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The year is 1888, and Steampunk technology has advanced at a prodigious rate! Probes have been sent to Mars, and soon astronauts will be manning rockets in order to mine the planet for newly discovered resources. The first is a brand new element, Celerium, that could prove to be a combustible energy source the likes man has never seen. The second is Sylvanite, an incredibly dense material unlike anything found on earth. In addition to these resources, glaciers have been discovered on the planet. Whoever controls these icy masses could work to create a livable atmosphere on Mars
In Mission: Red Planet, players work as mining companies compete to send astronauts to Mars in order to colonize and mine for recently discovered materials. Over the course of 10 rounds, players play one of their special agents every round to help fill the rockets heading to Mars with their own astronauts while simultaneously working to prevent their opponents from doing the same. Once landed, these astronauts must gather to control specific regions of the planet, each yielding one of the three resources: Celerium, Sylvanite, or Ice. After rounds 5 and 8, players gain score tokens for every region where they control the majority of the astronauts. At the end of the game, players score one final time, adding any bonuses received from Discovery Cards and Bonus Cards. The player with the most score tokens at the end controls Mars, and all the riches it can bring!
From Bruno Faidutti's website:
This one, designed with Bruno Cathala, started with the theme. We wanted to make a game about colonizing Mars, with shuttles leaving the blue planet towards the red one. The theme is strong, and well caught in the steampunk graphic style decided by Asmodée. In Mission: Red Planet, each player plays a colonial power which sends astronauts, in space shuttles, to occupy the most promising zones on the planet. For scholars, the systems merge a majority game, à la El Grande or San Marco, with a character/action card system, somewhere between Citadels and Hoity Toity/Adel Verpflichtet. Nothing really new here, but there was much work on it and we're really proud of the result.
- tight, tense area-control competition
- high interaction and Take That style
- layered scoring with discovery tokens and end-game cards
- enjoyable despite edition differences; still a solid game
- Madagot edition has some printing and rulebook clarity issues
- artwork not as striking as Fantasy Flight edition
- grammar mistakes and minor printing errors (e.g., misprinted card text)
- space exploration, area control and resource collection with tense, high-interaction play
- Mars with areas on a map of the planet, including Phobos and a Lost in Space area; discovery tokens and ice/other resources
- competitive, take-that, high-tension decisions
- Fantasy Flight's Mission Red Planet edition
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- area control and token scoring — Control of locations on Mars and Phobos determines who claims discovery and production tokens for points
- board manipulation and disruption — Players can move pieces, destroy rockets, or alter rocket destinations to influence outcomes
- carrying astronauts as resources — Astronauts are limited resources that can be killed or captured, creating brutal, high-stakes decisions
- deck management and card timing — Each player has an identical deck; cards launch when enough astronauts occupy the corresponding card location
- deck manipulation — Each player has an identical deck; cards launch when enough astronauts occupy the corresponding card location
- discovery and end-game cards — Discovery cards underneath the board sides and end-game reveal mechanisms affect final scoring
- event deck and discovery interplay — Event deck cards can influence draws and scoring; some cards help scoring while others introduce variability
- ice token scoring — An ice token card near the end awards nine additional points to whoever has the most ice tokens
- production and scoring phases — Production phases place tokens next to discovery tokens; scoring phases tally points from tokens and end-of-game discoveries
- simultaneous card play with countdown — Players secretly choose a card from a shared hand, reveal in countdown order, and resolve actions; ties resolve clockwise from the first player
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- This is a game I always enjoyed.
- This is a game that has just some fierce competition and it's a game where you're trying your best to manipulate the board, but you just don't know what everybody else is going to be doing.
- This game is absolutely brutal.
- I love Mission Red Planet.
- I think the artwork on this edition is good.
- The Fantasy Flight version from 10 years ago looked better.
- The game itself for me is an eight on the Cody scale. I love it.
References (from this video)
- highly interactive and chaotic in a fun way
- enjoyable with larger player counts; tempo remains engaging
- can stall with slower groups
- beat-to-beat tension can be volatile for some players
- area control, space mission coordination and resource collection
- Mars exploration
- semi-theme-driven, chaotic negotiations
- Area majority games
- Twilight Imperium (epic space game reference context)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- area_control — Mars zones yield resources to the leading players; majority grants rewards
- randomized_event_flow — face-down tokens and events alter the game state across rounds
- resource_management — collect and allocate resources to dock ships and move astronauts
- simultaneous_action_selection — players choose actions from a shared, identical set and resolve from 9 down to 1
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's basically it's an auction tiling game
- it's a classic Euro but with fresh mechanics that you don't really see in newer games
- the best scoring that you can get is one building amongst all these things is is four points
- I really liked it I think the very first uh work that I scored I took it all as money and I thought like this is great I'm gonna have so much money for the rest of the game but I think that hurt me in the end
- it's mean that it was comical
- it's a very silly game
- it's a strong mix of chaos and strategy
- it's better with higher player counts
- it's one of those games where there's very limited communication; it's fully cooperative