![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.criticalchit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/1000000350-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nTo set up, place the five building cards in reach of all players. Each player gets one of four available ship cards (with names that pay homage to famous sci-fi ships, like the \u201cFalcon 1K\u201d), an energy marker, and the seven colonists in their chosen color. One colonist goes on the ship, and the rest remain in a common pool (Earth). Shuffle all of the project cards together and deal four to each player. Players must then pick two cards to place face down in front of them in their \u201cprep module\u201d, and two to keep in their hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rule book does a decent job at explaining setup and gameplay, though I did notice a few issues that could have been solved by having a rules editor take a few extra passes. There are a few little formatting issues like extra spaces and incorrect page references – for example, the solo variant scoring says to refer to the scoring section on page 10, but the scoring section doesn\u2019t actually start until page 12. There is also one instance of ambiguous verbiage – depending on what section of the rules or which project card you are looking at, moving a colonist from Earth to your ship is referred to as \u201ctake\u201d, \u201claunch\u201d, and \u201cmove\u201d, without any explicit mention that they mean the same thing. I verified with Grey Fox to make sure they do. While all of these things annoy me a little bit, none of them really affect how the game plays, and that\u2019s where the real test lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The game is played in rounds, and each round consists of one turn per player. On a player\u2019s turn, they must take one of the available five actions – play a project card from your hand, play a project card from your prep module, play a project card from another player\u2019s prep module (more on that in a moment), launch a colonist from earth, or discard a project card to gain an energy. Remember, the goal of the game is to get victory points, and you get victory points by getting your colonists off Earth and onto Mars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Project Cards can be played in a number of different ways, and are the core of what makes this game interesting to me. Every Project Card has a numeric value (zero to seven), an effect when played from a player\u2019s hand, and a different effect when played from a player\u2019s prep module. Cards played from a player\u2019s hand trigger their effect and get discarded, but cards played from the prep module do some additional things. When a card is played from a player\u2019s prep module, it is placed under the building of its corresponding color and on top of any existing cards in that building. Compare the numeric value of the card you played to the value of the previous card (or the building itself if there are no other cards in that building). If your value is higher than the previous value, you can move one of your colonists from your ship to the first space in that building. You may then trigger your card\u2019s bottom action, as well as the building\u2019s action (even if you were unable to move a colonist). If you want to use the action of a building, but you don\u2019t have a matching color card in your prep module, you can activate the building\u2019s ability by playing a card from another player\u2019s prep module, with the caveat that the player who originally owned the card still gets the option to use the ability on the project card you\u2019re stealing. At the end of each player\u2019s turn, they may not have more than four cards in their possession, and must always either draw up to or discard down to four cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The entire game takes place using the actions described above. Scoring is pretty straight forward. Each player is awarded one victory point for each colonist on their spaceship, two for each colonist on a building\u2019s one star space, two points for having a colonist on each of the four possible buildings, three points for having four colonists in one building, and four for each colonist in a building\u2019s two star space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what did I think of the game? It\u2019s decent. It isn\u2019t my favorite game or even my favorite filler game – not by a long shot – but it is decent. I don\u2019t see us pulling this one out very often, but will I hold onto it? Yeah, probably. Its one saving grace is that it has a solo mode that actually plays pretty well, and adds a layer of strategy that didn\u2019t really exist in the standard version of the game – choosing between a favorable action and what action you are enabling the AI player to take in the process. I didn\u2019t go through the solo version in detail because from a gameplay perspective, that is the only real difference. The bottom line is, depending on where you look, you can pick this game up for ten bucks. If you are drawn to the Mars theme and can deal with some of the issues I brought up, Pocket Mars might be worth a look for you. If you are into solo games, Mars, area control, and quick play times, Pocket Mars hits all of those things at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Review copy provided by Gray Fox Games<\/p>\n\n\n\n Publisher: Gray Fox Games![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.criticalchit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/1000000348-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.criticalchit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/1000000349-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Number of Players: 1-4
Age: 10+
Price at time of Review: $10<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n