Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

Ares Expedition arrives with the weight of one of the hobby’s most popular games on its shoulders. Terraforming Mars has sold millions of copies and built a massive community around its blend of card play, engine building, and planetary development. Ares Expedition promises to deliver that same satisfaction in half the time, stripping away the board, the tile placement, and much of the direct interaction in favor of a pure card-driven engine-building experience with simultaneous action selection.

The result has divided the community in a way that’s genuinely interesting. Some players have found exactly the streamlined Mars experience they wanted. Others feel it falls between two stools, neither as deep as Terraforming Mars nor as elegant as the action-selection games it borrows from.

The Satisfying Card Engine

The card play in Ares Expedition captures the best feeling of its parent game. Slamming down a project card that perfectly synergizes with your existing tableau, watching your production tracks climb, and converting resources into terraforming progress all deliver the same satisfaction loop that made Terraforming Mars a hit. The cards are well-designed, clearly presented, and offer enough variety that building your engine feels different from game to game.

The simultaneous action selection mechanism means that each round, all players secretly choose one phase to activate, and all selected phases resolve for everyone. The twist is that the player who selected a phase gets a bonus for choosing it. This creates an interesting meta-game of predicting what your opponents will choose, piggybacking on their selections, and occasionally gambling on phases that only you want.

At higher player counts, this mechanism shines. More players mean more phases selected each round, which speeds up the game and creates more opportunities for strategic free-riding. The game actually plays faster with more people, which is an unusual and welcome design outcome.

The Solitaire Problem

The most consistent criticism of Ares Expedition is how isolated the experience feels. Without the shared board, tile placement, and milestones of the original Terraforming Mars, players are largely building their own engines in parallel. The action selection provides some indirect interaction through phase prediction, but the moment-to-moment gameplay often feels like everyone is playing their own puzzle at the same table.

At two players, this problem is most acute. With only two phases selected per round, the game can fall into repetitive cycles where both players select the same two actions repeatedly, and the pacing suffers. The game is designed around having more players to create phase variety, and two-player sessions can feel sluggish as a result.

The absence of drafting in the base game also reduces interaction. In the original Terraforming Mars, card drafting created tension as players weighed keeping cards for themselves against denying cards to opponents. Here, you simply draw from the deck and decide what to keep. It’s simpler, but it removes a layer of decision-making that many players miss.

Finding Its Audience Between Two Giants

Ares Expedition occupies an awkward middle ground. Players who love the full Terraforming Mars experience often find it too stripped down, missing the spatial puzzle of the board, the competition for milestones and awards, and the richer interaction. Players who want a pure action-selection card game often prefer designs that were built from the ground up for that format. Ares Expedition is a competent mashup of both styles, but it doesn’t quite reach the heights of either.

The solo mode, however, is a genuine bright spot. The tighter playtime and focused card engine make for a satisfying solo puzzle that moves at a pace the original game can’t match in single-player mode.

Should You Play Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition?

If you love the card play of Terraforming Mars but can’t always commit to its longer playtime, Ares Expedition delivers a condensed version of that experience that hits the table more easily. It’s also a solid choice for solo players who want a medium-weight engine builder with good variety. At three or four players, the action selection mechanism works well and keeps the game moving.

Skip it if you want the full spatial and interactive experience of Terraforming Mars, if you primarily play at two players, or if you’re looking for a card game with high player interaction. Ares Expedition works best when you accept it as its own game rather than measuring it against its parent.

The Verdict

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is a solid engine-building card game that successfully condenses the satisfaction of its predecessor into a faster format. The simultaneous action selection adds genuine strategic interest, and the card variety ensures good replayability. It falls short of greatness by trading too much interaction for speed, creating an experience that feels more solitary than it should. It’s a good game that lives in the shadow of a great one, and for many players, that will be enough.