The rulebook for Terraforming Mars was hiding a scoring tip I missed for 2 years

I was playing at a meetup in Portland last month and this guy noticed I was counting my points wrong. He showed me this tiny paragraph on page 8 that explains how greenery tiles score 2 points each, not 1. All that time I was shorting myself by like 30 points per game. Anyone else find a rule they overlooked for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

murray.robert1d ago

Right there with you. That greenery scoring thing hid from me for almost two years until a buddy at a local game shop pointed it out mid game and I just sat there staring at the board. Felt like such a fool because I’d been wondering why my scores were always 20 points behind everyone else. Now I triple check any rule that mentions icons or symbols before teaching new folks.

nancy_king291d ago

Oh man, 'page 8 explains how greenery tiles score 2 points each, not 1' - that one got me too, but I found out about it way later than I want to admit. I think I played for almost three years before someone pointed it out at a game night, and I felt so dumb because I'd been counting them as just the 1 point from the tile itself, completely forgetting the extra point for the greenery icon on the board. It's one of those rules that's easy to miss because the rulebook buries it in a paragraph that looks like a reminder rather than a new rule, you know? Makes a huge difference in scoring too, especially in late game when you're throwing down a bunch of greenery tiles for the city bonus. I still catch myself double-checking the rulebook every time I teach new players now, just in case I'm messing something else up.

wader711d ago

Three years though? Man, I don't know if I'd call that a buried rule, more like just skimming past a whole sentence on the page. Seems like you'd notice after the first few games when the math isn't adding up, you know?

-1