The Venus Next expansion for Terraforming Mars was released in 2017 and we only got around to incorporating it into our game. The previous expansion (Hellas and Elysium) got put on the table the day we got it. For whatever reason this one took longer.

This expansion adds a few new elements to the game. On the surface some of them look to be a bigger factor than they actually are. And there are a bunch of little ones that make a more of a difference than you would imagine

New Corporations:

  • I played with the Celestic Corporation which I thought was a pretty in your face corporation these are the Floater guys and if you get them you want to collect cards that generate and utilize floaters. To start you off the corp card gives you a couple of interesting abilities. It has an action that allows you to place a floater on any card (including itself). As your first action of the came you have to draw cards until you get two cards that let you build floaters. I had one in my hand and was able to get a quite a jump start going in. If that was not enough every 3 floaters that get placed on that card give you one endgame victory point. All in all the real strength on this corp is the floaters and like other corps in TFM if you play to those strengths you will do well.
  • My opponent used Manutech. The trick for Manutech is that every time you increase a resource production you get that resource immediately when it is increased. There are a few way I can see this being pretty powerful but it would depend on the cards you are getting the luck of bad draws could really sour you on this corp. My initial thought it that this would be a great card if you were playing using the Drafting variant.
  • Viron Didn’t use this but you get use a blue action card for a second time in a turn. There are a couple of card that it would be a great combo with to set up a point generator quickly
  • Morning Star As your first action you reveal card until you get three with the Venus Tag also is gives you -2/+2 on Venus requirements. Didn’t really get to explore this too much but is could be a good quick start to get your engine going if you get the right cards
  • Aphrodite you get to start with a plant production and you get two credits each time Venus is Terraformed. On the surface this do not look to be a great company but I’ll have to play with it to see how it works out.

Project Cards:

Now let’s talk about the new project cards. Thematically there are pretty good. Add a lot of new things you can do. Nothing that I saw appeared to break anything. The big thing to keep in mind here is the floaters. They are a new resource similar to Microbes and animals. The big difference here it is that I go three cards that you could use to increase the Venus track. I only ended up using two of them but they can be powerful and someone could run away with the game if they get too much into the floater business.

New Award and Milestone

  • Hoverlord- Milestone yet another thing that favors the Floater Guy. If you have some one that is building floaters he can get this pretty quick if he saves his floater for a couple of turns. The best thing here is to ice him out of this Milestone get the other ones before he can get this.
  • Venuphile award if you are playing with the Celestic or Morning Star this is something that you will want to get. The award is for the most Venus Tags. With those two corps you will have a big head start at the beginning on the game on this.

The New Board

This is pretty straight forward in that if you have played Terraforming Mars you should have no problem figuring this out. It adds a fourth track to the game (but completing it is not a requirement to trigger the end game). Four new off word city locations, and a new standard project: Air Scrapping, which allows players to increase the Venus scale one step for 15 M€, gaining a TR as normal. In our game we did not have any need to use that special project but I can see where it would be used and why you would want to do so.

The Solar Phase: World Government Terraforming

Now let’s talk a little about one of the more interesting changes that this expansion offers. This expansion give the option of adding a fourth phase to the turn: the Solar Phase. Simply put if you get to this phase and the three Mars tracks are not maxed out trigging the end of game then you go to a new phase and the World Government advances one track of the person the first player’s markers choice and then you go on to the next turn. Two important things to note here: 1. The player that advances this track does not get any of the bonuses for advancing the track in this way (i.e. you do not get a card if you tick that part of the track or if you drop an ocean they do not get the resources that were in that space). 2. Seeing as this is after the check for end of game, if this fills the last track on Mars you play another round until the next check for end of game. 

Final Thoughts

All in all we found the expansion pretty well put together and while some of the corporations could seem a little too powerful on the surface it can be pretty easy to knock them off. We found in our game that that we played TFM very differently our building on the board was very sparse. Both of use focused more on getting our victory points though projects and our TF ratings. Our final Score was Celestic 108 to Manutech‘s 96.

BGG Link to TFM Venus Next page