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In this video I go over the 12 base game corporations and rank them based on their strength and flexibility when playing with base game and preludes. I already made such a tier list in 2021 but since then, my opinion on a lot of these corps has changed, so I deemed it necessary to update it!
I hope you enjoy the video and if you do, please leave a like and consider subscribing 🙂
Intro: (0:00)
Credicor: (1:06)
Ecoline: (3:11)
Helion: (5:13)
Interplanetary Cinematics: (7:35)
Inventrix: (10:00)
Mining Guild: (11:54)
Phobolog: (14:22)
Saturn Systems: (16:13)
Terractor: (17:57)
Tharsis Republic: (19:12)
Thorgate: (21:14)
UNMI: (23:02)
Outro: (24:42)
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I think Phobolog is very strong when it works. I won all of my 3 TM games this year (I don't remember if I played TM more in 2023, before those 3) with this corp. But it might be very rare statistically.
1st time I ever play I had Phobolog no drafting I never got a space tag card entire game it was not fun
I would knock down mining guild and saturn systems to C tier, otherwise I think it's pretty solid rankings
you should do a corporation tier list for different numbers of players
Tharsis Republic is S tier, especially if you're playing with preludes.
our games became shorter (number of generations) since we included colonies and turmoil, not longer
I hate that Thorgate is such a trap for new players. It breaks a sort of unwritten player-developer agreement that you shouldn't guide the player towards dead ends, that there should be some sort of strategic payoff when one is so heavily implied to exist and, in TM, Power Tags/Thorgate are exactly that, a huge dead end.
This isn't to say that energy/prod is bad, just that the Tag itself points you in the wrong direction. Power Tags pretty consistently just pay out in… more energy, and often not really efficiently enough to justify going out of your way to obtain the tags to play them.
There are, in the entirety of TM, only about 3 project cards that require Power Tags, and only one that explicitly cares about them. Less than 10% of cards have said Tags, over a third of which have requirements to play, meaning that said Tags are both uncommon and difficult to play, further making Thorgate just a little stinkier, but a new player doesn't have this perspective. When they pick up the game they expect the discount to be meaningful at the start of the game and often this leads them to pick up cards that are suboptimal to bad even when discounted, especially Power Grid.
Most new players' first experience with Thorgate probably ends with 5-6 energy production, no real use for it other than maybe a bumper, and a heinously low score.
Thorgate is, frankly, emblematic of one of TM's weakest elements.
Rant over.
Bravo
you should 3D map out a tier list where each axis is 2player, 3player, 4-5player creating a tier list plane. then you can do the tier planes for the various expansions added. could be cool to see how the planes transform over all the corps to see potential trends
Very useful, thanks 👌
So what you're saying here is that you'll beat my buns in T-mars lol! I haven't played in years but your video was in my recommended today.
are you planning to do tier lists on all the expos aswell?
I personally put Ecoline one down further but it's because I seem to be terrible with it, not due to anything logical. This list is great otherwise.