Terraforming Mars Colonies Strategy: Building and Trading

Welcome to Level 4. Tournaments add expansions as their rounds go on. WBC’s 2025 and 2026 events used every expansion except Turmoil in the semifinal and final, unless all players agreed otherwise, so Colonies is part of the deep rounds. It adds a new action, a new standard project, and a lot of player interaction.

How Colonies works

From the Colonies rulebook:

Setup. Draw Colony Tiles equal to the number of players plus 2, or 5 tiles in a two-player game. Put a white marker on the highlighted second step of each track. Each player takes one trade fleet. Titan, Enceladus, and Miranda start with their marker on the moon itself, and only open once a card that can collect their resource is in play.

Building a colony is a standard project for 17 M€. Put your marker on the lowest open spot of a Colony Tile’s track and take the placement bonus shown there. Each tile holds 3 colonies at most, and each player may have only one colony per tile unless a card says otherwise.

Trading is a new action, not a standard project. Pay 9 M€, or 3 energy, or 3 titanium, and move your trade fleet to a Colony Tile. Only one fleet may visit a tile at a time. You get the trade income where the white marker sits, and every player with a colony on that tile gets its colony bonus.

After trading, the white marker moves as far left as it can, stopping next to the colonies or at the bottom of the track.

In the new Solar Phase, after production, all trade fleets return and every white marker moves one step up its track.

The two engines in Colonies

Colonies gives you two ways to earn, and they work best together.

Colonies are passive income. Each colony gives its placement bonus once, then a colony bonus every time anyone trades on that tile. A colony built early can pay many times over a game, mostly on other players’ turns.

Trading is active income. A trade’s value depends on where the marker sits, and markers climb every generation that nobody trades there.

When to build

Build early, for two reasons:

• More trades left. A colony built in generation 2 collects bonuses from every trade for the rest of the game.
• Raising the floor. After a trade, the marker stops next to the colonies. More colonies on a tile mean the marker never falls as low, so later trades there are worth more.

Choose tiles whose resources fit your plan. A colony bonus you cannot use is a bonus for nobody.

When to trade

The value of a trade depends on two things: how high the marker is, and how much of the colony bonus comes back to you.

• Trade where the marker is high. A track that nobody has visited for a generation or two has climbed. The first trader takes the big haul.
• Trade where you have a colony. You get the trade income and your own colony bonus.
• Watch who else gets paid. Every colony owner on that tile gets a bonus from your trade. Trading on a tile full of a rival’s colonies pays them too.

Since only one fleet may sit on each tile, trading early in the action phase can also take the best tile from a rival who was waiting for it.

Paying for trades

Each payment has its own cost to you:

• 9 M€ is simplest, and fine when money is plenty.
• 3 energy can be a bargain if you produce energy that would otherwise become heat.
• 3 titanium makes sense if you have titanium and few space cards to spend it on.

Pick the one that costs you the least, not the one that is easiest to count.

Tournament rules to know

Events can adjust Colonies. The WBC 2025 event, for example, allowed only one trade per turn, and let players build or trade at Titan, Miranda, or Enceladus even without a card to hold that resource. Read the event page before you play.

A Colonies routine

Each generation, ask:

1. Which tile’s marker has climbed highest since its last trade?
2. Where do I have colonies, and where do my rivals?
3. Can I build a colony this generation, while it still has many trades to pay?

Colonies rewards players who plan a generation ahead. Know where you will trade next generation, and build where your rivals will want to trade. Get it from Stronghold Games.