How to Teach Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars has a reputation as a long teach. Our piece on play time notes that explaining it can take twenty-five minutes. Much of that time tends to go to cards nobody has drawn yet.

The rules themselves are a small loop. Teach the loop, start the game, and let the cards explain themselves as they show up. Here is a script in the order you would say it. Print the Terraforming Mars teach sheet and set it where everyone can see it.

Before anyone sits down

Set up first. Oceans stacked, oxygen on 0%, temperature on -30 °C, generation marker on 1, every TR marker on 20, every production track on 1. Corporate Era cards in the box.

Deal each new player a Beginner Corporation. It is the rulebook’s own advice: 42 M€ and 10 free cards, with no corporation choice and no paying to keep cards. That saves new players a long read before turn one. Experienced players can take the normal two corporations and ten cards to buy from.

Skip the draft variant too. The rulebook does not recommend it for new players.

Minute 1: the goal

Say: “We are corporations paid to make Mars livable. We raise three things: temperature, oxygen, and oceans. When all three are full, we finish that round and the game ends.”

Point at the TR track. “Every time you raise one of them, you go up one step here. That is your terraform rating. It is part of your income every round, and it is points at the end. Most points wins.”

Minutes 2 to 3: a generation

Point to each part of the teach sheet as you go.

1. “Each round, called a generation, you draw 4 cards and pay 3 M€ for each one you want to keep. Not this first round: you already have your cards.”
2. “Then we go around taking 1 or 2 actions each, until everyone passes.”
3. “Then production: you get money equal to your TR plus your money production, and everything else your board produces.”

Stop here. Ask: “Questions on the round?”

Minutes 4 to 6: your player board

Hold up a player board.

• “Money, called M€, pays for everything.”
• “Steel helps pay for building cards, titanium for space cards. Look for the tag in the top corner.”
• “8 plants make a greenery tile. That raises oxygen, so you also gain TR.”
• “8 heat raises the temperature. Also TR.”
• “Energy you don’t use turns into heat when production starts.”

Then the one tip that helps most: “Production is what you get every round. Early in the game, more production beats almost anything else.”

Minutes 7 to 8: the map

Point at the board.

• “Oceans go only on these blue areas. Anything placed next to an ocean later gets 2 M€.”
• “Greeneries go next to your own tiles if you can. Each is a point at the end.”
• “Cities can’t touch other cities. A city scores a point for every greenery next to it, whoever owns it.”
• “Printed bonuses on a space are yours when you place a tile there.”

Minute 9: playing a card

Draw a card from the deck and read it aloud.

“Top left is the cost. Next to it, any requirement, like ‘oxygen at least 5%’. The bottom is what it does. Green cards happen once. Blue cards stay out and keep working. Red cards are events: play and flip them.”

Then show the standard projects. “If your hand has nothing good, these are always available. You can always spend money on Mars.”

Minute 10: start, and teach the rest live

Say: “Milestones and awards are extra points. I’ll explain them the first time someone can claim one.” Then the first player begins.

Teach these when they happen:

• A red-bordered icon on a card. It can hit any player. Explain it the first time one comes out.
• Milestones and awards. Explain both when the first player qualifies or someone has spare money in the midgame.
• A parameter maxing out. Remind everyone that it gives no more TR, but its cards can still be played.
• The end. When two tracks are full, remind everyone about the final plant conversion and how cities score.

What to leave out

• Every card’s details. Players read their own.
• Strategy. Let people find their corporation’s shape.
• Corporate Era, the draft, and expansions. All three are for later games.

Coaching during the first game

Terraforming Mars can stall while a new player stares at ten cards. Our guide to analysis paralysis has gentle ways to help. In this game, one question works well: “Which of these could you play this round?” It narrows ten options to two or three.

Help with the rules, not the choices. “That needs a building tag, so steel works” is helpful. “Play that one” is playing for them.