TERRAFORMING MARS

GIGA EXPANSION
RULES
Welcome to the final version of Terraforming Mars - Giga Expansion. If you are here you are
probably curious about how a longer game, with more complex engines and strategies would
play out. This is the main idea behind the creation of the Giga Expansion, giving players
possibility of playing a much bigger game. The GIGA Expansion clearly builds itself on top of
the original game with few rules mofifications and tons of add-ons. There will be new
mechanics, new game variables to pay a�ention to and tons, tons of new cards. I will proceed
to list first what are the basic differences with the original game and then list all the add-on
with clear explanations.

The map has an area between 3

and 4 time bigger than that of a
normal TM board. It features a
playable Moon, Venus and
Mercury. It can sit up to 8
players. Suggested game size is
4 to 6 players.

REQUIREMENTS

To play with this variant, you will need original copy of Terraforming Mars plus all the Official
expansions. You will need to download the GIGA map and print it, alognside all the modified
tiles for this variant. You will need then to collect and print all the cards from the following
expansions:

Pathfinder Expansion - GIGA Edition

Corporate Be�erments - GIGA Edition
Ares Expansion - GIGA Edition
The Moon Expansion - GIGA Edition
Venus Phase 2 Expansion - GIGA Edition
Rob Antilles Expansion - GIGA Edition
Postlude Expansion - GIGA Edition
High Orbit Expansion - GIGA Edition
Ides of Mars Expansion - GIGA Edition
Solaris Expansion - GIGA Edition
Nuclear Expansion - GIGA Edition

These expansion will be available for download on Board Game Geek, i will make sure all the
link are provided and easy to navigate through.
 DIFFERENCES WITH MAIN GAME
As it can be seen clearly from the map, this last one features higher requirements to trigger
game end. Oxygen has 30 steps, Temperature has 39 steps and there 21 Oceans to play. This
forces the presence of the first big rule for GIGA Expansion:

- card ocean requirements are doubled. Meaning that if card requires 3 oceans to be played it
now requires 6 oceans to be played.

Moreover, Venus has 30 steps, there are many more standard project (which will be analyzed
in the coming MOON and VENUS sections.), there are more than 60 different milestones and
award, to be chosen randomly at the beginning of the game, 10 of each to be precise. More
importantly, there are 6 new parties, that add to the already 6 present parties in Turmoil.

SPOME BUREAUCRATS EMPOWER POPULISTS CENTRISTS TRANSHUMANISTS

These parties will have new bonuses and new policies. At the beginning of the game 6 parties
are to be drafted and the game will go on with those parties. There will be cards with Parties
requirment, whenever a card is drawn for which the required party isnʹt in the game, that card
is immediately discarded and a new one is drawn. An alternative, is having the cost of that
card increased by 6 M€. Example, you draw a card which requires the Kelvinist to rule, but the
kelvinist arenʹt in the game. Players must decide beforehand if that card can be played at
increased cost or discarded. Moreover, each parties will have now two possible bonuses and
two possible policies, as shown below:

The chairman will choose which policy and bonus to enforce for the duration of the
generation. If the chairman is neutral, The default bonus and policy will be selected.

In addition, the chairman will be able to choose from

a pool of bonuses, not just get 1 TR. The outside
circle will be accessible from generation 11 onwards.
This modification forces players to pay moe
a�ention to who becomes chairman, and also gives
the chairman much more power.
 THE TAGS
Alonside the tags present in the original game, 5 new tags are introduced in this GIGA
expansion:

Mars tag. This tag is associated to everything concerning Mars culture,

landmarks, protected natural environments, and its people. It was introduced
in the Pathfidner Expansion.

Moon tag. This tag was introduced with The Moon Expansion and labels all the
projects which deal with the Moon. Moon tag are likely to increase your mining
capabilities, increase your Steel and Titanium productions.

Galactic tag. This is the GIGA tag, if youʹre playing one of these tag, which
make only 1% percent of the total card means you are a strong corporation.
These tags are the most expensive but the most powerful. From Solaris
Expansion.

Radioactive tag. You play this tag means youʹre doing some damage.
Radioactive tags are important as they give you the possibility of damaging
other players, we will see how on the dedicated section.

Infrastructure tag. the tag of space installations, introduced in high orbit it

identifies the high orbit infrastructures.

THE TILES
A lot of a�ention has been paid to create a color code for tiles, so that just by looking at a tile it
is possible to understand what it is, what it counts as, and where it sits. Especially special tiles.
Ocean tiles instaed will have a clear indication about their number and instructions on how
they intercact with the calamities from Ares Expansion.

Oceans are numbered and have clear indications on when to

remove or add calamities to the map.

Special tiles have different colors,

brown ones go on empty areas. Blue
ones go on top of oceans. red ones
damage the adjacent tiles owners.
Adjacency bonus is displayed in
yellow colour. Followingthis, green
special tiles go on top of greeneries
and gray special tiles go on top of
cities.
 TERRAFORMATION TRACKS
As a GIGA game can progrss for many generations it is important to balance all strategies
during the long run. Since card strategies tend to be predominant, a fix for this was adding a
terraformation track that keeps record of how much every single player contributes to
terraformation. There are 4 tracks, oxygen, cities, temperature and oceans. All players will put
their own player cubes on these tracks and keep count of how many contributions they give to
terraformation.

Letʹs check the Oxygen tracks. Letʹs suppose player A is the first to increase oxygen, he will
take his player cube and put it on the 1. Player B then increases Oxygen by 2 steps, he will put
his player cube on the 2. Player B then increases again and gets the postlude card bonus. This
is to explain that these tracks arenʹt global but for all players, and same as the pathfinder
tracks (explained later) wonʹt give TR but just some bonuses along the way. Like the
possibility of changing an unclaimed milestone with one of your choice at level 11.

Oceans work the same way. Note that these tracks are connected to milestones, fo example
THALASSOPHILE, first player to put down 3 oceans, and so on. Note on the picture the
bonus received when funding an award. In this map, funding an award will give you a
postlude card as bonus.
 PATHFINDER EXPANSION
Pathfinder from Jakub was the first expansion to be adapted for GIGA. It introduces the Mars
tag and the planetary influence tracks. Seen below.

Planetary influence tracks keep record of how much a certain planetary tag is played, these are
global tracks, meaning all players contribute. Anytime a planetary tag is played, either Earth/
Jovian/Venus/Mars a step is added to the planetary influence and tracks, and certain bonuses
are unlocked. Bonuses with a green arrow are for the player playing the tag while bonuses for
the red spot are for all players. So, if a player increases Jovian influence from 5 to 6 he will get
a trade action for free and a card while every other player will get a card only. No TR is given
by advancing on these tracks unless given as bonus. When at maximum a bonus of 2 VP is
granted to the player havingthe most tags of that type at the end of the game.

NUCLEAR EXPANSION
The Nuclear expansion adds a new tag, the radioactive one,
connected to pollution, contamination and energy production.
Playing a radioactive tag will increase the contamination tracks,
seen on the left. This is aglobal track, all players will contribute
to it. At certain steps, players can unlock the nuclear zone as
bonus, which is equivalent to the nuclear zone from the base,
adapted for GIGA. Itʹs a tile that gives an adjacency malus of
-2MC.

The expansion also adds the Radiation

resource, a versatile resource that can
hurt your opponents. Author of this
expansion is Tim Emerick, i adapted
this version for GIGA as it adds some
interesting flavors.
 ARES EXPANSION
Ares expansion from Niels Jensen is one of the best fanmade expansions around. Essentially it
converts all special tiles giving them the mechanic of adjacency bonus. All Special tiles on the
map will therefore give out resources, both wehn placed on the map, and both when a tile is
placed adjacent ot them. Moreover a new type of tile is introduced, the calamity tiles. these tile
symbolized the inospitability of early Mars. They are erosions and Dust storms. At the
beginning of the game 3 dust storms and 3 erosions are to be placed randomly on the map.
they give an adjacency malus of -1 production of your choice.

Calamities have 2 levels, light and strong (front and back of the tile). they will be light at the
beginning, but raising global parameters will make them more dangerous. they can be
removed at anytime ONLY y buildig something on top of them by paying the cost and ge�ing
the bonus. For example, building a city standard project on top of a light erosion will cost 25+8
and will give a TR as bonus. The erosion is then discarded.

Increasing global parameters will affect the calamities present on the map. Increasing
temperature will strenghten the erosions while increasing oxygen will strenghten dust
storms(to strenghten just flip the tile). Pu�ing oceans will cause instead to either add more
erosions (always at random) or to remove dust storms. the player that removes the last dust
with oceans storm will get 1 TR as bonus. As said previously tiles will have plenty of
descriptions on whatʹs their bonus and what they count for.

Left tile gives an adjacency bonus of 2

energies and counts only as special tile. Right
tile gives a plant but counts as a special tile, as
an ocean and as a greenery.
 MOON EXPANSION
The Moon, from Yaman Ylmaz, one of the most ambitous projects for terraforming mars. A
whole Moon map is added, alongside 3 new global tracks that give a new TR source.

The 3 new tracks are called Logistic rate, gray, Mining rate, brown, and Colonization rate,
blue. These can be increased by both cards and standard projects and will hand out TR. Moon
standard projects allow for the creation of 3 new type of tiles. Roads, Lunar Mines and Lunar
Colonies. These projects can be paid with either steel or titanium, as in the graphics. The Moon
map features some dark zones, these zones are reserved for Lunar Mines. The other areas are
for all the other tiles. Roads will increase Logistic rate, Lunar mines will increase Mining rate
and Lunar Colonies will increase Coonization Rate. For scoring purposes, Lunar Colonies and
Lunar Mines will give 1 VP for each adjacent Road tile to them, no ma�er the owner. Road
tiles are worth no VP.

A new tag is added, the Moon tag.Note that only Moon tiles
can be built on the Moon. Cities canʹt be built on the Moon
unless specified by special cards, for example Luna
Metropolis and Lunar embassy are Cities but placed on the
Moon. Also some Special tiles are to be placed on the Moon.
Downloading the cards is required, links will be provided.
 VENUS PHASE 2
Venus Phase 2 is an expansion conceived by Mr. High Orbit Adhay Gray and tentatively
realized by me. It is very much analogous to the Moon expansion. The expansion adds an
entire new map, Venus, new standard projects and new tiles. These tiles work very much like
they do for the Moon counterpart, but while the Moon is oriented towards mining and solid
resources, Venus is more focused towards gaseous resources and energy.

Venus track has been enlarged to 30 steps and new bonuses have been added. Venus map
features a lot of energy and heat placement bonuses, thematic with the real venus
environment. Venus has 3 Standard projects, Floating Arrays, Gas Mines and Cloud Cities, or
more easily Venus Colonies, similar to the Moon counterpart. Yellow areas are reserved for gas
mines, while all other areas are for other tiles. Venus standard project can be disocunted by
removing floaters from cards, each floater is worth 3 MC. Placing any Venus tile, i.e. Floating
arrays, gas mine or Cloud cities will make you increase venus 1 step. As it happens with moon
tiles, cloud cities and gas mines will give you 1 VP for every Floating Array adjacent to those.
Floating arrays by themselves are worth 0 points. Only Venus tiles can be placed on Venus.
Few cities can be placed on venus using project cards. (i.e. Maxwell base.).

Venus phase two features also an entire new

venus oriented card pack (roughly 50 cards)
which will push up Venus oriented strategies
which arenʹt so well reviewed in the current
offical game.
 INDUSTRIES
Industry is another great add-on made by Adhay Gray and restored by myself. Industry tiles
are a new class of tiles, theyarenʹt classified as special tiles, they are just ʺindustry tilesʺ for all
effects and purposes.

Industry tiles are labeled with black tiles. Each industry allows you to increase the production
of your choice, indicated on the tiles. Clearly, different productions will have different costs.
Industries are classified as standard project for all effects and purposes. Requirement to play
an industry tile is having a number of power tags higher than the number of industry tiles you
own. One player canʹt play more than 13 industry tiles.

Once an industry tiles is placed, increase the corresponding

production and distribute on the board the number of resource
indicated on the bo�om, on two areas adjacent the tile. You can
choose to distribute the resources on top of existing tiles, in that
case the owner ofthose tiles will collect the resources. it is
mandatory that you distribute resources in two areas, you canʹt
put all resources on a single area. Industries do not give any
adjacency bonus.

The industry track DOES NOT give TR, each player will put their marker and track the
number of industries they have. Some bonuses are obtainable along the track.

POSTLUDE
Postludes are strong cards, very much like
preludes. They can be obtained only by
bonuses, for example when funding an award.
When played they will have you place a tile on
top of either a City of a Greenery and trigger
certain powerful effects. Postlude tiles are
special tiles, charctaerized by a golden stripe.
These were made by Kenny Wong and
restored by myself.