This is always a pleasure to play. The rules are simple to pick up and there is a very good mix of luck and strategy involved.
The objective is to get you Astronauts onto the various areas of Mars. As you land you uncover one of three different types of Ore valued 1-3. During the game there are three scoring rounds 5,8 and the last round 10. On the first scoring round the player with the most Astronauts in an area gets 1 scoring token (that matches the Ore in that area) if there are any ties the token stays on Mars. In the second scoring round 2 tokens are awarded, ties split the tokens and any remainder stays on Mars. Finally in the third scoring round 3 tokens are awarded, ties re split as before with the remainder being discarded.
During the game there are different roles that people can use which give them different actions they can take, some just have a useful purpose to the player, others also allow the player to destroy spacehips, remove astronauts and other sneaky tricks. During the game you can collect event cards, these provide you with either additional Bonus points usually through having some conditions to be met or Discovery cards that change some aspect of one of the outer zones on Mars. Some of these have benefits and some provide detrimental affects to an area. These are only revealed at the end of the game so it can be quite nasty!
The game is played over 10 rounds and once you have played a particular character you can not play it again unless you use the recruiter character which gets you all your character cards back into your hand(including the recruiter). It becomes quite strategic as to when to use this card!.
The theme is very well done for this game and the pieces are extremely colourful and well made. I would recommend this game for anyones collection.
