Unpopular opinion: Terraforming Mars beats Everdell for replayability.

I have played both of these games at least 20 times each over the last year with my game group in Austin. Everdell is gorgeous and I love the wooden pieces and the worker placement mechanic, but after about 10 plays I felt like I had seen most of the card combos. Terraforming Mars, on the other hand, has way more variety in how you can win each time. The different corporations actually change your whole strategy from the start, and I still discover new card synergies every session. We had a game last week where someone won with a plant engine that just crushed everyone else and I had never even considered that approach before. Has anyone else felt this way about a game that looks better but has less depth after many plays?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jade11h ago

That plant engine win came from steering into it from turn one with Teractor and a lucky early Birds card, but that's exactly why TMars wins for replayability. Everdell's tight design means you're mostly optimizing within known paths, while TMars lets you stumble into wild strategies that shouldn't work but somehow do.

sethp2622h ago

Hit me with this: do you think the cleaner, tighter design of Everdell actually hurts its replayability compared to the messy chaos of Terraforming Mars? I've got about 15 games of each under my belt, and I swear every time I pull out TMars I end up in some weird corner strategy like building a whole economy around heat production just to spite the person hoarding plants. On the flip side, Everdell feels like after you've seen the main combos you're just waiting for the right cards to show up. Did that plant engine win come from a lucky hand draw or did they actually steer into that strategy from turn one?