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Category Archives: Engine Builder

Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars is a recent (2016) game developed by Fryxgames which is a family run gaming company (“FryxGames consists of 4 brothers out of a family of 10 brothers, 6 sisters, and 2 game-passionate parents.“). I first heard about it when it was nominated for some 2016 Golden Geek Awards (Game of the Year, Strategy Board Game, and Solo Board Game). It was later nominated for even more awards (2016 Swiss Gamers Award, 2017 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming, 2017 Jogo do Ano, and 2017 Kennerspiel des Jahres). Given all the hubbub, I decided to take a look.

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Terra Mystica: Fire & Ice

Terra Mystica was already a pretty exciting game for us. Then I got the Fire & Ice expansion for my birthday.

It includes a new board – which includes a reminder about the end game conversion of coins into Victory points – new Factions (with boards, Terrain tiles, and buildings), Final Scoring Tiles, Faction Tokens, and a Turn Order Board.

We haven’t used all the new features of the expansion. For example, the Turn Order Board changes the order of turns every round. Whoever turns in their Bonus Tile goes first (as with the base game), then whoever turns in second goes second, and so on. We haven’t had the chance to play the expansion with more than 2 players, so there’s no reason to use this. This means we also haven’t needed the Faction Tokens which are placed on the Turn Order Board.

We have played with 4 of the 6 new Factions, though: Ice Maidens, Shapeshifters, Yetis, and Riverwalkers. The Ice Maidens, Yetis, and Shapeshifters get a ring to place on the starting Terrain of their choice (unless that Terrain is already taken). After they make their choice, no subsequent player can choose the race with that home territory.

The first game Professor was the Ice Maidens and I was the Shapeshifters. The second game Professor was Yetis and I was Riverwalkers.

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Terra Mystica Platforms

This is the final entry in a four part series on Terra Mystica. In today’s entry I’ll talk about playing Terra Mystica on the various platforms (Android, Tabletopia, and the board).

There are definitely advantages and disadvantages to each platform. These are our personal pros and cons.

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Terra Mystica on Tabletopia

This is the third in a four part series on Terra Mystica. In today’s entry I’ll talk about playing Terra Mystica on Tabletopia.

Professor and I have played around with Tabletopia a few times. The first full game we played with it was Dinosaur Island. It took a little getting used to. Thankfully there’s a feature that lets you have hotkeys to zoom in on different parts of the game, which also helps with moving around a larger game space. Once you get the hang of the clicking and dragging, that’s no big deal, though I do think that lengthens game play a bit. There’s a little bit of an issue with pieces locking into place. I was trying to put three workers on a space, but apparently there wasn’t enough room to lock them all in, so one locked on the space and the other two went flying across the board! It was really funny, but I can see it getting frustrating.

We also played around a little with Terra Mystica, which I found easier to navigate. It could be because I’d already played another game with Tabletopia, and I’ve played Terra Mystica multiple times, but the biggest thing was that I didn’t feel like I needed to zoom in. I could move my pieces and get my resources and see everything at once. I really liked that.

We were able to play a full game of Terra Mystica with President Gamer and Shutter, who now live across the country from us. This was really exciting, since it had been almost a year since the last time we’d gamed with them. We sent them the info on Tabletopia and Terra Mystica and set up a gaming date.

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Terra Mystica App

This is the second in a four part series on Terra Mystica. In today’s entry I’ll talk about using the Terra Mystica App. It is available forr Android or iOS, but my review will be based on using Android.

Professor discovered the Terra Mystica app and played a game against an AI, then we played a local game together.

Right now the app only has easy AI opponents, but they’re working on adding medium and hard. The game also has tutorials, but since we’ve played the board game, we skipped those.

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Terra Mystica

This is the first in a four part series on Terra Mystica.

When Amazon first debuted their New and Interesting Finds feature, I decided to try it out. Somehow through clicking through various games I liked, I stumbled upon Terra Mystica. It sounded interesting, so I added it to my wish list. Then Christmas rolled around, and my husband bought it for me.

I couldn’t believe all the little pieces inside! My first thought was, “President Gamer would love this!” The more pieces a game has, the more he likes it. The rules seem a bit daunting, but after playing it a couple times, we got it down.

What I really like about the game is each player gets their own little board, and that board tells you most of what you need to know about the game. It tells me how much it costs to build each building, what my income will be at the start of each round, what I can do with the resources I get, etc.

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