Terraforming Mars: Prelude

After paying for corporations and project cards in setup there is an extra setup round where each player plays the two Prelude cards they kept in player order; the remaining Prelude cards are discarded, and the whole setup counts as generation 1 (page 2).

Prelude cards do not cost anything to keep and “work like green cards,” staying in play with their tags visible (page 2).

A wild tag does not trigger effects when put into play and does not count during end-game scoring, but after it’s played you may treat it as a tag of your choice when you perform an action (for example to help claim a milestone) (page 3).

The five Prelude corporations are shuffled into the corporation deck (you may be dealt one like any other corporation); as a variant you can deal each player one Prelude corporation and one regular corporation if you wish (page 2).

When using Prelude in solo you have 12 generations to complete terraforming (mark generation 12 with a gold cube); the TR solo variant’s goal is TR 63 in 14 generations (or 12 generations if playing with Prelude), and introduces the BUFFER GAS standard project (page 3).