How to use this guide

This is a strategy guide, not a rulebook. It assumes you know how a turn works and what the cards do when you read them. What it adds is the layer above that: how strong players think — what they buy, what they skip, and why they always seem to have money when you don’t.

If you have ten minutes

Read The big picture and then The cheat sheet. Those two pages carry the core of everything else.

If you have an hour

Add these three, in order:

1. The economy of Mars — where money actually comes from.
2. Judging any card — the five-second test you run on every card you’re offered.
3. Two-player is different — because you two play head-to-head, and most advice online is written for four players.

During the game

Use the search bar at the top of the sidebar. Every corporation and every notable card is in here by name — if Matthew plays something scary, look it up and see what the community thinks of it. The rankings pages are built for mid-game consultation: tier first, one-line “why” next to it.

How the tiers work

S take it nearly every time · A strong, usually right · B good in the named situation · C playable filler · D usually a skip · F a trap — looks tempting, loses quietly.

Tiers are priors, not laws. A C card can be the best card in your hand if the board says so. The one-line why beside each ranking is the part that transfers to situations the tier can’t see.

One honest note: there is no single correct way to play this game, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What this guide gives you is the shared vocabulary of strong play — the defaults you deviate from on purpose instead of by accident.