Weekly Trash - Cosmic Encounter

Thanks for all the info. With that short a game I'm very tempted to get it. I'm going back and forth...

I've been waffling on this but I've pretty much decided on getting it.

It's really funny. You guys are decrying what a bad year for AT it is, and then FFG comes out with 3 games that are making me think it's the strongest year for AT in years--I mean shit, I've traditionally been a major wargamer and I'll be getting CE and BSG this christmas and no wargames.

Arrrrgh...Amazon says CE won't get to me until Christmas Eve. They usually highball their estimates a bit, but still.

:grinds teeth:

It's really funny. You guys are decrying what a bad year for AT it is, and then FFG comes out with 3 games that are making me think it's the strongest year for AT in years

FFG really delivered right here at the end of the year- BSG, ANDROID, COSMIC ENCOUNTER, the TALISMAN reprint and it looks like AGE OF CONAN (if it's any good)will probably be out before christmas. If it weren't for these releases, I'd say that it was the weakest year for AT games since 2003-2004 easily.

It's sad though, that FFG is the only company really doing something at this level of consistent quality. I'd like to see other companies compete with them. I was thinking about it the other day and I was realizing that FFG now publishes or controls the reprint rights to at least 50% of my top 20 games of all time.

Michael Barnes wrote:

FFG really delivered right here at the end of the year- BSG, ANDROID, COSMIC ENCOUNTER, the TALISMAN reprint and it looks like AGE OF CONAN (if it's any good)will probably be out before christmas.

I'm pretty sure Conan is not scheduled till next year.

I was thinking since they had the rules up it was on its way, especially since everybody in the world has played it but me it seems...but yeah, I guess their christmas stuff is shipped now (CE, ANDROID, TALISMAN).

I admit it. I'm buying into the hype and am now eagerly awaiting CE. How well does it scale? How well suited is it to more casual gamers?

4-6 and very.

My Gameshark piece this week will almost definitely be about CE with a focus on the new edition.

Awesome. I'm really looking forward to it. I think it'll be good with my weekly game group, but I'm hoping it'll appeal to more casual gamers as well.

I'm looking forward to the review!

Well, I just went ahead and ordered it. It was between this and Fury of Dracula. I hope I made the right choice. But I guess I couldn't really go wrong. It's not like the choice was between CE and Bison.

I seem to be one of a small number of people who own the GW edition of Cosmic Encounter.

I can't say I've ever been a huge fan of the game - it's okay, but I dislike the way you don't get to choose who you pick on (I appreciate it's an essential part of the design, but I still don't like it), the "compromise" cards seem a bit pointless and some of the alien powers in my edition at least (the Virus for example) are absurdly unbalanced.

But .. no-one ever seems to reference how the GW edition stacks up against other versions of the game. It has no flares or any of that other stuff - it's pretty much basic CE as far as I can tell.

So the question is, given that I already own one version of the game, which I'm lukewarm about, is it worth my getting the FFG version? Will it add enough stuff to seriously improve the game?

Matt,

I'm sure the virus has a disproportionate win ratio, but you'd be surprised how many times a seemingly harmless alien like the Empath sneaks in a win because everyone's shitting their pants over the virus. The bottom line is the virus doesn't show up every game, and when he does, he brings a special kind of fear and excitement to the table. He may win more often than he "should", but as one of the designers once famously said, "balance is boring!"

I don't know the GW version, but my Mayfair version seems bloated with crap after playing the online version about 100 times (which only had about 10 aliens last I played ). I don't have the FFG version yet but I get the feeling it's going to have just the right balance.

Compromises pointless?

Poor Virus ... he's always mentioned in these "too powerful" discussions. Every time.

Here's the thing, though: of the 50 aliens in the FFG box, Virus isn't among the five most powerful. He might be in the top 10.

But many players (especially casual players or first-timers) see those big numbers and think he's unbeatable. But that's the rough equivalent of walking up to the beginning of a Settlers game and instantly declaring the player who built on the 6-ore hex the winner. While that might be a nice starting position, there's about 75 other factors that are also going to determine the winner.

I don't want to pound on this horse too much, since this isn't a "let's compare CE powers!" thread, but I'll close with five reasons why winning with Virus is much harder than it looks:

* He is rarely, if ever, invited to ally;
* He is a magnet for zaps;
* Not to mention a magnet for other annoying artifacts, particularly the plague;
* He is, clearly, the worst alien in the game when defending with zero ships;
* He is also the worst alien in the game when or attacking or defending with one ship.

This sort of discussion is one of the big reasons for the alien rating system in the new edition. Green aliens for beginners, yellow for intermediate, and red aliens for experienced Cosmic players. A beginning player, when faced by the Virus, will simply throw up his hands in disgust and proclaim the game 'broken'. He simply doesn't have the skills in his arsenal yet to effectively handle the Virus. With the rating system, I hope to reduce the number of beginners overwhelmed by that sort of situation.

A more experienced player starts to understand the power of card flow and how to use the various other aspects of the game to stem the virus's advance. He draws cards away from the Virus by negotiating (compromising, in the old terminology), lets the Virus spread himself out, weakening his power, and then starts to whittle away. When a Virus planet is conquered, pretty much everyone can then easily get a base there, since no matter what card Virus plays, 0 * anything = 0.

In the end, the Virus finds himself with plenty of friends when attacking (if he's foolish enough to invite them), but he's very seldomly invited along to attack or defend, since his power is worthless as an ally, and most players are very cautious about letting him get cards or ships as a defender reward. Really, it's a good thing that the Virus is his own best friend.

I hear a lot of talk about how chaotic Cosmic Encounter is, but for me the game is satisfyingly strategic, filled with shifting alliances and an incredible variety of play. Certainly, if you get upset every time your intricately crafted plans are disrupted by a clever card play, Cosmic is not your kind of game. Cosmic Encounter is a game of adaptation and constant re-evaluation. For me, Cosmic was my favorite game before I ever got to work on the new edition. I love seeing the alien powers interact like gears in a machine. I love wheeling and dealing to get allies for a crucial attack, and I love blowing another player's mind by doing the unexpected and slipping in for the win.

Interesting responses. In truth I haven't played CE since I was a teenager - so it's entirely possible that I completely failed to appreciate its complex subtleties at an age when all I really wanted to do in games was Kill Things With Big Weapons. However the slightly bitter taste it left in my mouth has kept the game sitting on my shelf all these years without another play.

So, Kevin, and anyone else in the know, aside from the colour rating system, any other reasons I should bother trading up my GW version for the FFG printing?