That 3-minute rule for setting up Terraforming Mars saves me 20 minutes every game night

I got tired of people taking forever to pick their starting corporations and preludes. So I started a timer. 3 minutes to pick everything. No extensions. Now we're actually playing by 7:15 instead of 7:30. Has anyone else tried a strict time cap for setup phases?

2 comments

2 Comments

seth_green8522d ago

Idk man, I was one of those people who always said "it's part of the strategy, you gotta think it through" but honestly this changed my mind. Tried it last weekend with my group and we got through setup in like 4 minutes total once everyone knew the timer was coming. Maybe it's just me but having a hard limit actually made people focus instead of second guessing everything. Now I'm kinda converted, saves so much time for actual gameplay.

william91722d ago

3 minutes? Man I'm the guy who still can't decide between Teractor and UNMI after 5 minutes, so I feel this. Last time my group tried a timer I literally panicked and picked Phoblog because it was the first card I grabbed, then realized I had no clue how to run a space mining strategy. Ended up losing by 40 points but at least we started playing before the pizza got cold. I'm the living example of why timers actually work for everybody.