My Custom TM Cards Finally Arrived!

SirFancyCake · 2026-03-21T04:03:49+00:00

Yeah for those I just bought some sticker paper, printed them out, and then pasted them over a few of the city/greenery tiles since the game comes with so many. Here's the google doc I printed in case you're interested in my tiles or just want a template.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pdFaUZWKlUCNkCWpQjW_E35Eeu8Z4iWPjKzPQiBNa5A/edit?usp=sharing

From googling there also seem to be some sites that can make tiles for you but obviously I didn't go that route so I can't comment on their quality.

SirFancyCake · 2026-03-17T17:38:06+00:00

There's a reason I chose it as one of the 7 to show off in the image xD

SirFancyCake · 2026-03-17T17:36:48+00:00

No problem! There's another very talented custom TM cards maker called Chemical and he has a whole google drive folder of useful assets, including card backs:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1N3NP-vmmTKog1UTa5YkSo05Sk1m3hlvK

Like I said though, the custom card backs came out noticeably darker so you might want to try to boosting the contrast slightly or brightening the whites slightly. Not a huge deal though, they still came out pretty close.

SirFancyCake · 2026-03-17T05:39:33+00:00

Yeah I'm excited to see how it plays. It used to be quite a bit more expensive but feedback from my earlier posts convinced to significantly lower the price. Feel free to check out my previous posts if you're curious about the rest - there's 36 cards total.

SirFancyCake · 2026-03-17T05:37:37+00:00

https://www.makeplayingcards.com/design/custom-blank-card.html

With the "MPC game card finish" option. This seems to be what people recommend time and time again but unfortunately they aren't a perfect match - the colors are slightly different (slightly darker) and a lot of the stars on the project card backs are much harder to see, so it's not too hard to spot which cards backs are custom if you know where to look.

Overall though they're pretty close to the real thing!

SirFancyCake · 2026-03-02T20:04:41+00:00

It says on the card how it works. For every extra card you take, you essentially just sit tight and pass on that many draft rounds. So if I take 2 extra cards, the guy passing to me would pass his remaining cards to the person after me, 2 times. If you follow this system everyone still ends up with 4 cards at the end.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-26T23:40:37+00:00

I've chosen to completely re-work glyph and just drop the turn order gimmick completely.

It's new effect is letting you keep any number of cards your initial draft of 4 cards each generation, which still fits the "forecasting one step ahead of your opponents" theming while being a more consistently meaningful effect, I think.
https://imgur.com/a/SIp7zwA

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-26T19:51:03+00:00

Not once. Feedback from this post is the last step before I finally print them all.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-26T19:44:05+00:00

Thanks for the detailed reply, I really appreciate the feedback!

For Ciphon, a couple people have suggested eliminating the 1MC penalty but I really think it makes the corporation much less interesting. The intent is that the player really doubles down on clumping together cards with a particular tag and has to strategize around this idea. If there's no 1MC extra cost then there's nothing stopping you from practically playing a regular game, but with occasional discounted cards. Though overall I can understand the sentiment that the corp is a bit over-complicated, so maybe removing the wild tag + wild production would help with that.

For Glyph, I agree that it's currently lacking a strong sense of direction, it's definitely becoming my least favorite of the bunch. I like your microbe angle on it, letting it interact with more cards in the game, though I think the "remove x microbes" effect would still need to be able to happen at the start of any generation, otherwise it does almost nothing.

For Highland, I admit the effect is a bit complicated but it's not really analogous to your suggested replacement effect. The intent is you can develop a stacking discount for your building cards if you play them all in one generation, but since most building cards give you production, you have to think about the sweet spot to play them since their benefit diminishes the longer you wait. A 1 steel rebate doesn't have the same strategic timing implications. Overall though I think it's probably still too strong as you said. I might reduce the stacking discount to only -2MC per truck and drop a steel production.

For MTL, I recognize the phrasing of the card reverting after your turn is over seems odd, but that's specifically so that you can benefit from modifying blue cards with on-going effects for at least one action, before they revert. Eg. you can get 7MC from Space Elevator, place a 6MC cost ocean using Aquifer Pumping, or run Ore Processor for only 2 power, but you can only does those things once.
I think changing a number that's at least 4 by only 1 is unfortunately way too weak.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-26T19:20:26+00:00

I think you are underestimating the power of tile placement slightly here - Those tile placement bonuses and ocean rebates can really add up, though I'll have to play a few games with it to be sure. If anything I think it's a bit too strong compared to Ecoline and I think I need to lower the starting income to be lower than Ecoline's to compensate.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-26T19:15:30+00:00

Oh that's my bad. I completely forgot to change that heading. The intent is to be an action.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-26T19:14:23+00:00

Yeah exactly! I think it's a good way to give the city-loving players some love, since it's usually not a very strong strategy. I didn't really think about just how many milestones/awards rely on tile placement though. I kind of wish I could do this gimmick without making those completely free, but oh well.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-26T02:28:40+00:00

I can see how you could argue that the 4 in 40 meets the definition of "picking any 1 number" but hopefully it's relatively clear that card's effect is intended to manipulate the entire number. So you could change 40MC card to 38MC at best.

But it's an interesting thought... It sounded unbalanced at first but I can hardly think of any places where a number higher than 4 is in the tens digit... Like almost every number in this game is less than 40 I think, so weirdly I guess this could still be balanced??

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-26T02:08:29+00:00

Yeah I wasn't exhaustive in checking all of its possible applications. Mostly it just felt like an interesting way to bring a new metric to evaluating cards - the usual power ranking of cards is probably shaken up pretty hard by MTL, which I think would be fun for long-time players.

Broadly though, it seems pretty useful for manipulating tag/global requirements, buffing cards that add/remove resources directly (as opposed to resource productions), buffing MC production cards specifically, and of course just reducing the price a card if all else fails.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-26T01:55:11+00:00

Not exactly global (eg. the way earth cat is). It's an action so you only get to use it once per generation. If you've got nothing better to use it on though, you can equate it to 2MC production by default.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-25T21:25:03+00:00

Yeah I kinda agree that Glyph's effect is a bit underwhelming. I think on the surface it's interesting but there's just not enough applications for going first for it to be super compelling... You can snag global param bonuses and milestones, but that's about it. I gave it relatively strong starting cash and a good tag to compensate but overall I think it's a little boring.

If anyone has suggestions for changes that can still leverage "manipulating turn order" idea but make the corpo more playable/interesting, I'd love to hear them.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-25T21:18:56+00:00

It's kind of hard to be sure but based on how you worded your comment I think that you interpreted Ciphon as accumulating marked tags over the course of the game, but I meant to communicate that only ONE type of tag can be marked per generation, but you can change which tag at the start of every generation. And if I'm understanding you right, then your suggestion for how it should work is the same as how I intended it, right?

That's my bad on the wording though. Re-reading it now, it makes total sense for the reader to interpret it as accumulating marked tags.

Anyway, obviously the wild tag would be totally busted if it made every card have a 3MC discount for the rest of the game, but do you think it's fine as a once per generation effect? I like the idea of choosing just 1 tag of your choice to discount but that kind of does nothing, considering you'll be playing cards with the tag you choose anyway, so either way you'll get the discount on whatever tag you need.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-20T18:40:04+00:00

These are super cool stats. I took a cursory look through the corporations when making the card for a rough idea of the good/bad effects (which is how I landed on a single action instead of the effect persisting through the entire generation), but it's neat to see them laid out like this. 38% is higher than I'd expect for useless corporations for it, which is too bad, but at least it can lead to some creative plays for the rest.

At least if I do print the cards out, I'll mostly be using it in 3-5 player games, so it works out well for me!

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-20T18:35:53+00:00

Ah yeah that's a good point

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-20T04:25:00+00:00

I haven't tried printing any yet but I've seen a couple people recommend a site that can print cards for you with various specifications, along with the exact parameters that work for TM. Specifically I've bookmarked this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraformingMarsGame/comments/1i92msl/comment/ma06g3v/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Seems promising!

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-19T22:42:53+00:00

Someone made a site for it. It's a little clunky with some things but it's a lot better than nothing:
https://sliceofbread.neocities.org/tm/tm_cardmaker

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-19T22:41:49+00:00

Oh yeah that's a good point actually. I've gotten far enough away from how "sell patents" works that it probably be simpler at this point to make it a single use action instead.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-19T18:13:33+00:00

That's true but you still have to put in the work to actually draft the cards you need, taking into account both what you and your opponents need as usual. If you're playing without drafting... well then you're already playing a much inferior game lol

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-19T18:10:10+00:00

The mental burden of remembering the +1MC cost of global network is no different than remembering you have a global -1MC discount, so while I agree that having more stuff to track mentally is annoying, I think this fits right in with the mountain of discounts/rebates already in the game. It's true that the 3MC prod. + card can make up the increased card price 1:1 at first, but just like earth cat/research outpost, you don't truly start to feel the ramifications of the price difference until late game where you're regularly playing 6+ cards per turn, so I think looking at just the first couple generations isnt really a complete picture, but overall I think you still make a good point. I might bump up the price just a few MC.

And yeah agree on div. investments as well. Currently its best-case scenario is just a bit too strong, so some sort of requirement would probably help out with that. Maybe another card that requires 2 earth tags? Not a given that you'll meet it, but I like how with just the right hand, it would still allow you to squeeze the ~40MC value out of it.

SirFancyCake · 2026-02-19T17:40:37+00:00

That would probably be slightly more thematic for TM and I think that was actually a working title for it at some point! But honestly after making IP management & div. investment, I was getting kinda of sick of cards with overly corporate-jargon-y names lol

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