we had a busy week and only managed to get our group together for a long session Terraforming Mars- it was a 4 player game with one new player at the table. While the newcomer did good, it came down to us other three to see who contributes the most.
I had a terrible start with almost all cards being useless early game. I had the Tardigrade card as my only card for 3 generations. I managed to claw my back back into the game by pursuing aggressive card-drawing strats. Placing oceans on the card-drawing hexes and take every opportunity to draw more until I had some decent cards on the table. Only ever build 2 cities and 2 greeneries but managed to get a head in the terraforming score by having some good science cards. In the end it was not enough still. My gf won the game scoring a whooping 23 points just from her cards and additional 10 points being first with 3 cities and 8 construction cards. She also got the Titan/Iron competition and flew ahead by 3 points. In-between me and her was our third player who is a longtime veteran of the game. While she had an amazing early game, her late-game faultered a bit.
For me, the game plays extremely well with 4 even though it can be a bit long.