Mission: Red Planet brings steampunk Martian domination to your tabletop

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games! Check out our complete board gaming coverage right here—and let us know what you think.

Admit it: you would secretly love to launch a private army to Mars. Luckily, Mission: Red Planet lets you do so as part of a steampunk Victorian mining conglomerate. Along the way, you'll sabotage the rockets carrying other astronauts, redirect opponents' ships to unimportant patches of Martian soil, take over Phobos, and just generally run riot in your quest to exploit the Red Planet's hidden resources.

To do this, each player gets nine role cards. The roles each grant a set of specific moves, such as placing three astronauts on the same docked rocket ("Travel Agent") or placing one astronaut in a rocket and then killing another player's astronaut on Mars and then moving three of your own astronauts down from Phobos onto the Red Planet itself ("Soldier"). Other roles let you destroy docked ships ("Saboteur"), force not-yet-full ships to launch early ("Secret Agent"), or change the destination of a rocket even in flight ("Pilot").

Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments