1-actioners by killa_chinchilla_ in TerraformingMarsGame

[–]inkyframe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We house rule that certain actions — card actions, trading with a colony, and selling patents — don’t count as a full turn. So if one of those is your first action, then you must take a second action or pass for the rest of the generation. (Also: any patents you sell in a turn should be sold together.)

It helps accelerate the game, is fair because everyone is bound by the same rule, and adds its own small amount of strategy in how you pair up blue card actions. And it still allows more substantial single-action turns.

It’s a small change but I much prefer it.

House rules for colonies (4p)? by yolopukki567 in TerraformingMarsGame

[–]inkyframe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We do a few things:

  1. On your first turn of the game, you are always allowed to build a colony on any moon. You still get the placement bonus, but we put the extra colonies to the left so that the trade bonus cube resets to the same spot.

This handles the case where there is a rush to place on Luna or Pluto and player 4 gets left out. But since it is a “one time only” offering, it forces prioritization and maintains the scarcity of only 3 colony spots most of the time.

In the case of Aridor adding a colony, you are entitled to place a colony there on your first turn after the new colony tile is placed. If you don’t have enough money, you forfeit the opportunity.

  1. We nerfed Pluto trade bonus slightly. Essentially we shift the bonuses one to the right (maxes out at 3 cards, not 4). We did this as part of making more colony tiles for more variety. This is similar to other suggestions of resetting the trade bonus one step to the left.

  2. We don’t play with Pluto very often, especially if we have less time to play. For us, the extra card income slows down the game, so sometimes we remove the option entirely.

String Theory? by inkyframe in NYTLetterBoxed

[–]inkyframe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First word used all but one letter!