Suggestions Regarding Beginners

[Please Go Easy, I'm Virgin]

During the choose corporation phase, the first question before you see anything should be "Are you a beginner?" If you choose yes, you get the beginner corp. If you choose no, you proceed on to choose between 2 standard corps. Nobody should be able to see the beginner corp as an option against 2 other standard corps. Nobody should have the option to take the corp with the best overall advantage.

Game creation should allow for the ability to disable beginner mode entirely.

Ranked games should never allow beginners.

[Roderick]

If you don't like any of the two given corps, I like to choose beginners corp. Hopefully that stays.

[geo_bob_kram]

I agree with you. Beginner is only for beginners.

[Miaouf]

Corporation B is in no way reserved for beginners. It is simply a simpler corporation (no particularity to manage) and to learn new cards (we start with 10 cards).

Corporation B is not stronger because we do not know the 10 cards we will receive.
From the moment we choose a corporation (which gives access to the choice of the card), we can not choose corporation B.

[sirusx715]

Beginner Corp should not be locked out by default, but I could see having an option when setting up a game to disallow it.

What I would like to see is a rework of the opening hand/Corp picking process. It's kind of wonky right now having to click a Corp, go to cards, browse cards, but back, click a Corp, go to cards, select cards, and confirm. It should just ask if you want beginner Corp. If you say yes, you're done. If you say no, it goes to the 10 card pick while having your Corp choices visible on the screen. After you pick cards, you then pick corp.

[markjohnnash]

I think a better idea would be the ability to choose from 3 or 4 corporations.

[Miaouf]

Most often we choose the card according to the corporation, not the other way around!

[Gray Wolf]

I don't believe the beginner corporation to be all that strong myself. Perhpas if your first player it is nice since you can drop a standard project water tile for 2 extra cards. On turn two you can buy 4 more cards and clain the planner for five victory points and then spend the rest of the game playing the 16 cards you have with the best plan you can figure out.

[sirusx715]

I'd argue you pick your Corp based in your card picks more than the other way around. I tend to pick my Corp based on what my 10 cards are then prune my card pucks based in Corp. That's why I want the cards presented first with the UI showing Corp options on screen somewhere.


I'd also agree beginner Corp isn't particularly strong. It is high variance for sure. An amazing hand will take it far. A mediocre hand will just lead to discarding half the hand at some point. If you discard half the hand, they're very similar to the rich start corps minus ongoing benefits. The planner trick seems more relevant to me in high player count games where the race for milestones is tighter. If/when expansion maps are added, beginner Corp is also weaker.

I'm not sure how the devs are implementing draft. If they have draft for the opening 10 cards, beginner Corp should definitely be locked out of that game varient.

[Narkulus]

Originally posted by Brian Star:

During the choose corporation phase, the first question before you see anything should be "Are you a beginner?" If you choose yes, you get the beginner corp. If you choose no, you proceed on to choose between 2 standard corps. Nobody should be able to see the beginner corp as an option against 2 other standard corps. Nobody should have the option to take the corp with the best overall advantage.

Game creation should allow for the ability to disable beginner mode entirely.

Ranked games should never allow beginners.

I believe you're right. The way the game is working now, you're basically choosing between 3 corporations when you start, which does violate the rules. As the rules read below, the new players get Beginner Corps but no other options and the experienced players don't get the Beginnner Corp option at all. Part of the reason for the Beginner Corps is so new players don't take forever trying to figure out which cards to buy and can just study the ten cards they have and how they might work together.

Corporation cards: Players new to
Terraforming Mars each get a Beginner Corporation
card (colorless card back) and follow its instruction
to get 42 MegaCredits and draw 10 project cards to
form their starting hand. Then they can examine their
cards while experienced players continue this setup
without them. Shuffe the 10 standard corporation
cards (excluding the 2 Corporate Era corporations)
and deal 2 to each remaining player.

[Please Go Easy, I'm Virgin]

No corporation is bad. It usually depends on the cards but in all honesty, the corporation is only a tiny perk to what you can do with initial cards but is by no means going to dictate how the entire game goes. The beginner corp, on the other hand, gets all 10 cards for FREE and just doesn't have some minuscule ability to give it a slight boost in the game. The point of the beginner corp is to just give a load of cards to someone who doesn't know how to play, and give the person a chance to figure out some of the cards. If you already know how to play, you just gained a 30 ME advantage in the start, which is when ME matters most. It doesn't matter if you don't like some of the cards. Not having to pay for the ones you like is a double bonus for the start when it matters the most.

And the rules say the beginner corp is for beginners, so you should not see your other 2 corp options if you don't choose beginner. PLAIN AND SIMPLE