1 percent a step. Oceans go from 0 to 9 tiles. When all three reach their goals, you finish that generation, everyone gets one last chance to turn plants into greenery, and then you score.

Here's the math-teacher aside. That's 19 temperature steps, 14 oxygen steps and 9 oceans. Forty-two raises, shared by everybody at the table. The rulebook explains the science behind each number too. The designer taught high school science, per the author note, and it shows.

Ties go to the player with the most MegaCredits left.

Solo play and variants in the rulebook

• Solo: you start at TR 14, play exactly 14 generations, and must finish all three goals by the end of generation 14 to win. You also skip milestones and awards.
• Corporate Era: add the cards with the red and white icon for a longer, more economic game. The rulebook doesn't recommend it for new players.
• Draft: in the research phase, players pass cards around and pick one at a time, instead of drawing 4 each. It adds time and isn't recommended for new players either.

Terraforming Mars on Amazon US right now

Our data for this page lists nine Terraforming Mars boxes from Stronghold Games on Amazon US as of October 2026. The table above shows the players, age and time each listing gives. Where a listing leaves a field out, you'll see a dash.

The base game

• Terraforming Mars: the game described above. The listing gives 120 minutes and engine building. Players and age come from the publishers' pages: 1 to 5, 12+.

Every add-on below needs it.

Add-ons for the base game

• Amazonis & Vastitas: listed as an expansion that needs Terraforming Mars, 1 to 5 players, 12+, with a solo mode. FryxGames describes two new maps of other regions of Mars, each with its own bonuses, ocean areas, milestones and awards. Amazonis is the larger map with longer global parameters, aimed at 4 to 5 players.
• Utopia & Cimmeria: listed for 1 to 5 players, 12+, with a double-sided game board. The listing doesn't mark it as an expansion, but FryxGames sells it as one: two more maps with new placement bonuses, ocean areas, milestones and awards.
• Milestones and Awards: listed for 1 to 5 players, 12+. The listing doesn't mark it as an expansion. FryxGames describes 70 milestone and award tokens that replace the ones printed on the board, so you can mix or randomize them each game. You need the base board to use it.
• Prelude 2: listed as an expansion that needs Terraforming Mars, 1 to 5 players, 12+. FryxGames adds an important detail: it needs both the base game and the earlier Prelude expansion. Many of its cards connect to other expansions too.
• Automa: listed as a 1-player expansion that needs Terraforming Mars, 12+. FryxGames describes it as a solo mode where you play against corporations run by cards and rules, instead of against the generation clock.

My one opinion for this page: get the base game to the table a few times before buying any of these. An expansion adds rules to a game you haven't learned yet. The base rulebook alone has a beginner corporation for a reason.

Spin-offs that stand alone

These use the Terraforming Mars name but are their own games. You don't need the base game.

• Ares Expedition (Collector's Edition): 1 to 4 players, 14+, 45 to 60 minutes, solo mode listed. FryxGames calls Ares Expedition a stand-alone card game with simultaneous action selection, and describes the Collector's Edition as including dual-layer player boards and storage trays.
• Ares Expedition: a second listing, marked as engine building and not an expansion. It doesn't give players, age or time.
• The Dice Game: 1 to 4 players, 14+, solo mode listed. FryxGames describes 60 custom dice and 159 cards, with 45 minutes per game.

If two hours is too long for your table, these are the way into the same theme. Ares Expedition plays in about an hour by its listing, and the Dice Game in 45 minutes per FryxGames.

Quick matches

• A first copy: the base game
• Solo players: the base game's solo variant first, then Automa
• Groups of 4 or 5 who want a bigger map: Amazonis & Vastitas
• A shorter game with the same theme: Ares Expedition or the Dice Game
• A gift for someone who already owns everything: Milestones and Awards, after checking they own the base game

Who should skip Terraforming Mars

Skip it if your group wants a game that ends in under an hour. The base game is listed at 120 minutes, and a first game with new players runs longer while everyone reads their cards.

Skip it if anyone at your table dislikes math and bookkeeping. You track money, six resources, six production tracks and a lot of card effects. The rulebook even suggests that one player handle the final scoring while everyone else checks it.

And skip it for players under 12, by the publishers' age. The spin-offs are listed at 14+.

If you like Terraforming Mars, look at these

Pages chosen by what they share with it: strategy, building up over many rounds and 1 to 5 players.

• Strategy board games: the wider shelf of longer, heavier games
• Dune: Imperium: deck building and worker placement
• Wingspan: an engine builder with a gentler theme
• 7 Wonders: card drafting and building up a civilization over three ages
• Everdell: an engine builder with a calendar

Forty-two steps. Count them as you go.