Sometimes I love TFM. Other times...

[Lytical]

I am paying luna beam with a discount, I don't need to go rushing to make bank with this card. It's a 3MC income for me the moment I play it, the rest just cheddar. The TR I get from it just a bonus, it doesn't stop me from going science. If I just save money for couple gens I am all good, I have a science tag with guild, with my cash and heat control, that's winning. You may not even want to play aquifer pump if you are running well on science.

Both Thorgate and Phob are science creepers, they are actually extremely attractive to science path, and they both get to do things that no other corps can do. In fact, they are pretty powerful outside of Tharsis.

[primrose1234]

The reason I don't like pumping is that sometimes people just drop two oceans for you right off the bat from preludes. Or by gen 2 you ran into ice asteroids. You can just save the money and draw cards instead. I am thinking since we are more TRing than engining, we just skip sabo so we don't slow anything down. Who knows maybe we get a better oxy pumper. Pumping feels too committing, what if I want to go science instead with Mars U or AI on gen 3?

Game is without preludes, that is why pumping is valid for me.

[primrose1234]

The only question is really Sabo vs Guild and I'd wager Guild is more expensive than the value it might provide and playing it at all likely delays the game by a full gneration, but if you find Deimos or Flows or Nuke Zone off of it then it becomes amazing and worth a lot more than Sabotage.

I can see your point. I am not sure if i want to commit fully to a rush with just 2 heat prod and no heat events. By soaking 2 TR off the board every gen my engine can be worse than the opponents one and still be successful. I guess we want to have Terraformer as Milestone, I dont see another Milestone in range. With a lot of luck gardener, but honestly, probably just no.