Jacob Fryxelius, designer of Terraforming Mars, reveals some of the easter eggs hidden in Terraforming Mars in this weekly article series.

Tharsis Republic

When creating factions for Terraforming Mars, I wanted most of them to be corporations, but not all. Tharsis Republic is the first democracy on Mars, centered in the Tharsis region, which covers most of the base game board (which we call the Tharsis map). Many of Mars’s most iconic features lie here: Valles Marineris with Noctis Labyrinthus, the triplet volcanos Arsia, Ascraeus, and Pavonis Mons, and the biggest peak in the whole solar system – Olympus Mons (just beyond the left horizon on the Tharsis board. These four massive volcanos are also the basis for the Tharsis Republic flag, with a simplified but correct configuration on a Martian surface.

Tharsis Republic is of course featured elsewhere in the artwork as well, most prominently on the box cover that we promised to talk about last week. Both astronauts have the Tharsis emblem on their shoulders.

Lets talk a little about the box before going back to Tharsis Republic. The box cover is framed with a real Martian map with the great canyon system Valles Marineris at the top. The frame style was chosen in conjunction with our decision to make this a future-optimistic game, and can even be reflected in the shape of the bar code on the back. On the side of the box is a TM emblem that was once a prototype box front, as seen in our first no-budget teaser video (here).

The panorama is a representation of the terraforming itself, with a barren, unterraformed Mars at the far left, being gradually colonized and terraformed towards the right until it is actually somewhat green and with birds in the sky. In the center of this process are the two human astronauts from Tharsis Republic, overseeing the process and helping it along. Some people think women are underrepresented in the game. What they don’t realize is that Isaac’s wife Lovisa posed for both of the box front astronauts. Women don’t have to have super-accentuated features, especially in a space suit.

Ok, back to Tharsis Republic, which is also featured on the card Power Supply Consortium (they need electricity for their cities, right?). It is also featured on Martian Rails, with its ‘Vote for MFR’ on the side of the train. MFR stands for Mars Free Republic, an early name for Tharsis Republic.

Martian Rails has another corporation on it as well. Can you spot it?

With this update, we also want to wish you all a Happy Easter holiday! See you next week with more Easter Eggs 🙂

Jacob Fryxelius, designer of Terraforming Mars, reveals some of the easter eggs hidden in Terraforming Mars in this weekly article series.

When Isaac created the logos and artwork for Terraforming Mars, many small details were put in that may not be obvious to most people. There are references, cameos, corporation logos, logos from our printing partners, real landmarks, and more. Now that Easter is upon us, we want to give you a taste of this, so we will present some of them in this article series, starting with everything Ecoline.

We like small actors playing big roles, and Ecoline is one such example. It has a typical sea shell icon as its logo, and with an interesting note that it also symbolizes a flexible fuse in the field of electronics. These meanings combine to say that Ecoline engineers lifeforms to withstand the harsh environment on Mars.

The tag line ‘Evolving Your World’ just seemed appropriate.

Ecoline is one of the more featured corporations in the game art, and can be found on cards such as Grass, Earth Office, Zeppelins, Micro-Mills, and Soil Factory (and Lunar Exports and Venus Soils from the expansions).

The picture from Grass, done by brother Daniel, was once suggested as part of the box cover art, but Isaac made a much more fitting art for the box. We’ll talk more about that next week.

Micro-Mills represents the first terraforming method employed in the Red Mars book series by Kim Stanley Robinson. Soil Factory includes 3 cameos, which are just as difficult to spot as the corporation logos, while Earth Office features 6 corporation logos, 2 of which are not released yet. Zeppelins has the tagline on its side, also fairly difficult to see. These things were done for our own entertainment, but also for anyone taking out the microscope to scrutinize our pictures. Isaac hid things even I didn’t know existed in the artwork… trying to keep some of the fun for himself!

As you can see, there are even more things to see than can actually be seen.

Hello all! Just wanted to say that the cube sets are back in stock!
Within a few weeks, we will also get a restock on the Dual Layer Player Boards and the promo pack, which will make the NUTZ Bundle and the Goodie Bag Bundle also available again. Cheers!

For a long time, we’ve been negotiating a decent shipping contract for the US. Well, we’re still negotiating, but we’ve got so many requests from US customers that we felt compelled to offer shipping at the prices we do have. We’ll try this out for a week or two, and if it works well, we will also add more countries.

The shipping cost for a package up to 1kg is 200 SEK (approx $20).
The shipping cost for a package up to 2kg is 300 SEK (approx $30).
We cannot send packages over 2kg at this point.
We also offer untracked shipping for the smallest packages only containing promo cards. For up to 100 grams (enough for both promo packs), shipping is 50 SEK (approx $5). For up to 250 grams (enough for more sets of the promos), shipping is 88 SEK (approx $9).

The weight of each item can be seen under the “Additional Information” tab on the respective product page.

Hopefully, these prices will become better soon and hopefully, we’ll have prices for heavier packages. But for now, we just wanted to say: welcome to our web shop, dear Americans!

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Isaac just finished the official youtube tutorial for Turmoil. This is probably the easiest way to learn the rules of our newest expansion. Enjoy!