Painted Terraforming Mars tiles

 OK, not really painted painted, but touched up. I went in on the Terraforming Mars 3D tiles kickstarter that shipped earlier this year, and while the terrain markers for this game looked pretty cool as sculpted, they were missing somthing.

But with a wash and some drybrushing, these terrain pieces really pop. The city has more depth (maybe not visible in this pic), and the forest seems more lifelike.

The TM expansion came with 24 city tiles, 40 greenery tiles, 9 ocean tiles, and 14 special tiles. I gussied them all up, and now my games of Terraforming Mars look that much cooler. 

Holiday gaming

With things slowing down for the holidays, I had a chance to play Terraforming Mars with my gaming buddies. Although we tried to get going again last summer, the increase in COVID meant we put our weekly games on hiatus for awhile. But since we're all vaxxed, we got together to make the Red Planet habitable. Here's how that world looked at the end of our game (note the 3-D tiles, which I detailed with some washes and drybrushing):

Although it was a low-scoring game since a couple of us wanted to finish terraforming to prevent other players from generating more points through their economic engines, we had a good time. I came in second out of four players in what turned out to be a pretty challenging match.   

We liked it so much, we have plans for another game next week. I hope everyone has a chance to relax over the next few days, and hopefully get in a game or two over the holidays.

Games in the time of coronavirus

These are weird times for everyone: Global pandemic, mandatory isolation, economic recession, toilet paper shortage, and probably, sometime soon, locusts. Thanks to this disease, my regular gaming location, Dragon's Lair, is closed, and the second annual FnordCon, set for this weekend, got canceled. But I can't complain; my wife and I are lucky enough to still be working, and our pantry's full. So I thought I would see how everyone has adjusted their gaming in this season of uncertainty.

With face-to-face gaming with my regular group not an option for the foreseeable future, I'm trying to get my geek on at home. My wife and I have been playing The Awful Green Things From Outer Space, teaming up as the crew and using some semi-random mechanisms to conduct the monsters. We still haven't managed to completely defeat the critters, but she enjoys playing it with me, and we both appreciate the quirky art. 

My spouse isn't, however, as big a fan of Terraforming Mars, so we've only played a single game together. Luckily, the solo rules for this board game are enough to keep me coming back again and again. While I miss having multiple opponents, it has a lot of entertainment value as I try to meet the victory conditions. And I'm using the Prelude, Venus Next, and Colonies expansions to get even more mileage out of TM.

I haven't done anything minis-related, but I may try to start working on some Ogre minis soon--or maybe I will paint up some of the scatter terrain or fantasy minis I have piled up. Maybe I can get something ready in time for the next game convention, whenever that may be. What about y'all? How are you adjusting your gaming to the new normal?

Christmas present

I asked for (and received) the excellent board game Terraforming Mars for Christmas. It's a card-driven game that also uses a map of the Red Planet so players can track their progress in making the world suitable for human settlements.

Players act as corporations over a span of generations, accumulating resources and taking actions to increase three environmental factors (temperature, oxygen, and surface water) to Earth norms. This game is very thematic, with actions such as dropping a comet on the planet to add oceans or using orbiting mirrors to increase the temperature. It's a fun game, and I even got my wife to play!

What did everyone else get this holiday?