Terraforming Mars Prelude Strategy: A Faster Start

Prelude is a common first expansion, and tournaments such as WBC and the French qualifier circuit use it. It does one thing: it gives every player a head start. That sounds small. In practice, it changes how you choose your opening, and how long the game lasts.

How Prelude works

From the Prelude rulebook:

• The box adds 35 Prelude cards in their own deck, plus 7 project cards and 5 corporations shuffled into the normal decks.
• During setup, each player is dealt 4 Prelude cards along with their corporations and project cards.
• You choose 2 Prelude cards to keep at the same time as you choose your corporation and starting hand. Prelude cards cost nothing to keep.
• After corporations are revealed and cards are paid for, there is an extra round: in player order, everyone plays their 2 Prelude cards. Discard the other 2.
• Prelude cards then work like green cards. They stay in play with their tags showing.
• The whole setup counts as part of generation 1.

For solo play, the rulebook shortens the game to 12 generations when you use Prelude cards.

One decision, three parts

At Level 1, you learned that corporation and hand are one choice. Prelude makes it three. Lay out your options and look for overlap:

• Prelude and corporation. A Prelude that adds a resource your corporation rewards is worth more than its printed effect.
• Prelude and hand. A Prelude that adds steel or titanium makes your building or space cards cheaper right away. One that adds a tag can meet a requirement in your hand.
• Money. Preludes are free, but your project cards still cost 3 M€ each. A Prelude that gives M€ can let you keep an extra card or two.

When nothing lines up, take the most flexible Preludes, usually the ones that add production you can use with any plan.

Production first, as usual, but sooner

Most Preludes add production, resources, or TR. That puts everyone’s engine a generation or more ahead of where it would be. Reviewers on the FryxGames site say Prelude speeds the game up, and it makes sense: bigger engines raise the parameters faster.

That has a real effect on the math from how to value a card. Fewer generations means fewer production phases left at every point in the game. A production card in generation 4 of a Prelude game has less time to pay back than the same card in generation 4 of a base game.

So in Prelude games:

• Production still comes first in the opening, but stop buying it sooner.
• Early TR is still good, for the same reason as always.
• Watch the clock from the start. Count the steps left on the three tracks each generation, as in the midgame lesson, but expect it to drop faster.

Races start earlier

With every engine ahead, milestones and awards get decided earlier too. A Prelude that adds tiles or tags can put you, or a rival, in reach of a milestone within the first few generations. Check every player’s Preludes as they are played, and note who is suddenly close to one.

Placement bonuses go fast as well. If your Preludes place tiles, think about the map the same way you would for any first tile: where you want to grow, and what you give away.

Reading the table after Preludes

Prelude also tells you a lot about your rivals before the first action. Once everyone’s Preludes are down, you can see:

• Which resources each player is producing, and so which parameters they will push.
• Which tags they have, and so which milestones and awards they are near.
• How fast the game will move. A table full of TR and plant production will end sooner than one full of M€ production.

That is a lot of information. Use it to plan your first two generations.

With the draft

Prelude and the draft fit together. Tournaments such as WBC have drafted Preludes too: in 2025, players kept 1 and passed the rest until each had 4, then chose 2. The same rules from the draft lesson apply: first pick for you, later picks with an eye on your neighbors.

Get Prelude from Stronghold Games. It needs the base game.