Review of Terraforming Mars: Turmoil

Blurb from the publisher: 'It's a time of turmoil for the human civilization on Mars. Different ideologies and agendas vie for political power, while terrible dust storms and other disasters threaten the progress of the Martian societies. Send your own delegates to influence the Terraforming Committee, and prepare your corporation for the events lurking on the horizon. Find a way to prosper through the challenges ahead!

This is an expert expansion to Terraforming Mars. Turmoil is played together with the main game and may be combined with any other expansion and variant. It adds about 30 minutes to the game length.'

What you get: Your USD 34,95 or equivalent will buy you Terraforming Mars: Turmoil, an expansion for the resource management, economy building Terraforming Mars game line. The basic game can accommodate from one to five players in just over two hours. It has been so incredibly popular (not to mention commercially successful), that it is well-seated in the 4th place of BGG game listings and has reached the status of modern classic. The present expansion was funded through an incredibly successful kickstarter that got delivered just before the Covid-19 outbreak. It does not affect the number of players, yet it does increase the game's time.

In addition to the 8-page A5 format Rulebook that can also be downloaded from the publisher's website free of charge, the game contains the following: 6 Policy tiles, 16 Project cards, 5 Corporation cards, 2 Reference cards, 31 Global Event cards, 14 Neutral delegates, 35 Delegates (7 per colour), one Dominance marker, one Terraformer Milestone tile, one Terraforming Committee board, and one Global Event board.

Gameplay: Turmoil introduces a number of new concepts and mechanics in the basic game. The most prominent is the Terraforming Committee. Six parties participate in it, each of which will grant a different bonus when it holds power. On each round, a player can place a delegate inside a party free of charge, further additions however have to be paid for. The first delegate in any given party is the party leader. Neutral delegates are delegates placed by the game through Global Events, in order to partially randomize things when it comes to the delegate count. The party with the most delegates is the ruling party. When another party surpasses it in delegates, it becomes the dominant party, and will itself become the ruling party in the next generation. It will then appoint its party leader as the new chairman (that player will claim TR), as well as a ruling bonus. Ruling bonuses and ruling policies are party-specific. The first are used immediately after a dominant party becomes the ruling one, and include concepts like everybody gaining credit for the buildings they have, gaining credit for the science they have etc The latter can only be used during the action phase. As an example, Mars First gives you one1 steel when you place a tile on Mars, while the Greens give you 4 credits each time you place a Greenery party.

The Terraforming Committee however does not only grant bonuses, it also effectuates budget cuts. At the beginning of the Turmoil phase, just after Production, all players lose 1 TR. Ooops.

Global Events are known three generations in advance, or three rounds early if you prefer. When they are first placed on their board a neutral delegate is added on the party they indicate. When an event becomes current however, another neutral delegate is added in another party and their effect takes place. Effects can be either beneficial or detrimental towards the player, with specimens like Pandemic (lose credits for building tags), Riots (lose credits for city tiles), or Scientific Community (gain credits for cards in hand).

The project and corporation cards work like the ones in the basic game and are added to the respective decks as usual. Some of them relate to the new Terraforming Committee Board both theme-wise as well as rules-wise, with prerequisites like being a Chairman, a particular party in power etc. Others, like four out of the five corporations, can be played with the basic game without ever using Turmoil.

Just like the base game and the previous expansions, Turmoil can also be played solo with rather moderate changes of rules.

The strong points: A brand new layer of management and optimization based on randomly drawn yet publicly known events well in advance? Sounds like fun... and it is. Neither Global Events nor the Committee Board are all-encompassing. You should however pay attention to them, in order for the rest of your play to shine. You don't need to knee-jerk your way in order to anticipate what will happen. When however your overall plans are close to what the Committee may offer, you will be crazy not to take the opportunity, invest, and reap the benefits or offset the damage that is coming. The new system breathes new life into the value and flexibility of your cards, while multiplying the paths to victory. Timing is of paramount importance; you will not always nail it, every time you do so however your satisfaction and adrenaline will hit the roof.

Turmoil turns an otherwise economic game into a political experience, at least partially. This involves both positive and negative plays, where you might devote a move towards making someone's life harder. It also includes multiplayer interactions. 'If you do this here I will do that there so that the leading player gets shafted there'. Hah! That was missing, without however the game turning into a random pie-throwing contest. Terraforming Mars is still about outperforming others, not destroying them. In any event, pay attention; everybody must be equally knowledgeable of how the expansion practically works in order for this type of play to shine. Let people get used to the base game before you jump into Turmoil.

I enjoyed enormously the optimistic, thematic fit of Global Events being known in advance. It is as if one can see the quantifiable effects that something will have on the world one hundred years from now, like a major new technology, or a byproduct of human activity, and plan around it. Wouldn't it be fantastic if humanity could do so in real life?

The new Project and Corporation cards are interesting, and some of them can be even used without the expansion's defining sub-system. Admittedly however, one is not likely to buy this expansion in order not to use the Terraforming Commission.

The weak points: 'Do I really need this?' is the main question to ask here. This is a brand new mechanic, a new system within a game that is already robust. I enjoyed it a lot, but then again I enjoy full-day games like Mega Empires. If you play casually, it might come out as too much additional thinking for only marginal added value. If you are engaged, but still don't want a game to take a full session, it might cause some concern. The Global Event cards are effectively the ones influencing how long your game will last. The more negative cards come up, the longer a game will turn out to be, not including the unavoidable analysis/paralysis issues that will arise by having an extra variable to calculate when playing. The game is more likely to last 90 minutes more and not 30, as it professes, but then again this depends on player experience. In short: Turmoil will see use in my table, yet I don't believe it will be used every single time, and especially when we are pressed for time.

Like with any other expansions, players might only partially interact with it during a play, and especially during the first, exploratory games. The obvious recommendation: if someone engages heavily with the Committee while the others are going through the motions and mostly focus on the pre-Turmoil aspects of the game, that guy is on a surefire path to victory. Consistent plays on the Committee round after round can see your output marginally increase to the point that it soars. Don't let anybody blindside you; these extra bonuses are waiting to be plundered.

As usual, the expansion does not address any of the main game's issues. Don't ask me to pronounce myself on the cards' balance after a handful of plays, even though I don't feel that everything is kosher. From the base game already the design opted to balance itself on the long run, after dozens of plays, and does not concern itself with glitches that come out inside a particular play. Easy example: one could have expected alternative systems of regulating Global Events so that positives and negatives balance each other out, or that a certain flow is established (like in Through the Ages). No such effort has been made. The Global Events you draw are fully random.

The catalogue price is simply outrageous, something that feels rather consistent with the previous expansions. Turmoil shouldn't be worth more than USD 20 to 25, and thankfully there are many places where you can find it for exactly that price. To add more insult to injury, the kickstarter edition of the product included indented, dual-layer player boards for your cubes not to slip, it specified however that these boards would not make it into the retail edition. Indeed, they didn't. What a shortsighted marketing strategy. It's as if the publisher actively asks you to buy unofficial, third-party accessories to pimp your game.

Dreadful colour scheme? Check. Then again, I did not expect this to change halfway through the line.

Conclusion: Turmoil does not lie: it is a well-crafted, hardcore gamer expansion addressed to those who want a new layer of play with additional management and optimization as well as a touch of politics. It delivers solidly on that, with a long, immersive experience that you may use as often as you may decide to omit. Just don't buy it at catalogue price.

For more info on Terraforming Mars: Turmoil visit Stronghold Games at https://strongholdgames.com.

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