Flashback Friday - Cosmic Encounter - Love it or Hate It? Do you Still Play It?

If you want Cosmic Encounter to exist primarily as a strategic exercise, you should stick to the rules that Erik lays out. But as a game it is much more than that.

For me the interaction and the chaos are the most appealing aspects. The strategic elements anchor it, and they never entirely go away, but I've never been a gamer who cares most about a game's depth.

Still my favorite game. Playing it is always a good reminder that I probably have enough other games.

I have the red aliens sorted out in a separate bag. I doubt I'll ever get any of them out, because if I did, that would mean I had a table full of Cosmic experts.

I have enough expansions to play 8 players, which I hope to do at some point. I played an 8 player game at Gen Con once with randos and 2 friends. It was super fun, and amazing to me that a game could be good with strangers.

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san il defanso wrote: If you want Cosmic Encounter to exist primarily as a strategic exercise, you should stick to the rules that Erik lays out. But as a game it is much more than that.

This is true. For me the biggest appeal of Cosmic is that it's this fun, crazy game where experience matters little that also has some actual depth and skill involved. It's like my ideal party game because I can play "well" and do interesting, funs tuff without thinking "well, this is fun, but dumb".

But it's true there's far more to the game. Really, I just love seeing all the aliens and the idea of "How can I win with this weird power?" and just seeing them interact and so on. There's far more than strategy in Cosmic, but, like you say, it's what anchors it all together.

I'm in the boat that it needs to be more fun than strategic so I strongly prefer a higher player count because with three people (until recently the usual number in my AT group) you can see people thinking a bit too hard about it, so I don't pull it out unless I have at least four players (plus I have a lot of games that do three players much better) - meaning it hasn't got out much at all in the last few years. But the group has grown to four recently so I am going to squeeze it back into the game rota again.

I'm considering getting one (and only one) of the expansions for the FFG version of the game. My only requirement is that it be one that includes pieces for a sixth player. So, convince me which one I should buy. Thanks!

Greg Aleknevicus wrote: I'm considering getting one (and only one) of the expansions for the FFG version of the game. My only requirement is that it be one that includes pieces for a sixth player. So, convince me which one I should buy. Thanks!

Incursion has 20 new aliens, the Rewards deck, and adds another player.
Conflict has 20 new aliens, the Hazard deck, and adds another player.
Alliance has 20 new aliens, adds another player, and provides some rules for team play.
Storm has 25 new aliens and adds space stations (moons in the old Mayfair version.)
Dominion has 30 new aliens, most of them fan-designed, another Reward deck, and special ship markers.
Eons has 30 new aliens, the Essence deck, and Hidden Alliance rules and dials.

Based on your stated limitations, I'd go with Incursion, if you can still find it (it's from 2010.) The Reward deck changes the basic game the least and it adds another player like you want. CE fanatic that I am, I can hardly believe you want to stop at one, but whatevs.

Yeah, Incursion is the best choice. Conflict will do in a pinch as well, though the rewards deck is more fun than the hazard deck I think.

I once ran through all of Cosmic Encounter's expansions and manually wrote down how many aliens from each expansion I wanted and I think that shows the difference in quality of the expansions. Hence why I own some expansions and don't own others:

Both Incursion and Conflict have some of the best alien designs in the game and compliments the base game very well. I would pick them in that order because Incursion is slighty better alien-wise. The actual "expansions" aren't necessary but I would add Rewards to every non-beginner game while I wouldn't play with all other expansions.

Dominion is great and has mostly fan-designed aliens. They are all very interesting but it tends to be more complex in either play or design. Great expansion, but I don't think anyone who doesn't have the former two should get it.

I own those three expansions.

Alliances is weak. Most of the aliens are weak designs or mere variants of other, more interesting powers. It's one of those expansions I would only add a couple aliens from because every mediocre alien that gets plays is one less Loser, Virus or Filch we could be having fun with. I would pretty much get it for the (original!) Schizoid, Butler and perhaps a couple here and there.

Eons was better received but I don't like. It has the original designers on board and it strove to push the envelope. For many that's fgun, but for me it resulted in aliens that were too complex and perhaps unnecessary. While some liked them, having powers with a "hand of small power cards" is not a direction I think Cosmic should take. I might get this expansion in the future but I' not attracted.

The most interesting part of this expansion are the "alliance dials".

Storm is awful. Most aliens in the set are downright bad and many have development issues. A large amount are just worse, wordier less strategic variants of other aliens. There are no aliens I would want to add to my game and some that are complete anathema to both game design and fun. Hey, have a power that can choose to switch places with you! All you did this game is useless and now I benefit! There are powers in this expansion that more or less do nothing. Awful.

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Talking about which aliens are good: I now store my aliens in two of the expansion boxes inside the actual box. It's an obvious yet better way to store them than the handmade organizer I had and I can fit all aliens from the expansions I mentioned plus the base game. That's about 120 aliens! More than enough, I think. I also sleeve my aliens so chances are you can fit far more than I do if you don't.

While so far I've only cut one alien (Locust), I think there's value to only keeping the best of the best. Funnily enough, I thought about cutting Observers because it was "bad" only for it to keep winning!

By the way, I've been thinking about writing a bit more about the game. I think the world would welcome an article telling people why you shouldn't just invite everyone.

Thanks for the post, Erik, very helpful for the peanut gallery (me!) too.

Great post Erik, thanks! (And please do write that article -- I'd love to read it.)