Terraforming Mars: Turmoil

Terraforming Mars Is Back!

Turmoil! In Lots of Different Ways!

The base game itself is complicated enough as it is, but what if you added in an expansion (or several)? Terraforming Mars: Turmoil, the fifth and final expansion for the game, is rated as an ‘Expert Expansion’ for a reason: it’s very complex when you jump in for the first time.

This one doesn’t add any new maps and it doesn’t add many new projects or corporations(*) either, but it does add two whole new elements to the game and a smattering of smaller additions and changes too. In this review we’re going to break down each of the parts of this expansion and talk about what they are and whether they’re good pieces or not so good. The name of the expansion really says it all, in that it can be split into two major parts. You have ‘Global Turmoil’ and then you have ‘Political Turmoil’, but don’t worry- I promise it’s better than it sounds!

Come To Mars! Join The Terraforming Committee!

Terraforming Mars: Turmoil adds a very interesting and unusual mechanic to the game: Politics of a sort. Don’t worry though, you won’t be sitting there arguing over who becomes the next chairman (hopefully anyway). The expansion comes with a new board that’s set out like a sort of parliament, complete with six different parties that all want to be in power. Each party has its own area on the new board and these six areas each have a series of seats and a bigger one for the party leader.

In the centre is a fancy-looking white seat for the chairman, and then at the top are the lobby and the reserve areas. Each party gives two things if they become the ruling party, an instant single-use bonus and an effect or action that is ongoing while they hold power. You’ll be battling it out with your opponents to try and get the party that most benefits you elected as the ruling party. It’s very fun, much better than real politics!

So How Exactly Do I Take Part In This?

This particular part of the Turmoil expansion is the part we found to be the most complicated when we were playing, but once you get your head around it you’ll find it fairly easy to keep up with. A new action is available that works like a standard project, but isn’t considered one. ‘Lobbying’ is the action of paying five MegaCredits to place one of the six delegates in your chosen colour on one of the seats for a party of your choice. Your first use of this action each generation costs nothing.

Your objective in the Terraforming Committee is either to get a party that benefits you elected as Ruling Party, or to stop someone else getting a party they want elected. There’s a lot of strategy here, and we often found ourselves having to think about which was more important- do you risk trying to push your party into power or do you play safe and stop another player that’s doing really well already?

An interesting twist to note is that there are also neutral delegates used in the Terraforming Committee, and these are placed in various parties by cards and (mainly) global events. You’ll find that sometimes a party is elected because of the neutral delegates, so it’s important to factor those in when you decide what party or parties to put your delegates in. And to keep the same party from being the Ruling Party all the time, when a party becomes ruling, all of its delegates are returned to the lobby. This means other parties have a chance when the next election comes around at the end of the next generation. 

The World Is Ending! No, Really!

Okay maybe that was a slight exaggeration, but bad things are happening. One of Terraforming Mars: Turmoil‘s really interesting parts (and my personal favourite) is the introduction of global events. These are events that happen once per generation and can have a variety of effects. Some are nice, some are far from it! There are some like ‘Interplanetary Trade’ or ‘Diversity’ that are really helpful and can give you extra resources if you meet requirements.

Then there are dangerous ones like ‘Solar Flares’ or ‘Global Dust Storm’ that can have truly horrible effects, with the latter causing everyone to lose all their heat! You’ll have time to plan for what’s coming but it’s still terrifying when you realise that you’re going to lose a ton of MegaCredits in just a couple of generations…

Global Events: You Should Probably Make Some Plans…

So we’ve established that global events are a new feature, but how exactly do they work? And how can we help ourselves limit the losses when they happen? Well Terraforming Mars may be a complicated game but it isn’t unfair, and there are ways it gives you a chance to consider your options. The Turmoil expansion comes with a small board that you use for these event cards. There will be three event cards visible on this board at almost all times in the game.

On the left sits the distant global event, and this is coming in three generations. This gives you time to prepare and try to minimise the losses or maximise the gains you’ll take. In the middle is the coming global event, the one that will hit next generation. Be aware of this so you can make last minute preparations. Finally, on the right you have the current global event, and this will take effect towards the end of the generation. What we find really helpful is that the event board tells you exactly what to do for both the event cards and the Terraforming Committee so you can be sure you won’t miss anything. Get familiar with it because you’ll return to this board every generation.

How Do Global Events Affect The Terraforming Committee Though?

Terraforming Mars: Turmoil may have two separate new systems, but how do they link together? Well to put it simply, the global event cards dictate where neutral delegates are placed, which can swing the elections in unpredictable ways. When a global event is revealed for the first time it indicates which party to place a neutral delegate on, and when a global event becomes the current event it indicates another neutral delegate to be placed on a specific party. This can drastically impact who gets to rule in the Terraforming Committee, and I think it’s a really good link to have between two very different systems.

Wait, There’s Still More?

Correct! Besides the Terraforming Committee and the global events, there are a handful of smaller features that are also included in Terraforming Mars: Turmoil, some of which we found ourselves wishing didn’t exist! The big change to the rules is that each generation everyone’s Terraforming Rating decreases by one. This is to counteract the bonuses you get from global events and the Ruling Party, but we still found it a little unfair as we had to really think about how to increase that rating quickly. The other change for Terraforming Rating is that the Terraformer Milestone is replaced with a new tile. Instead of the 35 TR that the milestone requires in the original game, it now only needs 26 TR instead, so it’s a little more reasonable for the new rules. 

Besides those changes there are a handful of new project cards too, and these require a certain party to be the ruling party in order to be played- we didn’t find them coming into play often and thankfully there are only 16 new cards of this type. On the other hand a very interesting thing to note is that there are also 5 new corporations and I think some of them are very interesting. Terralabs Research only starts with 14 MegaCredits and a -1 to their Terraforming Rating, but buying cards to hand only costs 1 MegaCredit each time instead of 3. Pristar, another interesting one actually rewards you if you don’t improve your Terraforming Rating in a generation!

Final Thoughts On Terraforming Mars: Turmoil

We found Terraforming Mars’ Turmoil expansion to be a very welcome addition to the game, adding some really unique mechanics that could shift the game in unpredictable ways.The learning curve is pretty steep and in particular getting to grips with the Terraforming Committee and its different parties took quite a bit of time. Once we’d gotten there though it was very fun and it’s a fun competitive system that had us fighting to get our own choices elected as the ruling party to get those bonuses.

The global events are really fun too, even the ones that can be nasty. Seeing a distant event turned over that will get rid of a lot of your hard-earned resources is a bit of a shock, but then you remember it will happen to everyone else too! And while we’ve only played with a couple of the new corporations they all have some very appealing features and in particular I can’t wait until I get Terralabs Research as my corporation!

The only feature that we really didn’t like was the loss of 1 to everyone’s Terraforming Rating each generation. The game says it’s to justify the bonuses global events and ruling parties give but often we didn’t feel like the bonuses justified losing the rating when we then had to fight twice as hard to keep it high. All in all though, Turmoil made the already very fun game even better and we play with this expansion every time now. If you don’t mind a bit of a learning curve I would definitely recommend it!