Mars. The very near future.
The Solarus Corporation discovered an infinite source of rare and precious minerals deep in the red crust. Resources that will end the energy crisis on Earth and fuel the deep space expeditions planned as population swells beyond capacity.
You have been chosen to lead an elite crew of Pod pilots who will delve below the surface of Mars in Solarus Corporation's first major drilling expedition. As a part of this maiden voyage, the corporation has agreed to let you reinvest any wealth you uncover back into training your Pod pilots, increasing their skills and efficiencies. Will you be remembered as the greatest Solarus Corporation employee in the galaxy?
Super Motherload is a tile-laying deck-building game, which means that you have your own deck of cards from which you draw each turn. The cards in your deck start out very basic, but over the course of the game you add new and more powerful cards to it. You use these cards to bomb and drill minerals and other bonuses from the game board. You then use the minerals you've collected as money to purchase better cards for your deck. Some cards give you an immediate bonus when you purchase them, and some give you other bonuses when you use them to drill. Each card you purchase from your library is worth victory points (VPs). You can also gain VPs from achievement cards that become available throughout the game. Whoever has the most VPs at the end of the game wins.
Super Motherload features game boards that are added and removed during play to create videogame-like scrolling action, and it challenges spatial relation skills for 2-4 players who love video games, Eurostyle board games, or deck-building card games.
- Original top-placement mechanic integrated with deck-building
- Fast, accessible rules with deep tactical choices
- Strong two-player and three-player experiences, variable depth boards
- Good component quality and replayability potential with board/deck variations
- Less tactical in four-player games due to turn-order disruption
- Art style not fully aligned with theme; may be underwhelming visually
- Replay value potentially limited by reliance on two-board variants
- Some luck factor present, but not prohibitive
- tunneling meets deck-building with depth progression and artifact rewards
- Mars mining operation where crews dig tunnels to extract profitable minerals
- procedural, goal-oriented with victory points
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Achievements — Minor and major achievement cards grant VP; max one minor and one major per turn.
- artifact tokens and depth progression — Token pool controls depth progression; artifacts grant additional effects.
- bomb action — Spend a bomb to place a bomb-shaped tunnel onto the board; allows area-covering actions.
- deck-building — Players start with a small color-coded deck and acquire new cards to improve actions.
- draw action — On turn, players may draw two cards to replenish hand.
- drill action — Play multiple cards of the same color to drill tunnels and gain tunnel segments.
- Endgame scoring — End scoring totals VP from hand, deck, and gained achievements.
- Resource management — Mineral tokens must be allocated to one of four stacks and spent to gain cards.
- tunnel placement — Tunnels must be placed adjacent to surface or existing tunnels and connect logically.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Super Motherload really blends an original and unique top placement mechanic into the deck building genre, but more importantly, it's not gimmicky and works quite well, making all the mechanics of the game solid.
- The game certainly offers tactics with tunneling and short-term goals and long-term strategy with the deck building and long-term achievement cards.
- I do think the game is best played at two, then three, and lastly at four.
- a little bit of luck and that is not too detrimental should it go bad.
- It's definitely worth checking out, especially if you want something different.
- Super Motherload gets 7.5 out of 10.
- On their turn, players will do two actions from three choices.
- Everything can be bombed except steel plates.
- Artifact tokens will let the players randomly choose one from the pool.
- These can be saved and used later on for an effect as listed on the back.
- Unlike other deck builders, you do not draw at the end of the turn, and you do not discard cards from your hand you haven't played.