Cosmic Encounter - A Review

Greetings gamers

Gravius here with a little trip into the world of board games, although todays’ game doesn’t really have much of a board to speak of but rather enjoys the limitless confines of the universe as its playground (come to think of it, with that much space available why are all these weird and wild alien races desperately trying to establish colonies on my five planets? Anyway I digress…).

This week I shall be reviewing Cosmic Encounter, a game for 3-5 players, by Fantasy Flight Games.

Our weekly gaming group has had Cosmic Encounter in our collection for a good few months now, and I’m confident in saying it is pretty much our favourite board game.

There’s never really a good reason not to play it, it’s pretty quick compared to a lot of our games (here’s looking at you Game of Thrones!) and it at least allows someone to win (that one’s for you Arkham Horror!). The best part about the game has got to be the bizarre and varied alien races though, which each drastically and differently affect, what at its core is a really simple game.


Ciaran> Last week was my first play at Cosmic Encounter so my perspective in this review is as a first time player. It is refreshing in that it is very simple and very quick to get into which is something that is starting to become a must for alot of adult gamers out there who are trying to balance busy lives with their hobby. There is not many components to the game other than planets, ships and cards which again helps the pace of play and keeps things simple.  

How to Win

The rules are pretty straight-forward, each player starts the game with five planets and picks a race at random, which gives him a special power for the duration of the game. The aim of the game is to gain five colonies on your opponents’ planets before the other players, and you do this by attacking their planets with your ships. At the basic level it’s that simple.

How to Play

Each player takes it in turns to attack one planet of a randomly chosen opposing player, which is drawn from a deck that tells you who to attack. This is a useful contrivance in order to stop players from ganging up on a weaker opponent or targeting a weakened player in order to get an easy victory.

In order to establish a colony you use your ships to attack the chosen planet and your opponent uses the ships on that planet to defend. Each player can ask for allies, offering whatever enticements may be needed, who can help out by adding their ships. Finally, the attacking and defending player each choose one card from their hand (most of which have attack values ranging from zero to 40) and add that to their number of ships, with the higher total winning.

The turn then moves to the next player, who chooses an opponent at random, and attacks one of their planets in much the same way. Rinse and repeat until 1 player has gained five colonies.

Whilst this is pretty much the majority of the game there are just the right amount of embellishments to always keep the game entertaining and intriguing, right to the final colony.

What passes for a board where the universe is concerned

The Extras

Tech

In order to keep the game from getting stale there are a few mechanics that keep players on their toes. Firstly, each player can research various technological upgrades (by spending ships, with the more powerful techs costing more ships, thus reducing your defences for a few turns while they work on the tech). Which once complete can add an extra colony, add extra attack power to your ships or simply obliterate an enemy planet, and anything on it, from the face of the universe (that one is a particular favourite).

While researching a tech, at the start of each players turn you have the option to commit one more ship to its research, gaining you the tech more quickly but possibly leaving your home planets or colonies vulnerable to attack. The simple mechanic of using your ships to contribute to research means you never really have a solid foothold on any planet or colony, and every time someone flips that random target card over, you’re praying it’s not you.

Flares

Flares are powerful abilities which, if you’re lucky, you can draw into you hand of cards from the main deck. Flares are all related to a certain alien race and whilst any race can use any flare in their hand, the flares are more powerful if you use the one that relates to your race.

Flare cards are not discarded after use but go back to the player’s hand, with the proviso that they may not be used again that turn.

Whilst the attack cards are just numbers, and the tech cards all have some form of logic to them (more expensive to research meaning more powerful, so if someone got 10 ships stacked up researching their tech you know it’s going to be good when it activates), the flare cards can have some extremely random and powerful effects, with the beauty being, you never know who’s got one until they play it.

Before flare cards attacking was just a matter of odds, you know how many ships you have to attack with, you know if you have a relatively high attack card or not, and can therefore, feel pretty confident about whether you’ll win or not. However, flare cards introduce just enough of an uncertainty to always make things wary. Sure that planet looks pretty undefended and I’ve got a high power attack card, but what if that player has that one flare card that says the player with the lower total wins this battle? The odds are low but what if it’s a trap, why else is that planet so poorly defended?

It’s those little moments of doubt, in what should be a pretty simple odds calculation, that keep this game interesting. Especially when you have the full complement of 5 players and it isn’t only the person you’re attacking directly you have to worry about.

Races

The final and most interesting pieces of the Cosmic Encounter puzzle are the races themselves. There are about 30 different races and because we choose them at random there are still some we’ve yet to play with and against.

Each race has a power which affects a certain aspect of the game, and often when you read these powers in isolation you think it is the most overpowered ability imaginable. Then you see five equally overpowered and crazy abilities on the table and you can’t help but revel in the madness of every turn. A few quick examples of the races available help to sum up the awesomeness that is on offer. (note: the upside down wording is so the other players can see your power at a glance, from across the board / universe).

Anti-Matter (that’s right you can play as anti-matter)

Effectively anti-matter’s power is that the lower total always wins in combats involving its ships, a pretty simple ability that completely turns the easy combat calculations on its head. But that only counts when fighting against the anti-matter, so having low power combat cards is probably useless against all the other players, and because you never know who will attack who, thanks to the random draw, you can’t really plan ahead to use a certain card at a certain time.

Zombie (a kind of space-zombie-giant-tentacle-mouth-beast thing)

The zombie race never loses its ships if it loses a battle. Everyone else, when they lose a battle lose all ships involved to the warp (and you can only get back one ship a turn without the use of special cards or tech). Whilst is doesn’t make combat any more complicated or uncertain to calculate like the Anti-Matter, the Zombie is always at full ship capacity, and therefore, capable of dealing a serious blow to anyone he attacks. Just one more thing to consider when deciding how well defended each of your colonies should be.

Masochist (erm…yeah, he likes pain, a lot)

This races power is one of the simplest. If the Masochist loses all his ships he wins the game. But you can’t just let him win all his battles because then you’ll just lose your ships and won’t be able to win yourself. But you can’t just kill his ships off all the time as then he’ll win because he likes getting his ships killed. It's a quandry.

There is no need to adjust your screen, you are now experiencing ...Games-Knight. 

Gravius> Taken individually, each race poses an awkward enough situation on its own. However, when you have five races all with similarly bizarre powers, slugging it out all at the same time it can be fantastically entertaining. 

What started off as a simple ‘my number vs. your number’ fight to the finish has descended into a thoroughly enjoyable hour of anarchy and confusion as vessels from the farthest, and most confounding, corners of the universe desperately strive to be the ones to conquer your five humble planets.

For me, this game is a really good hours entertainment. It's simple to learn the basics, but is kept fresh by the varied races and powers that crop up from game to game. After a good few months play, there's still something new each time we get it out, be it a race we've never played before or a flare card we've never seen used. Without a doubt this game gets 5/5 for me. Get a few friends round and enjoy an evening of gaming that won't take itself too seriously, but will be thoroughly enjoyable because of it. 

Ciaran> There is not anything about this game you can find to dislike. It is quick and simple to play and will offer you and your gaming buddies a good hour of fun. It is not a game to take seriuosly it really is just a good old fashioned board game for an hours worth of fun. (Despite the lack of a board but we can gloss over that) I think it is a game that suites 4 or more players better but that really is a matter of opinion. Its is also good to see an 'original' game from Fanatsy Flight as opposed to one based on a brand / franchise. For me this is a 4/5 and I look forward to sharing a Cosmic Encounter with my gaming pals again in the future.

And Finally…

I’d just like to leave you with this. If you think Cosmic Encounter is all about weird alien races with complicated and often unfathomable powers, duking it out across the stars…well you’re pretty much right…but there is one bastion of hope for us earth dwellers. We can take comfort in the knowledge that if Cosmic Encounter is in any way representative of our universe (and I like to think it is) humanity will have established its rightful place and authority amongst these varied alien races.