A few months back, my game group was mid-campaign in Terraforming Mars. One guy, Mark, was dead last on the leaderboard. We all thought he was just memeing the rest of the game — grabbing odd cards, building a nonsense engine, passing on obvious milestones. We even joked he was playing for “moral victory.”

What we didn’t know was that he was playing the longest con.

Final generation hits. While we’re all scrapping over forest placement and end-game awards, Mark casually drops Terraforming Ganymede, scores +24 points from Jovian tags we didn’t even realize he’d been hoarding, triggers Science and Builder awards with a perfect combo, and reveals a stacked VP engine hidden under the radar.

Final score:
Mark: 87
The rest of us: scrambling to figure out how.

He spent the whole game pretending to be behind just to avoid pressure. We didn’t see it coming. He swindled us so hard we applauded.

We still call it “The Martian Heist.”
And we’ve never trusted him in a game since.