Weekly Trash - Cosmic Encounter

Well, all right, I'll give you the sales pitch on the FFG version. I'm rather biased, of course.

1. 50 aliens, about 16 of which haven't been in any previous printing (including several of the very best homebrewed aliens to ever hit the internet). The aliens are sorted into rankings and I took great care to simplify timing and cosmic zap issues. I carefully selected aliens from the available pool to try to deliver the best play experience. I chose them with an eye towards fun interactions and nifty, simple powers.

2. Flares. Aside from the Eon edition, no other version of Cosmic has the reusable flares that so many players love. They add a new level of strategy to the game by providing another layer of hand management (and greatly change the effect of negotiate cards on the game). While I altered some effects that were unfun or repetitive in playtests, I tried to keep the unique feel of each flare. So far, the oldtimers have been very happy with the flares.

3. Look and Utility. The new edition features attractive art (in glorious pulp sci-fi tradition), clean graphic design, and a number of improvements to layout and formatting that make the game easier to teach or learn. A nicer looking game is more able to draw in players, and well organized components can make a game easier to play. For example, many of the basic rules of the game are now found on the cards themselves (An attack card briefly explains what happens when it is opposed by another Attack or a Negotiate, while a Red destiny card explains itself, including what happens if the Red player draws it).

4. The Cosmic Deck. It's also worth noting that I did a lot of work in streamlining the deck. Several artifact (edict) cards got rolled together where they seemed too specialized (such as Edict Zap, Flare Zap, and Un-Zap) or confusing (such as Stellar Gas, which is now Ionic Gas and cancels both compensation AND defender rewards, since everyone tries to play it that way anyhow.) I applied a chunk of probability to it in order to improve the odds that players get (on average) what I would consider a fun hand of cards. The ideal hand that the deck is designed towards is 4 Attacks, 1.5 Negotiates, .5 Reinforcements, 1 Artifact, and 1 Flare. I plan to be very cautious in expanding this main deck (I have other ideas about how to add cards into the game.)

5. Technology. New to this edition is a play variant that I designed called Technology. In it, you can use your ships to research technologies that will give you new one-shot or reusable abilities, such as the Omega Missile, which blows up a planet. Playtesters all liked it and said it fit nice and seamlessly into the game without slowing down play. It adds an extra element of resource management in that you are splitting your ships between fighting and researching, and it has been very positively received.

6. Physical Quality. The pieces in the new set are excellent quality. The cardboard is thick and chunky, in FFG's usual style. The plastic UFOs have a great hand feel and stack nicely, plus you can turn them upside down and spin them like tops (a bonus for twitchy gamers like myself). The cards are durable, with linen texture and bright colors to make it easy to tell what your hand is like in moments. The use of planet tokens instead of system hexes allows the game to be compressed into a small space or spread out, as you prefer, and there are pieces to keep track of things like the Warrior's experience, not to mention a scoring track on the warp to help avoid those wins where you realize that you missed a base sitting behind a pile of ships in another system.

So, there you go. My utterly biased list of improvements in the new edition.

A question on the color coding of the aliens...

The page 6 rules say to deal each player 2 aliens and then they get to pick which one to play. This is followed by a little note about the color coding of the aliens.

The way it came across to me when I read it was:

-Deal everyone two aliens
-they pick which one they want, using the color coding as a guide (Players might think along the lines of: should I keep it simple since I'm new to the game with a green one or take a chance with a red one).

The color coding would be a guide only, but all colors would possibly be in play.

The other way I could see it is that you seperate out the colors you want and only deal those ones.

Of course once I get the game I can do whatever I want with it, just curious how you played it in playtesting. If you seperate out the colors, did you decide by the group or by the player? So if two newbies are playing to experienced players, they new guys could request green aliens and the more experienced guys could still play yellow or red.

Kevin, sounds like you really dealt with all the problems that players have found over the years. I have often felt some of the Zaps are too specialized, but it never occurred to me that they should be rolled up.

Something you could add to your sales pitch (if you deem it's worth mentioning, obviously): After playing the online version many times, I saw the beauty of a fast-paced 4 planet/4 base game. I've tried this with my Mayfair set as a variant, but 5-planet hexes make it a bit awkward. With your separate planet pieces it would be no problem to play with only 4.

I recommend only playing with the green aliens when there's a beginner playing. If someone else picks Virus, the system doesn't really do any good.

But will this game pull chicks?

Mr Skeletor wrote:

But will this game pull chicks?

Not if you're having the Virus!

unfortunately the new version doesn't come eith the *Best Power Ever*. The Snivelers have the power to whine. You can whine about not haveing specific combat cards or having few ships and people have to give you theirs or loose them. I rarely win with the snivelers but they're so damn fun I don;t really care. The collective groans from the group is reward enough!

Steve"Sniveler"Avery

Ugh. Sniveler makes me want to hurt myself, others, or both. Bleh.

But ... I'm in the minority there. You're about the fifth or sixth person I've seen posting the pro-Sniveler sentiment in the past two or so weeks, so there's obviously some strong feeling abut it in the greater CE community.

Ugh. Sniveler makes me want to hurt myself, others, or both. Bleh.

Which is exactly why I love them!!

Steve"Pain in the Ass"Avery

I remember watching a game which I thought was CE once where some guy had everyone calling him "Sir" in every sentence or there was some sort of penalty. Was that game CE and if so what race was it?

Mr Skeletor wrote:

I remember watching a game which I thought was CE once where some guy had everyone calling him "Sir" in every sentence or there was some sort of penalty. Was that game CE and if so what race was it?

It could have been. It was probably from a moon effect (an optional expansion item) rather than an alien power, though. The "polite moon" from the Mayfair edition does exactly what you're describing ... and it's about as sumb as it sounds. I was never a big fan of the sillier moons.

Was that a rather ugly edition? The one I was watching was black and white from memory, rather ugly and old looking.

TheDukester wrote:

Ugh. Sniveler makes me want to hurt myself, others, or both. Bleh.

But ... I'm in the minority there. You're about the fifth or sixth person I've seen posting the pro-Sniveler sentiment in the past two or so weeks, so there's obviously some strong feeling abut it in the greater CE community.

I don't miss the Sniveler either. People playing the Sniveler tend to actually role-play the sniveling, which quickly gets annoying.

Shellhead wrote:

TheDukester wrote:

Ugh. Sniveler makes me want to hurt myself, others, or both. Bleh.

But ... I'm in the minority there. You're about the fifth or sixth person I've seen posting the pro-Sniveler sentiment in the past two or so weeks, so there's obviously some strong feeling abut it in the greater CE community.

I don't miss the Sniveler either. People playing the Sniveler tend to actually role-play the sniveling, which quickly gets annoying.

That's three against, then. For exactly the same reasons. One guy in my old group used to really ham this one up.

The annoying meta-game power I do miss is the Seeker, though.

"Have you stopped molesting farm animals yet?"

Mr Skeletor wrote:

Was that a rather ugly edition? The one I was watching was black and white from memory, rather ugly and old looking.

It's pretty no-frills...

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/123/389833498_e2b4ab16f1.jpg?v=0

The polite moon was one of the "cheese" moons - the silly ones had a cheese icon so you could easily remove them if you weren't feeling insane.