Terraforming Mars Tournament Rules: Procedure, Time, and Ties

At home, a missed production cube gets fixed with a laugh. At a tournament, it is a ruling. The best-documented Terraforming Mars rules in the competitive scene come from the World Boardgaming Championships, whose game master posts a detailed event preview each year. This lesson walks through them, using the 2025 preview and the 2026 preview.

Other events set their own rules. Read your event’s page before you play.

The format

WBC runs two heats, then a quarterfinal, semifinal, and final. Only heat winners advance. Heats seat four players where they can, with some three or five-player games as needed. The event is marked for experienced players only.

Boards rotate by round. In 2026, the heats used the original board and then Elysium, the quarterfinal Hellas, the semifinal the original board, and the final a random board.

Setup rules

• Corporate Era is in. All cards and corporations are used, and production starts at zero.
• No Beginner Corporations.
• Banned corporations: ManuTech, Vitor, Point Luna, and Poseidon.
• Random milestones and awards, 5 of each, on the original board and from the quarterfinal on. Hoverlord and Venuphile are added when Venus is in.
• Expansions grow by round. In the heats, tables that agree to expansions play at least two of Venus, Prelude, and Colonies. The quarterfinal uses at least two expansions, not Turmoil, unless all agree. The semifinal and final use every expansion except Turmoil, unless all agree otherwise.

Drafting

WBC drafts everything:

• Starting hand: deal 5 cards, keep 1 and pass left until everyone has 5. Then deal 5 more and pass right, for 10 in all. Then choose a corporation and which of the 10 to buy.
• Preludes: dealt with the first 5 cards, then drafted keep 1 and pass until each player has 4. Then choose 2.
• Each generation from generation 2: deal 4 and draft, keep 1 per pass.

The 2026 preview is not consistent about which way the generation draft passes in odd and even generations. It is the kind of detail to confirm with the GM at the start of play.

Announce, show, then act

Every action follows a procedure. You state aloud what you are doing, and then:

1. For a card, say its name and its effect.
2. Say how you are paying, and show the payment in front of your player board before it goes back to the supply.
3. Adjust production and resources as the card says.
4. Place any tile and take its placement bonus.

One player moves all TR and global parameters for the table, announcing each TR change aloud. Another deals cards. Players remind each other when a city or ocean is placed and someone’s card triggers from it.

Production is handled so the next player can check it. Move your existing resources to one side of each box, place new production on the other, and let the next player audit before they are mixed.

Mistakes

The WBC rules are specific:

• Production errors are fixed as soon as they are noticed.
• Extra resources taken in production are lost at once.
• Missed resources are not recovered unless the error is noticed before your next-generation action and all other players agree.
• Missed benefits from another player’s action, such as a city or ocean triggering one of your cards, must be claimed before your next-generation action.
• If another player’s action was based on a mistake, they may take a different action, unless it would hurt a third player.
• Anything unresolved goes to the GM.

The lesson for practice: claim your triggers out loud the moment they happen.

Fast Mode and trading limits

WBC adds a few changes for pace:

• Fast Mode: each turn, you take 2 actions or pass. You may take 1 action and then pass for the generation. You may use Sell patents as your first action and again as your second.
• Colonies: no more than one trade per turn.
• Venus: the World Government step is mandatory.

Time

Heats and the quarterfinal have a four-hour limit. The semifinal and final have a soft four-hour limit. The GM announces when 30 to 45 minutes remain. If every player has taken at least one action that generation, the table finishes it and plays one more. Otherwise, the current generation is the last. Final greenery conversion happens in turn order as part of that generation.

Ties

A tie on points goes to leftover M€, as in the rulebook. If players are still tied, in the heats every tied player is a winner. From the quarterfinal on, the tied player who moved later in generation 1 wins.

Heat winners are ranked by most wins, then by placement points, then by a margin-of-victory tiebreak set by the GM, and finally by a die roll.

Bring it home

You do not need a GM to use these habits. Announcing actions, showing payment, and auditing production make any game cleaner, and they catch the rules slips from Level 1 before they cost anyone. Practice them at home, and the procedure will feel normal by the time it matters.