Board Game Arena

Is it just me or do others feel this card is just insanely busted? If you have it down first turn there is no reason to even continue the game because it will save you 100 or more credits. Who else thinks an errata of like 3 to 4 earth tag requirement would help to balance this card?

If you go on https://www.tfmstats.com/startinghands which ranks cards by how good they are in the starting hand, it's 1st by a fairly significant margin. It can still be beaten, though - if you think they have you beat in a long game because of a very strong engine, then maybe try to end the game earlier

Also, TFM is the kind of game where you have to go "oh well" sometimes. While only very few games are unwinnable, sometimes they just are. Shake it off, luck evens out in the end.

It’s not that great. Certainly not game-defining. In my humble opinion it barely makes S-tier and is nowhere close to some cards in terms of ceiling. That comes from someone who plays exclusively Hellas, a map that favours playstyles utilising EarthCat.

It is clearly the best card to get in your opening hand, with almost any strategy, but as the game goes on it becomes less good (few times will you play EC in the last gens as it is quite expensive and won't discount that many cards). That being said, it is still very strong even in the midgame and in contention with the best card overall in the game.

It's annoying to play against, especially from gen 1, but it is not an instant win. What pushes it more towards an instant win is also having card draw with it.

landus wrote: ↑07 May 2026, 09:05 It’s not that great. Certainly not game-defining. In my humble opinion it barely makes S-tier and is nowhere close to some cards in terms of ceiling. That comes from someone who plays exclusively Hellas, a map that favours playstyles utilising EarthCat.

S-tier isn't game defining? Then what is?

I thought it was the best starting card in the game. Which cards are considered better?

Corvus Mortis did some data analysis and found earth catapult, played gen 1, is on average followed by playing about 40 cards (so a discount of about 80, except it should be lower because of cards whose price would go below 0). So it saves about 54 credits. Nowhere near 100 unless you are always playing very long games. As rambling_coherently said, if your opponent opens earth catapult, you should tend toward trying to end the game early.

FrankJones wrote: ↑07 May 2026, 18:58 I thought it was the best starting card in the game. Which cards are considered better?

It certainly is the best starting card in the game, by far, but other cards could compete with it as the "best card in the game" in general, as they are better later on but not as good in the first gens. These cards might be stuff like AI Central, Restricted Area, Deimos Down, GIA, NRA, MarsU, Kelp Farming, Advanced Alloys...

ft029 wrote: ↑08 May 2026, 07:45 Corvus Mortis did some data analysis and found earth catapult, played gen 1, is on average followed by playing about 40 cards (so a discount of about 80, except it should be lower because of cards whose price would go below 0). So it saves about 54 credits. Nowhere near 100 unless you are always playing very long games. As rambling_coherently said, if your opponent opens earth catapult, you should tend toward trying to end the game early.

40 cards that only have a combined discount of 54? That seems like a high number of very low-cost cards, and/or cards in the 2-8 MC range that are combined with other discounts. But without EC, that snowball effect of discounts and card draws might not have occurred in the first place, in which case it might be understating the effect to say that only 54 MC are being saved. Base game + preludes deck only has 9 cards whose cost would go below 0 as a result of EC alone.

This would also depend on whether the player is Vitor or Teractor or Thorgate or Interplanetaty cinematics, since those corporations would increase the number of cards for which EC would not provide the full 2 MC savings.