Terraforming Mars is an incredible game that's tremendous fun, but has player mats that are made of thin card stock which prevents movement of the player mat during game play and creates the risk of pieces being easily bumped accidentally.
This product from BoardGameBoost.com solves these issues by providing a backboard for the player mats and an overlay to hold both the resource cubes and the income track marker cubes in their places. Assembly is quick and easy: simply place the player mat on top of the acrylic backboard, lay the clear acrylic cube overlay on top of the player mat, then snap the entire item together with the included fasteners. That's it! You then have a permanent board that never needs to be assembled again. Because of the backboard, the entire player mat can be picked up and moved during game play with the cubes on it.
The overlay has bins for the resource cubes and tracks with small notches for the income marker cubes, plus as a bonus also has a long slot in which to store a supply of player cubes for marking hexes or cards. Each income track also has a cube slot to the right of the "10" space to indicate "+10" when income reaches high levels. This slot is rotated 45 degrees to make it easily discernible from other cubes.
Opinions vary on whether there should a divider wall or not between the Energy and Heat resource bins, so now you can have it whichever way you prefer! The overlay comes with a wall there but is built to break off if you prefer to slide your cubes from one bin to another. See the photos and video for more information!
Because of the tight nature of the artwork for the income tracks on the player mats, there is little to no space for material between each numbered square. As a result the overlay tracks are just slightly out of vertical alignment with the player mat, but if you look at the photos and video you can see that it is barely noticeable and will have no impact on appearance or reading what number the marker cube is resting on.
Each player board measures 9.17 x 6.81 x .24" (233 x 173 x 6mm). A stack of 5 boards is about 1.18" (30mm) tall. A stack of 5 fits into the game box without having to remove the box insert (with some careful arranging of game bits).