I am on my 16th straight loss and I need to be told where I can improve

[FrankJones]

^

Well said by CapitalDecay.

TFM is not an easy game, and most of us, even veterans, still make mistakes. I regularly discuss strategy with a high-rated player, and we analyze games and point out each other's errors or possible errors. (More in my games, which is why I am lower-rated )

[FrankJones]

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=632522295

Ouch! That was a rough Sabotage. I might have placed the Mohole area on the card spot and delayed Bribed Committee by one generation. Maybe you stumble into Media Group or Earth Office or Earth catapult on gen 2 and can play the card at a discount

Regarding the gen 2 draft, Yeah, it's a bummer to pass WIFE, but Earth Catapult just cannot be passed there.
Earth office was rough, because keeping it would have required passing Olympus to the player who already had Earth Catapult. That's just a tough spot. I wonder what the other player kept to be passing Earth Office and Olympus?

Additional note- Bribed Committe isn't a great card in 3-player game with preludes with no support for the card (Meaning, a discount or rebate). It costs 10 MC to buy and play, and returns 2 income, so it's 5 generations to break even, but not really, since 10 MC now is much better than 2 MC per gen spread over 5 gens. (Somewhere there's a complicated formula for the exact valuation of MC return over time, taking that devaluation into account.)

And the card gives you no permanent tag.

If the game only goes 9 generations, Bribed Committee barely turns a profit. I'm not saying not to buy and use it in gen 1 - but it's not necessarily an automatic play for me. It depends how much cash I have on hand and how much I expect to need right away.

[DrWreck]

https://boardgamearena.com/gamereview?table=649054429

I need to be told what I am doing wrong and that it's not just bad luck.

That is a horrible starting hand, and one reason I never play with preludes.

Other notes:
1. Soil factory is a terrible card. NEver keep it, and never buy it in the draft. If you end up with it as a free card, it's still not worth playing, except as a steel-dump late game when you are cashing in for points after terraforming is complete.

2. Solar power. The problem isn't when you played it. The problem is, it's a terrible card, never worth keeping. It's 14 credits for 1 energy production, ad a meaningless early game VP.

3. Adapted Lichen is a bad card. 12 MC for what MIGHT turn into a greenery in 8 generations. (Granted, you Do have protected habitats, but still, this is not a good card.

4. Earth Office - Auto-keep in the starting hand, always.

5. I agree about the second city not being ideal. I would either create two adjacencies with your other city, or, carve out a strong area in the southern part of the map.

6. Pasing Giant Ice asteroid is a major error. I do not understand the "I cannot afford it" reasoning. Draft the card, pay 3 MC, pass as your action, and play Giant Ice in gen 3. You do not need to just play every playable card you can afford, and you can and should buy cards you cannot yet afford or play. (Also, on literally the next draft decision, you kept a card priced identically to GIA, while passing a very good card in electro catapult, while sitting there with energy production (albeit in a card I hate, Solar power). Also, notice, with better city placement, you could have kept Giant Ice, smashed some ecoline plants, and immediately started gaining big points for ocean adjacency. The Tharsis map allows Cities near the equator to gain ocean adjacency money and plant placement bonus simultaneously. A city just north of the two "draw-card" spots would have done well with Giant Ice Asteroid putting oceans directly above it.

7. Restricted Area should have been placed next to the 2 oceans, or maybe on a draw-card spot, or on a 2-steel spot.

8. You played Solar power (A mistake, as others have pointed out), yet you did not keep "Mineral deposit". That is literally throwing away 2 MC for zero reason. (Mineral deposit costs 8 MC to buy and use, and gives you 10 MC worth of steel.)

9. Unless you are setting up a card that uses an energy resource to activate (Development center, Martian rails, etc.), do not just dangle an energy for someone to steal. There's no gain and big risk. What if someone hits you with Energy tapping? You just paid 14 MC for an energy that you do not have.

I'll stop viewing the replay here, because I think the key points has been made and there is already much to analyze and discuss.

Honest assessment: You might not be ready for 3-player games with preludes. I suggest 2-player without preludes until you have a better grasp on the card values and the tactical placement of tiles.

Don't mean to quote the entire thing but I am new to this interface.

I am hearing a lot about these cards being bad, and, what I want to emphasize is not that I thought they where good. With the exception of Earth office, and GIA-- and I will meditate on valuing EO higher-- but with that exception I am not hearing a lot of-- "So you should have bought/played THIS card instead."

Cause the thing is, I don't like soil factory, and I don't like Adapted Lichen. I don't even like Solar Power. But, those felt like my only plays. Did I have a better -line- here? Like, beyond clarifying which cards are bad/good.

[DrWreck]

What I am trying to say is I don't want my take away to be "I had shitty cards". P:

[FrankJones]

- but with that exception I am not hearing a lot of-- "So you should have bought/played THIS card instead."

Cause the thing is, I don't like soil factory, and I don't like Adapted Lichen. I don't even like Solar Power. But, those felt like my only plays. Did I have a better -line- here? Like, beyond clarifying which cards are bad/good.

I am not sure how others do it, but when I am quoting different parts of a post, I quote the entire thing, as you did, and then use copy and paste to surround each portion I wish to quote with the bracket text at the beginning of the quote and the bracketed backslash end quote. (It's difficult to describe without typing it, and if I type it, it will think I'm trying to quote something.

But basically, make it look like this, but with square brackets instead:

(quote=DrWreck post_id=208652 time=1742961209 user_id=1566571)

something something

(/quote)

YOUR REPLY to that something

(quote=DrWreck post_id=208652 time=1742961209 user_id=1566571)

something something part 2

(/quote)

YOUR REPLY to that something part 2

Etc.


To address your question:

If you are not getting good cards, save your money to spend on good cards later. I mean, I'm unsure exactly where this question is coming from. You said you passed Giant Ice Asteroid because you couldn't afford it, yet you're making it sound as though you bought and/or played bad cards because you didn't have anything else to spend your money on.

There will be good cards at some point, expensive cards, and you want to have money to play them. You do not want to have wasted your money on bad cards because you didn't feel as though you had any other options.

Again though, this is why I recommend not playing 3-player with preludes. That setting (which SHOULD end in 9 generations, maybe even 8) can make you feel rushed, and to me, just sems a lot like a crapshoot as people basically just play whatever they get without waiting for much synergy.

Try 2-player without preludes. I'll play you, with those settings, if you wish. Also, you can review any game from any player's perspective. BGA's interface is open information. I do this a lot. I just completed a very tight, closely contested game against a friend who is rated 580. We both had nothing going on early, so we patiently waited until the synergy came, and when it did, we both has the cash to play our hands. It was one of the best games I've been involved in.

If you really want to learn, and want to see the value of cards and of patience and tag synergy, that game would be a good one to review from each player's perspective.

[DrWreck]

So your advice is "If the cards are bad, don't buy them, don't play anything, just save and hope you draw something worthwhile"?

I obviously did not know GIA would come. It sounds like your advice is "Hope your luck changes". I don't want to misrepresent that?

Also please stop insinuating that I don't have experience with this game. I have been playing it since it was first published. I already had hundreds of games on BGA. This is just my first attempt at climbing a ladder.

[charliec247]

Cause the thing is, I don't like soil factory, and I don't like Adapted Lichen. I don't even like Solar Power. But, those felt like my only plays. Did I have a better -line- here? Like, beyond clarifying which cards are bad/good.

Then don't buy them. And yes, that does mean you pass, save up money, and hope something better comes along. Don't force yourself to buy a bad card just because the alternative is to have no plays.

Even if expensive cards like Giant Ice Asteroid or Io Mining Industries don't show up, you're in a much more flexible spending position by stockpiling money and passing without action. What if there comes a draft where you really want to buy 3-4 cards? Followed by another draft where you want to buy 3-4 cards? With lots of money, you can buy them and play them quickly, rather than either not buy as many as you had wanted .or not be able to play them immediately/in the following generation.

[FrankJones]

So your advice is "If the cards are bad, don't buy them, don't play anything, just save and hope you draw something worthwhile"?

I obviously did not know GIA would come. It sounds like your advice is "Hope your luck changes". I don't want to misrepresent that?

Also please stop insinuating that I don't have experience with this game. I have been playing it since it was first published. I already had hundreds of games on BGA. This is just my first attempt at climbing a ladder.

I am not insinuating anything. Please.

You wrote a post entitled, "Please help, I have lost 16 in a row." And then you are going to complain about receiving constructive criticism? really? Come on. The very title of your post invited constructive criticism. And when you have that many errors on the first two generations of a game that is posted, yes, you are going to receive constructive criticism. (This is not an insult. The consensus here is that the posted game had numerous errors.)

(I might add, the Constructive criticism is from expert-level players. Or in the case of Potatoes, master level.)

I have played 124 games of TFM with corporate Era and draft, and I have been beaten 16 times. Total. So, if you don't want my advice, fine. No problem. I have already spent hours on this thread helping you, when you explicitly asked for help. And now you're taking an attitude?

I don't understand.

Here - you want to see what you do when you are not getting any good playable cards? YOU WAIT. And then, when the cards and the synergy comes, you unleash hellfire upon your opponent. LIKE THIS:

(Note that my opponent, who SEEMED to be off to a great start while I was "doing nothing", was actually just playing whatever cards happened to be in his/her hand. At the point when the game was conceded, I was engine building AND Terraforming and was about to cash my entire hand.)

https://boardgamearena.com/archive/repl ... s=87790301;

But based on your sudden attitude, I don't expect you to bother. Rarely do people making such posts actually want to study, learn, review, analyze.

Take it for what it is worth.

Shrug.

[FrankJones]

Cause the thing is, I don't like soil factory, and I don't like Adapted Lichen. I don't even like Solar Power. But, those felt like my only plays. Did I have a better -line- here? Like, beyond clarifying which cards are bad/good.

Then don't buy them. And yes, that does mean you pass, save up money, and hope something better comes along. Don't force yourself to buy a bad card just because the alternative is to have no plays.

Even if expensive cards like Giant Ice Asteroid or Io Mining Industries don't show up, you're in a much more flexible spending position by stockpiling money and passing without action. What if there comes a draft where you really want to buy 3-4 cards? Followed by another draft where you want to buy 3-4 cards? With lots of money, you can buy them and play them quickly, rather than either not buy as many as you had wanted .or not be able to play them immediately/in the following generation.

Yep. Exactly. Well said, CHarliec247. But the OP seems ready to die on the hill of "I'll play the cards I get dealt because there is no guarantee anything better comes." I mean, let's examine the reasoning: "I didn't know Giant ice asteroid was coming".

Okay ??? So? If it doesn't come, continue to wait. If it does come, and it is not affordable, buy it anyway, pass, then play it next gen, demolish Econline plants, gain 4 TR, etc.
Is there such thing as having too large a pile of money in Terraforming Mars??? The most nerve-wracking situations for me are when I am spending down to my last dollar against an experienced player who is passing with lots of cards and lots of money. Because I just know, at some point, it's going to rain, pour, snow, sleet, and storm.

[charliec247]

The most nerve-wracking situations for me are when I am spending down to my last dollar against an experienced player who is passing with lots of cards and lots of money. Because I just know, at some point, it's going to rain, pour, snow, sleet, and storm.

Especially when it results in swiping a milestone from you that you were dead sure you were a lock for and are not currently in contention for any other milestone. That's gotta hurt.