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Cosmic Encounter Duel Gets Lost to Warp - Review
- Michael Barnes
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- Mountebank
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- HYPOCRITE
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- hotseatgames
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It also makes me wonder... how would people feel about this game if they had never played the original?
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- Andi Lennon
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- Do your thing
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That said, this was worth it just for the tag:
"Wow, wouldn't a 2 player Cosmic be cool?"
No.
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- san il defanso
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- ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
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It's also worth noting that the process in Cosmic Encounter is almost all some kind of parameter that manages the interaction. Essentially the rules are guardrails. In other games, the process of playing is meant to be managed in a way the Cosmic doesn't always seem very interested in. I mean, you CAN manage it, and indeed good players will do so, but it defies that sort of management at the same time.
On one level it's pretty interesting to see a two-player interpretation, even one that doesn't work very well. Cosmic is a big enough game that five people can look at it and have five different interpretations on what the "soul" of the experience is. But it sounds like this product wasn't very well-developed or polished, which is an odd oversight for FFG. I hate seeing standalone products like this not work, because I want to see fewer serialized purchases from FFG, but it sounds from your review like this is a total bust.
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- Matt Thrower
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- Shiny Balls
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It sounds like those two core concepts might well make the basis of a decent two player CE variant, but it's been buried in an over-complex, over-engineered design. I'd still try it if I got the chance, I guess.
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So, as I said above, I've played 4 games of it, and they all were all enjoyable and played quite differently. I will not quibble with calling the game very random, as it definitely is. You sometimes are not in control of your destiny, but you could certainly argue that your decisions also influenced where you ended up. Clearly this was meant to imbue the game with some of the chaos of the original, and I can see why some see this as a negative. But it also allows for some very different outcomes. What was important to me is that I almost always felt like I had interesting decisions to make during the game, even if I could just simply get screwed by a random card that throws all my plans away. Kinda sounds like Cosmic to me, it's just the game doing it instead of another player.
In Barnes' example of being down 4 to nothing and winning due to an event, that may seem unsatisfying. But, that also indicates he was still in it, even while being decimated. And I could argue why was his son so low on ships? Maybe he sent too many ships early on in the game or chose to draw cards instead of retrieving ships from the warp (that's something you have to manage more carefully in this game that you don't need to in CE). But I'm saying this all hypothetically, maybe his son was never able to retrieve any ships and it was all just bad luck.
One example of a CE:Duel game had my son up 4 to 3 on me (you still play to 5 colonies). The next planet duel that came up had the caveat that if the player that wins the duel also wins the game, they actually lose the game. So now my son has to do everything he can to lose that planet, I win the planet easily, saving resources for the next duel. So now we're tied at 4, and the next planet duel that comes up says that no ships retreat at the end and if both players win the game, it's a shared victory. I couldn't blow up all of his ships, and thus we ended with a shared victory. That was a satisfying series of random events.
And to say base CE isn't random, let me recount one of the last times I played CE. Another player and myself were at 4 colonies and it was his turn. Much effort was spent by the collective group to keep him from winning that encounter and he was narrowly defeated. And then on my turn, I drew the flare card that just lets you get a foreign colony for simply playing it, which I did and then won the game. My friend, who was playing his first game of CE, was incredulous that I basically won simply because I drew the "you win" card from the deck. And I can't say he was wrong (yeah, I guess if someone had a Zap it would have been different). Anyhow, I've always though CE had a strong element of randomness, so not sure why it's such a harsh criticism here.
My biggest complaint for CE:Duel is that the alien powers seem a bit tame compared to CE, though some are more interesting then others. My last game I could steal played cards from my opponent and put them under my Alien or take a random card from under my alien and force him to use it without either of us looking at it. That led to some mind games about did he play a good card or a bad one (expecting me to take it).
I guess I'll just say if you can try out the game (hard to do in a pandemic, I know), I wouldn't completely write it off. But by the same token, you need to go into it with the right expectations.
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- BackBurnerGames
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I don't like CEDuel as much as CE, but that's a really tall order, as CE is one of my Top 5 All-Time Board Games (TM). For what it is, though, CEDuel gives you a good taste of the CE world if that's what you're in the mood to play, but don't have the people to play it. I will never NOT want to play CE, but there will be times I won't be in the mood for CEDuel. A 2-player version of Cosmic Encounter was never going to be like the original, so I choose to take the game for the merits of what it is, not what it isn't.
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