The premium cards
Out of 208 project cards, the community’s most complete card-by-card review puts just 14 in S tier and 29 in A tier. These are the ones to know by name — when one appears in your research phase, the default is buy it, and passing needs a reason. (Remember every card’s true price is printed cost
- 3 MC.)
Cards marked ▲2p are a tier better than listed in your two-player games.
S tier — near-auto-buy
Section titled “S tier — near-auto-buy”| Card | Why |
|---|---|
| AI Central | 2 free cards every generation — and cards are the game’s scarcest resource. One catch: it’s a long-game card; if you can’t play it by ~gen 5, skip it. |
| Deimos Down ▲2p | 3 temperature steps in ONE action + the biggest plant kill in the game. Holding it lets you dictate when the temperature race ends. |
| Earth Catapult | Every card costs 2 less, forever. Nets an estimated 40-80 MC over a game played early. Several strong players call it the #1 card in the game. |
| Ecological Zone | The heart of the green combo — an animal for every plant/animal tag you play after it, plus a special tile with real placement value. |
| Giant Ice Asteroid ▲2p | 3 TR in one action (2 temp + ocean) and it eats 6 plants. Head-to-head it’s “basically a seven-point swing.” |
| Insects | +1 plant production per plant tag — the only plant producer that scales with what you were building anyway. |
| Kelp Farming | The best flat plant producer: 3 plant production + 2 MC production + 2 plants, one card. |
| Large Convoy | Up to 7 VP on one card with a 1-point animal in play — the biggest single-card score in the deck. Early, it’s 7 plants and an ocean instead. |
| Mars University | Cycles a dead card into a fresh one on every science tag. Draw, a point, steel-payable. |
| Nitrogen-Rich Asteroid | With 3 plant tags: +2 TR and +3 plant production. Watch Matthew’s plant tags — this is the card he’s saving for. |
| Research Outpost | A 1 MC discount on everything plus a free city that grabs a bonus and collects greenery points later. |
| Restricted Area | The only continuous card draw with zero requirements — fires from generation 1. Pay 2, draw a card, forever. |
| Terraforming Ganymede | +1 TR per Jovian tag. With a Jovian line it’s the biggest TR swing in the game (up to +10). |
| Viral Enhancers | Every plant/microbe/animal tag afterwards yields a free resource — and the instant plants let you convert to a greenery before an asteroid lands. |
A tier — strong, usually buy
Section titled “A tier — strong, usually buy”The engines: Media Group (3 MC per event, no setup — arguably S) · Optimal Aerobraking (3 MC + 3 heat per event) · Earth Office (costs 1 MC, pays after two Earth tags) · Olympus Conference · Research (the only double-science card) · Mass Converter (6 energy production for 8 MC — the most efficient power card by far) · Advanced Alloys-style metal boosts ride here too.
The plant machine: Arctic Algae (2 plants on every ocean anyone places — up to ~19 plants a game, arguably S) · Trees (3 plant production, no setup) · Decomposers (the cheapest good microbe collector) · Herbivores · Mangrove (the cheapest greenery, dodges adjacency rules) · Imported Hydrogen · Imported Nitrogen.
The point scorers: Birds and Fish (1-VP-per-generation animals — play them with 5-6 generations left and they’re among the best cards in the game) · Ganymede Colony, Io Mining Industries, Water Import from Europa (the Jovian multipliers — expensive, and they win games anyway) · Anti-Gravity Technology (7 science tags is a wall; behind it, a 2 MC discount on everything + 3 VP).
The tempo events: Big Asteroid (two heat steps in one action) · Towing a Comet · Lake Marineris (2 oceans + 2 VP — strong while good ocean spots remain) · Nuclear Zone · Mohole Area (a temperature bump every other generation by itself).
The attack package — all ▲2p: Predators (steals an animal per generation — the biggest swing in the game when it lands early) · Sabotage (4 MC all-in destroys 7-9 MC of his stuff and wrecks a turn he’d already planned) · Virus (4 MC: eat 5 of his plants or 2 animals — the cheapest 2 points in the game) · Protected Habitats (5 MC for total immunity to resource removal; head-to-head this turns his entire attack hand into dead cardboard — the single biggest two-player riser in the deck).
The contested ones (worth knowing the argument)
Section titled “The contested ones (worth knowing the argument)”- Standard Technology — listed B by one expert, ranked #1 in the game by two others: it makes every standard project card-efficient and gives you an on-demand answer to anything. Treat it as at least A.
- Pets — long underrated; the consensus now is ~6-7 discounted VP, “like a seventh milestone.” Treat as A-ish.
- Heat Trappers — revised up to “the strongest hate card in the base game,” specifically at two players. ▲2p.
- Strip Mine — two famous lists call it top-10; the careful math says it’s a 5-generation payback once you price the energy production it eats. Fine with cheap energy, not elite.
The one-line summary of the whole premium list: engines that draw or discount, plants in every form, multi-step TR events, and — because it’s just the two of you — every card that touches Matthew’s stuff.