Fantasy Flight Games

3, 2, 1… Liftoff!

Published 16 October 2015 | Mission: Red Planet

3, 2, 1… Liftoff!

Mission: Red Planet Is Now Available

She strapped herself into the brown leather seat and took a deep, excited breath. Next stop, the mountainous region of Ausonia on Mars, where rich deposits of celerium were waiting to be mined. But she wasn't headed to Mars as a Soldier, or even as an Explorer. Her job was to hunt out the astronauts of the competition and persuade them to work for her bosses instead. Persuade by any means necessary.
The ships engines started with a low, rumbling purr. She looked at the astronauts on board from other corporations and smiled.

Enlist your astronauts, study maps of Mars, and plot your corporation’s route to riches. Mission: Red Planet is now available from local retailers in the United States and in our online store.

In this acclaimed board game designed by Bruno Cathala and Bruno Faidutti, two to six players compete to control Mars and mine its priceless natural resources. This edition incorporates updates by the original designers, including a new zone—the moon Phobos—and new Action Cards that enable players to perform devious new tricks before final scoring. The game’s steampunk aesthetic has also been given a more contemporary look with all-new graphic design, including a reinvented launchpad and a round game board.

Martian Reconnaissance

Mission: Red Planet places you in charge of a unscrupulous mining corporation at a revolutionary moment. Incredible natural resources have just been discovered on Mars: combustible celerium which could fuel the world, dense sylvanite which could transform the materials we use and, most surprising of all, ice. In order to mine Mars’s riches, you need to send your astronauts there, occupy the most profitable zones, and do anything you can to cripple your competition. You have ten rounds to mine as much celerium, sylvanite, and ice as possible, and to complete your corporation’s secret mission. You may also make some unexpected discoveries about Mars during your excavations. The player with the most victory points at the end of those ten rounds wins.

A team of nine cunning professionals—including an Explorer, Scientist, Secret Agent, and Saboteur—is in your employ, but be careful how you use them. After they’ve done their jobs a single time, you’ll need to send a Recruiter to hire them back before they’ll work for you again. You can learn more about these sneaky characters, the secret missions you may undertake, and what you may discover on Mars in this preview. You can also learn about the updates made to Mission: Red Planet in designer diaries by game designer Bruno Faidutti and Fantasy Flight Board Game Manager Steve Kimball, who worked together with Bruno Cathala in the revision process.

The Race for the Red Planet Has Begun!

An unexplored world, unfathomable riches, and unknown adventures await humankind on Mars. Corporations are clamoring to get their astronauts boarded on ships, so they can get their first crack at the minerals and ice before the deposits are drained. Don’t be left behind. Prepare for liftoff by downloading the rules from the product site and pick up your copy of Mission: Red Planet today!

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Preparation for Launch

Published 18 September 2015 | Mission: Red Planet

Preparation for Launch

Game Developer Steve Kimball on Mission: Red Planet

Designed by Bruno Cathala and Bruno Faidutti, Mission: Red Planet pits players against each other in a fierce and fast-paced race to harvest the incredible natural resources of Mars. Our new edition doesn’t just refresh the game’s steampunk aesthetic with new art and graphic design, it also streamlined the mechanics. Our Board Game Manager, Steve Kimball, worked with the game’s original designers to fine-tune every aspect of the game. In today’s preview, he discusses some of the changes made through that collaboration. In addition, you can now download the game's rules from the support section of the Mission: Red Planet minisite.

Here’s Steve:

When I heard that we picked up Mission: Red Planet, and that I would have the chance to personally work with Bruno Cathala and Bruno Faidutti (aka Bruno²), I was obviously stoked. Mission: Red Planet had been on my radar for years, but as yet I had not been able to try it for myself because the game was so difficult to find and selling for such high prices on the secondary market. Generally, before playing a game that we intend to publish for the first time, I prefer to take stock of the components. From this, I create instinctual expectations going into the game, which are often quite insightful when compared to my post-game observations. With Mission: Red Planet, it was no different.

Initial Ideas

Upon unboxing the game, I immediately noticed a few things I wanted to update in our new version. First, I wanted the player pieces to be sculpted and representative instead of abstract, although back then I wasn’t sure what form the sculpt should take—should it represent a drilling/mining machine, an astronaut, or something else? In the end, I was especially pleased with the astronaut figure included in the final game.

Second, I wanted to expand the game’s player count. Including a two-player variant was obvious, what with Bruno Cathala’s proven two-player-variant track record. Going up to six players required a little more effort, but I felt it was extremely important. A signature design element of Bruno Faidutti is to include a framework for subtle, dynamic player interaction (bluffing, misdirection, outguessing, politicking, etc.). His games can really reach a new level when players realize they are not only playing the game itself, but also “playing the other players.” Mission: Red Planet is no exception—the more, the merrier, and the richer the player interaction. Additionally, the number of games that scale up to five players is vast, but that number considerably drops off for six players. Expanding the player count really was a no-brainer.

I quite enjoyed my first playthrough of the original game (no, I didn’t win, but I came in second!). The notes I took back to my desk were few: some event cards had too much variance or did not scale well with player counts, the Soldier seemed underutilized, and the arrangement of zones on the board appeared rather symmetrical and plain. Sure enough, when I first spoke with the Brunos about the project, our observations were well aligned.

A Whole New Board

The first prototype I received from the Brunos addressed the rather static rectangular board layout of the original. Beyond introducing more organic shapes and modified adjacencies, which made the board much more dynamic than the previous version, they yanked the Utopia zone from the planet, renamed it Phobos, and kicked it into orbit. In fact, this first prototype board they showed me is essentially the board that made it into the final game.

Playing a game with the prototype board and original launchpad in Amiens, France, in March, 2014.

Another key change is the board’s round shape. If you search for early marketing photos of the Asmodee game, you’ll find that the Brunos originally intended the game to have a round board. I mean, why wouldn’t they? Thematically, it actually looks like a planet; mechanically, it would be clearer to see which discovery cards were assigned to which zone. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult (and costly) to manufacture a board with no right angles. Then it struck me—we could go with a puzzle-cut board that is laid out on the punchboard in four separate quadrants. From there, all we needed was two more separate pieces for Phobos and the Lost in Space Memorial, and the board was complete.

The other part of “the board” I haven’t mentioned yet was the launchpad. In the previous version, the launchpad had its own board that showed transparent silhouettes of docked ships and launched ships. To maximize punchboard efficiency and not monopolize table space, I asked graphic designer Sam Shimota to design the docks to be puzzle-cut. This way, during setup, players only need to fit together as many docks as the player count calls for, keeping the rules simple: refill all empty docks.

As we listened to feedback from players of the original game, including many whom we used as playtesters, they agreed that the original cardboard ships were not easy to shuffle, and many had started to show wear. We believed that the ships were best executed as cards, so Sam’s job was to craft the ship cards and launchpad in such a way as to clearly convey docked vs launched. To be honest, Sam absolutely nailed it. The ship cards slide under the punch when docked, so that the punch covers the engine exhaust and shows an open hatch with a staircase leading up to it (for astronauts to board). When slid away from the dock, the uncovered card shows a closed hatch and the ship in flight, with engine exhaust pumping out the aft, clearly indicating that the ship has launched.

It’s the Little Things, Really

The prototype that Bruno² delivered was virtually a finished game. As such, I was able to devote a good amount of attention and playtester focus to the small details. For example, several early playtest groups forgot about the ice majority bonus during final scoring. The ice majority bonus is more or less a mission that all players can achieve (if multiple players have the most, then they split the points), so we tweaked the mission card template, called it the “Ice Monopoly" global mission, and voila! Now this very important rule for final scoring sits out in the play area and stares at you throughout the game.

Another issue that arose was the order and timing of game effects after round 10. The original launchpad board showed a red numeral for which rounds generated point tokens (rounds 5, 8, and 10). The trouble was that, due to when discoveries are revealed, the round 10 scoring isn’t intended to function quite like the other two. I opted to go with a more robust “round tracker” of sorts to put this information at the players’ fingertips. You can see the final results—we gave discoveries their own phase instead of tying them to the rounds themselves, and the dots of each production phase visually indicate how many point tokens are generated. Icons on the discovery and action cards matching those on the round tracker make it crystal clear when exactly they take effect.

Everything in Its Right Place

After playing the game for the first time, one of my co-workers asked me what I thought. I distinctly remember my response: “It’s like Citadels on steroids.” I still feel that way. It has good pacing and very little downtime. The event cards reward clever planning as well as ensure some endgame uncertainty, and the scoring gradually ramps up to make sure the game’s climax arrives in round 10—at the end. I hope that all of you enjoy playing Mission: Red Planet as much as Bruno Cathala, Bruno Faidutti, and I enjoyed bringing it back to life!

Thank you, Steve!

The only way to discover what riches Mars truly holds is to send an expedition there yourself. It’s time to start training your astronauts, shaping your directives, and preparing to launch.

Download the rules from the Mission: Red Planet minisite and pre-order the game from your local retailer today!

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Hot Competition for Ice Cold Mars

Published 19 August 2015 | Mission: Red Planet

Hot Competition for Ice Cold Mars

Preview Characters, Missions, and Discoveries in Mission: Red Planet

When the company scientist reported a massive and untouched glacier deep in the mountains of Ausonia, they sent the explorer out with a team of three astronauts to verify his findings. After weeks of hard hiking, they found the glacier. Hundreds of thousands of tons of ice ready to be harvested…and one lone human dressed in a red uniform that she recognized instantly. She took out her notepad and began drafting a telegram. “Found iceberg. Competition here too. Send someone to eliminate them.”

In Mission: Red Planet, unfathomably rich mineral deposits and—even more incredibly—ice have just been discovered on Mars. As the heads of greedy mining corporations, you and your friends are eager to claim as much Martian territory as possible and harvest the planet’s newly discovered resources. At your command are countless brave astronauts and an elite team of professionals ready to pilot your spaceships, survey the red planet, and even sabotage your competitors.

Today’s preview of Mission: Red Planet looks at how to accomplish your corporation’s extraterrestrial goals, from the shining and nefarious characters who will guide your astronauts to the sudden discoveries that may thwart your aims or make you rich beyond your wildest imagination.

The Rush to Mars

Once news spread of the riches to be found on the red planet, thousands of prospectors packed their bags and booked passage to Mars. As a corporation, however, you’re not just hoping to amass whatever riches you can: you have a unique and secret mission to fulfill as well. It might be to harvest as much Sylvanite as possible, or occupy certain Strategic Zones . You might even be tasked with establishing Eternal Fame for your corporation by sacrificing as many astronauts as possible in your effort to occupy Mars.

With that mission in mind, you’ll want to send as many astronauts as possible off to Mars. Seating in spaceships is limited, and demand for those seats is high: you’ll have to play your cards right to get the number of astronauts you need placed in ships to your intended Martian zones. Here’s where your team of professionals comes in. Every round you’ll play one of the nine characters from your hand. Each has a different skill set: the Travel Agent secures passage for three astronauts in a single ship of your choice. The Pilot seats two astronauts but, more importantly, alters a ship’s destination. The Saboteur places only one astronaut, but can also detonate a bomb under a docked ship occupied by your competition, sending the astronauts inside to the Lost in Space Memorial.

Each round, you’ll count down to launch, from 9 to 1. The number on each character card determines when that character acts: Saboteurs, for example, always do their dirty work before Pilots take the controls. In addition, since these professionals are short-term hires, once you’ve played a character, you can’t play them again until you use your Recruiter to hire a new team. You’ll have to deploy the characters you command very judiciously if you want to exploit their talents to the fullest.

Movement, Discoveries, and Murder

Getting your astronauts to Mars is only half the battle. Once they’ve landed, you’ll have to survey the planet to find the minerals and ice that you want to harvest. You may have to lead them across the desolate landscape to more profitable zones, or even eliminate a few of your competition’s astronauts in order to claim a particularly resource-rich zone. Only your Explorer can lead astronauts across the red planet once they’ve landed. Only the Soldier can parachute astronauts from the moon Phobos down to the Martian surface. Only the Femme Fatale can both eliminate an astronaut and use her wiles to lure an astronaut over to your corporation.

The state of the Mars, Phobos, and the Lost in Space Memorial after the first production phase.
Discovery cards are placed facedown under the zone that they affect.

Achieving your secret mission is only part of your goal. You likely also want to harvest as much ice, celerium, and sylvanite as possible. Three production phases over the course of the game let you mine the riches (and the points) from any zones that you control at that time. Since there’s no way to know what resources lie latent in a zone until an astronaut lands there, you may first want to send astronauts into several different zones and then focus on the specific minerals that you want the most.

Celerium, sylvanite, and ice, aren’t the only things you’ll find on Mars. Your Scientist can make secret discoveries that will be known only to you. He might find that a zone contains an Ether Magnet or deadly Virus . His research could provide you the means to undertake a profitable Planetary Cleanup , or the chance bring your lost astronauts back as Space Zombies . You may even get the opportunity to complete an additional mission. Discoveries don’t become public until they take effect just before the third production phase, so you might also use your Scientist to research what discoveries other corporations have made in a zone and let you know whether to occupy or avoid it.

During final scoring you’ll reveal your missions and total up your points. You may find that even though you didn’t complete your mission, your mining profits have earned you points far beyond those earned by opponents who completed their missions. Or, you may find that completing your mission has granted you a narrow win over your competitors. Triumph may slip into, or out of, your hands because of a shocking discovery. There is also a global mission that all players are striving towards: achieving it may be the decisive factor in the your victory.

Stake Your Claim

A new frontier has just opened to mankind, and the rush for sylvanite, celerium, and ice is on! You can safeguard the future of your mining corporation—and help pioneer the technological advancement of humanity—by investing in the race to mine the red planet’s resources. Start planning your expeditionary forces and prepare to stake your claim.

Pre-order Mission: Red Planet from your local retailer today!

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Return to Mars

Published 28 July 2015 | Mission: Red Planet

Return to Mars

Designer Bruno Faidutti on Mission: Red Planet

The board game Mission: Red Planet sends you on a mining expedition to Mars to harvest its priceless natural resources before competing mining corporations can gain access to them. You have ten rounds to launch your astronauts into space, land them in the planet’s most resource-rich zones, and harvest as much ice and minerals as you possibly can, all the while racing against – and even sabotaging – your competitors.

While our upcoming edition maintains the game’s core mechanics and steampunk theme, we also brought in the game’s original designers, Bruno Faidutti and Bruno Cathala, to work with our developers in updating and perfecting the game. In today’s preview, Bruno Faidutti offers his perspective on that process.

From Citadels to Mars

The design of this game started more than ten years ago, and what I remember of the early design is very vague. The theme was Mars from the beginning, though it wasn’t steampunk. Mechanically, the idea was to mix the role selection system from Citadels with “something else.” The early versions of the game had a single deck of characters and a role selection system very similar to that in Citadels. I also remember that at some time we had a hex grid board and were trying to move across it, or encircle zones. Then we switched to a majority-style game and Mission: Red Planet started to take its form. From the beginning, there were secret missions. That’s more or less all I remember; all the rest is vague and may be imbued with fantasy. I have much better recollections of how the new version was developed after FFG decided to reprint the game less than two years ago.

The Rewards of Collaboration

At Fantasy Flight Games, Steve Kimball was in charge of the development, and he did a great job, regularly infusing new ideas and performing extensive testing of every version. Part of his job was to act as a mediator in those moments when Bruno Cathala and I didn’t agree. But basically, we all wanted to make the game better and smoother. And I think we did.

For example, we reworked the mission cards. In the first edition, most missions were “all or nothing:” either you fulfill the conditions and score lots of points, or you don’t, and don’t score anything. Bruno Cathala wanted to make them more progressive, with the points scored being proportional to the relevant mineral in the zone. Steve found a solution for the issue. In the end, I managed to keep some “all or nothing” missions, like Pockets of Influence, Strategic Zones, and Colonization, while we achieved a compromise and created the 1/2/4/7 scoring for most of the Influence missions.

We also found a good solution with the discoveries that remove astronauts from some zones. Bruno Cathala thought this was too violent, because a player could lose lots of points for having all his astronauts removed from one of the zones needed to achieve his mission, while I thought it was fair and fun. The solution we reached favored Bruno Cathala’s ideas more. I managed to keep the Native Resistance card, which removes only one astronaut per player. Other cards, such as Even Ground and Uneven Ground, only state that astronauts are ignored for gathering resources, but still count as occupying the relevant zones.

A New Moon

Another fun story was Phobos. We all agreed it would be fun to have a moon on the map, but we didn’t really know what to do with it. At one point in time, the moon had a unique resource named Phobium. We even considered having Phobos circling around Mars, and considering it as adjacent to a new zone every round, but this would have been a real brain burner. Then came the idea of giving the Soldier the ability to airdrop astronauts from the moon onto Mars, and with that we had what was needed to bring Phobos into the game.

Countdown to Launch

Finally, we reversed the way that the characters are numbered. The number of a character, such as the Soldier or Scientist, determines when that character's ability is resolved. If you’ve played the Asmodée edition, you probably remember that the characters were numbered from 1 to 9, so character 1 would act first, then character 2, et cetera. In the Fantasy Flight Games edition the characters are numbered in reverse, from 9 to 1. This way, calling out the characters becomes a countdown to launch, which is very thematic. It’s fun, and it sounds obvious once you’ve heard it – but neither Bruno Cathala nor I had this idea in the almost ten years of this game's existence. It’s one of our playtesters who made this suggestion in the last few days before the rules and files were conclusively validated. It’s one of those “how could we not think of it before” moments.

Thank you so much, Bruno!

Join the Expedition

Focus your mining corporation’s efforts on dominating one region of Mars, or voyage to the moon, Phobos, to discover what valuable resources it offers mankind. Dedicate your team to mining resources, or devise cunning ways to undermine the competition. Countless wonders, incredible riches, and unpredictable adventures await you on this new frontier!

If you’re attending Gen Con, you can undertake a preliminary exploration of Mission: Red Planet at the Fantasy Flight Games booth. Some of those explorations will even be lead by Bruno Faidutti himself!

Pre-order your copy of Mission: Red Planet from your local retailer today!

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Mission: Red Planet

Published 24 April 2015 | Mission: Red Planet

Mission: Red Planet

Announcing a New Edition of the Acclaimed Board Game

April 24, 1888
The pilot, the explorer, and I have landed – not on Mars, but on the small, dark moon of Phobos. It thrills me to be among the first of mankind to set foot here, and even better, we have found deposits of Celerium, enough to fuel thousands of steam engines. Tomorrow we will land in the Valles Marineris zone of Mars. Aeons ago, that valley was a deep sea, filled with swimming alien life. If some of that sea remains in the form of ice, we three could become the richest people in the solar system.

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce a new edition of Mission: Red Planet, the steampunk-themed board game of planetary exploration designed by Bruno Faidutti and Bruno Cathala.

In Mission: Red Planet, two to six players compete to control as much of Mars and its priceless natural resources as they possibly can. This edition maintains the core mechanics of this fast-paced game while incorporating updates by the original designers. Astronauts can land in a new zone, the moon Phobos, and the Soldier can convey astronauts from Phobos to anywhere on Mars. Missions and Discoveries have been fine-tuned, and new Action Cards join the Event deck. The game can now handle six players, with rules for a two-player variant also included. What's more, the Victorian steampunk aesthetic has been refreshed with all-new graphic design for a more contemporary look.

Launch an Expedition to Mars

With technology rapidly developing and the human population growing, Victorian-era Earth is in dire need of fuel, land, and other natural resources. Fortunately, automated probes sent to Mars have discovered celerium, an ore that can be combusted to produce ten thousand times more power than a steam engine, and sylvanite, the densest substance ever found. More incredibly, the probes found ice that could be used in terraforming the planet, bringing the idea of colonizing Mars even closer to becoming a reality.

The launchpad with astronauts, docked ships, and launched ships.

As the head of a mining corporation, these minerals and ice found on Mars could make you unfathomably wealthy – if you can reach them before your competitors. You have ten rounds to send your astronauts into space, occupy the planet’s most resource-rich zones, and harvest as much celerium, sylvanite, and ice as possible. At your command is a team of nine professionals. Each has a unique skill set, from helping your astronauts traverse the Red Planet to blowing up spaceships before they launch.

Discover the Red Planet’s Secrets

Until astronauts arrive on Mars, you and your opponents won’t know exactly where the largest deposits of sylvanite, celerium, and ice are. Over the course of the game, you’ll have three chances to earn points from mining the ore and ice you find. At those moments, whichever corporation has the most astronauts in a zone gets to mine the ore. Scientists can also make unique discoveries about the Red Planet, such as an inexhaustible deposit of ore, or mysterious lichens – the first life found beyond Earth. These discoveries could offer you incredible wealth, or make a zone uninhabitable, or even deadly. Discovery cards remain facedown until the end of the game, and only Scientists can peer at them. No corporation can possibly learn all of the Red Planet’s secrets.

You also begin the game with a secret mission to accomplish. It might entail harvesting more sylvanite than anyone else or distributing your astronauts across Mars to gather intelligence about what other corporations are up to. You could also gain another mission in the midst of your excavations. Fulfilling your secret mission isn’t necessary to win, but it does grant you points in addition to the resources that you mine.

Undermine Your Competitors

In this intense race for the Red Planet’s riches, you have to keep an eye on your competition. You may even want to use a few dirty tricks to undermine them. Some characters, such as Saboteurs, Secret Agents, and Femmes Fatales, help you prevent your opponents’ astronauts from reaching the Red Planet at all. If necessary, you might even use your Soldier to eliminate astronauts who stand in the way of your success.

Your Scientist’s findings might also enable you to take actions after all your astronauts have arrived on Mars. That action could be a surprise move between zones, or you could gain the ability to bring back your dead astronauts as space zombies , and use your newborn zombie horde to take control of a profitable zone.

The Red Planet Awaits!

A mission to Mars offers a chance to explore an unknown world and amass incredible wealth in the process. There are numerous risks involved, and mining corporations will stop at nothing to win the race for the Red Planet and its natural riches. You’ll need cunning plans and devious tricks to finish ahead of the pack.

Ships begin leaving for Mars in the third quarter of 2015. You can find more information to help you prepare for your expedition on the Mission: Red Planet minisite.

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Fantasy Flight Games

3, 2, 1… Liftoff!

3, 2, 1… Liftoff!

Martian Reconnaissance

The Race for the Red Planet Has Begun!

Preparation for Launch

Preparation for Launch

Initial Ideas

A Whole New Board

It’s the Little Things, Really

Everything in Its Right Place

Hot Competition for Ice Cold Mars

Hot Competition for Ice Cold Mars

The Rush to Mars

Movement, Discoveries, and Murder

Stake Your Claim

Return to Mars

Return to Mars

From Citadels to Mars

The Rewards of Collaboration

A New Moon

Countdown to Launch

Join the Expedition

Mission: Red Planet

Mission: Red Planet

Launch an Expedition to Mars

Discover the Red Planet’s Secrets

$(document).ready(function() { var opts = { iframe: true, innerHeight: 661, innerWidth: 300 }; $('#2AA2').colorbox(opts); }); Undermine Your Competitors

The Red Planet Awaits!

Undermine Your Competitors