Cosmic Encounter

Earlier this month I bough a highly recommended game called Cosmic Encounter. A classic of thirty years, Cosmic Encounter is a negotiation strategy game set in space. The game has apparently influenced games such as the Dune board game (which shares designers), and Magic The Gathering.

In Cosmic Encounter, players choose a color with five planets  — or four for a shorter game– and twenty ships stationed on each planet. Players get eight cards out of the play deck at the start of the game. The goal of the game is to gain five(four in a short game) foreign planets.

To begin an encounter, a player draws out of a “destiny” deck to determine which color the player will attack. The attacking player chooses which planet of that color to attack and sends up to four ships through a wormhole. Both sides then commence to call for allies for the attack or defense. The play cards include numbered attack cards, artifact cards, negotiate cards and reinforcement cards –small numbers with a plus. Both sides draw either an attack card or negotiate card from their hand faced down and reveal after both are played. Ships in combat are added to the attack card’s total and highest number wins with the losing side losing their ships to the warp — similar to the graveyard in Magic. The winning attacker and its allies get to place their ships and gain a colony on the foreign planet. A defender who draws Negotiate loses the planet and ships, but gets reparations in the form of cards from the attacker’s hand equal to the number of ships lost. If both players draw negotiate, they have one minute to come to a deal (cards, colonies, etc) or all ships are lost. Reinforcement cards may be played after the attack cards are revealed.

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What makes Cosmic Encounter unique is the inclusion of alien powers, each of which breaks the basic rules. At the beginning of the game, players are given two flare cards which have a default power name at the top. Players choose which one of the two will be their default power and receive a large card for display and explanation. Both flare cards get shuffled into the play deck, these flare cared contain “wild” powers for whoever does not have the labeled alien power and a “super” for the player who possesses the labeled alien power. The first game I played I shortsightedly put all fifty flare cards into the play deck, which basically gave everyone flares to play at whim. While some powers may seem unbalanced to the point of breaking the game (Virus multiplies the ship total with the attack card number, Zombie never loses ships) these imbalances encourage other players to gang up on the unbalanced player. These powers assure great replayability and unique playing styles to the core game.

The Dice Tower may explain the rules better than I can.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAGdKMMnk-U&w=425&h=344]

I purchased the Fantasy Flight Games version released last year although I admire the Avalon Hill version’s sexy early-90s graphic design. While a piece was missing from the package, I contacted FFG and received the missing piece in the mail free of charge. Thanks Fantasy Flight.

A fan blog Blogmic Encounter goes into detail about strategies and news about the game.<An expansion by Fantasy Flight del datetime=”2009-11-25T00:15:52+00:00″> will appear in time for the Holidays may appear in February. I am now inspired to make a Cosmic Encounter playlist with each song based on the alien powers.