u/markjsno1

Lately I've been creating custom Terraforming mars cards. I've posted the first 3 here already, but they've been updated. The latter 3 are new.

It'd be great to hear peoples thoughts on these cards, their design and their balance. Please discuss!

Corporation Made by me - "Io Iron Imports"

Please, let me know what you think!

The Corporation was first inspired by some corps that are out there that let you spend energy on space cards, so I thought about the idea of spending heat on steel cards. However that didn't go in the direction I wanted it to, since energy is worth around 2MC while heat is only worth around 1, and I thought that I'd basically just be making a worse Helion.

I decided to pivot to a heat rebate when paying with steel instead. I thought it'd be fun to theme a corp around molten or hot metal being transported to mars, and using the left over heat to help terraform the heat track. However, I thought this effect alone was a bit weak, and I wanted a bit more to it, so I also made it kinda like phobolog, but actually good since it has initial steel production too.

I was thinking about theming it either around Mercury or Io, collecting metal from either the hot side of Mercury with Mercury Metals, or the volcanic landscape of Io with Io Iron. I decided to go with the Io theme, as I liked it more, since Io is the heat colony, and Mercury isn't really mentioned much in terraforming mars, its more about infrastructure in the asteroid belt and gas giants. And so, I thought it'd be unique to have a steel corp based out of Io, since most of Io's stuff is based around titanium. That also helped with the "steel worth +1" theme I think too, since its not just raw iron, it's iron alloyed with stuff like titanium, making the iron stronger and worth more.

I've also done some calculations to price the worth of the corp too if you want to check it out:

Tags:
- Building = 0.5 MC
[This tag is here because the whole corp is themed around building out of molten steel]
- Jovian = 2 MC
[I could have themed the card differently, and not included the Jovian tag. However, I enjoyed theming it around the moon Io, and so thought it'd be weird for it to not have a Jovian tag. It can definitely be useful later in the game though even if you don't start with a titanium economy, since you can build one up if you wish with your initial building tag cards]

Effects:
- Steel worth +1 MC = 8 MC.
[Rego Plastics = 10 MC to play, 3 MC to buy, and contains 1VP which is worth 5MC. So, Play cost (10) + buy cost (3) - VP (-5) = 8MC]
- 2 Heat rebate on building cards = 12 MC
[Suppose 10-12 building cards played in a game, heat is worth 1-1.2 MC, so, ~22MC worth of heat generated throughout the game instead of all at once. Based off similar rebate cards like viral enhancers, and Olympus conference, I've priced the effect around 10-14MC, so set it as 12 MC].

Production:
- 1 Steel production = 8.5
[Steel production is valued around 7-8 MC, titanium production valued around 10. Due to the +1 effect, I just gave it 8.5 to also balance out the building tag 0.5 for easy maths.]

That's a total of 31 corp value before starting money.

Based on some other posts, I'm valuing corporations around 67 MC, so 67-31 = 36 MC.
That's a lowish, but definitely not unreasonable or unheard of amount of starting capital. (The corp does are start with the equivalent of +3 money production too, so its not that worrying).

Lets also start the corp off with some lump sum starting steel, so players are incentivised to spend it on building tags while also helping with the theme. lets say... 4 steel, which is 12 MC worth of steel.

That leaves the corp with 24 starting flat cash MC, which I've bumped up by 1 to 25 starting MC.

The card is based off of Cards like Bribed Committees, Greenhouses, Aerosport Tournament, and Flooding.

It has a -1VP to represent the damage to the environment it’s doing, like other environmental disaster cards (flooding for example).

Reason for 4MC pricing:

For comparison, Bribed Committees costs 7 MC (+3 MC to draft) for 2 TR and -2 VP. That’s an opportunity cost of 10 MC for 2 TR and -2 VP, which works out to roughly 5 MC per TR with a corresponding -1 VP drawback.

That makes sense when a temperature increase is worth roughly 11 MC and a TR is worth roughly 5 MC. A temperature increase with a -1 VP penalty would therefore have an effective value of about 6 MC.

If oxygen is completed before temperature, there can be up to 14 greenery tiles in play, giving 14 heat, or roughly 1.75 temperature increases. That means the card can potentially provide about 0.75 extra temperature increases beyond that 6 MC baseline.

The reason it’s only 4 MC (7 MC opportunity cost including drafting) is that it only reaches that value in a very specific late-game board state. Most of the time it’s mediocre or completely dead in hand. The intention is for it to be a niche rush card that can help finish the temperature track, especially in greenery-heavy games.

Edit: The Greenery icon should be red bordered. Oops.

Multiple versions of this Acrylic overlay are being sold online, so it doesn’t seem to be proprietary or anything.
I just want the original file so i can laser cut it myself for free instead of spending $10 per overlay.

Does anyone know where I can find the original file to cut it myself?

MycoGen Biotech
Microbe tag, Plant Tag

42 M€, Mycelium Marker*
(You start with 42 M€. As your first action, place 1 Mycelium Marker (bronze cube) on a Non-Reserved Area.)

Effect: Areas containing your Mycelium Markers are Mycelial Areas. These Areas are Reserved for you.

Action: Add 1 Mycelium Marker to a Non-Reserved Area adjacent to one of your Tiles or a Mycelial Area, OR to an Area containing 1 or 2 Mycelium Markers.

Effect: When placing a greenery tile on a Mycelial Area, you pay 2 plants less for each Mycelium Marker on it. Remove all Mycelium Markers from the Area after a tile is placed on it.

Description: A bioengineering company focused on subsurface fungal systems, MycoGen uses mycelial networks to prepare Martian terrain for controlled ecosystem growth. By combining soil conditioning with early terraforming infrastructure, the company improves land readiness and stabilises developing green areas.

———

This Corp is designed using 2 other Corps as a base, and 2 other cards which use dubes as markers on the board (Ecoline & Arcadian Communities, and Mars Nomads & St. Joseph of Cupertino Mission).

The first is Ecoline, as placing one Mycelium Marker per turn is the income equivalent of 2 plant production per turn, plus 2 initial starting plants (for the initial Mycelium Marker). However, unlike Ecoline, it still costs the equivalent of 8 plants to place a greenery.

The second is Arcadian Communities. It is similar to how you can Reserve up to 1 hex Area per turn using Arcadian Communities. However, MycoGen allows up to 3 Markers on the same reserved area instead of just 1. This maximum of 3 also means you do still have to pay at least 2 plants per greenery even if you have 3 Mycelium Markers on a reserved area (since it only offsets 6 plants total).

So, the company is a mix of early board presence mixed with cheaper but planned greenery placement later in the game. It is supposed to show a more realistic sense of ecosystem terraforming by first preparing the soil to make it easier to plant stuff in the soil.

(Also, I wasn’t sure about the starting money which is why it has 42 right now.)

———

Please let me know how you might improve it, if it’s good enough already, or even if you hate the idea to begin with.

Any feedback would be appreciated. Thank you for reading!