Cosmic Encounter is a game designed for two to four players who seek out new planet systems. The first player to have five colonies on any planets outside of her home system wins the game.
The game comes with a lot of components and thankfully, my clumsy hands didn’t ruin any of them while punching the counters out. We have the following: 4 planet systems, 1 war, 80 ships, 20 of each color, 12 cardboard orders, 46 encounter cards, 8 artifact cards, 20 alien cards, one mothership, 4 carriers, and 4 holders for alien cards.
The planet systems are in essence, pieces of the board. They link up to the Warp. You place one planet system on the warp per player playing. You randomly select your alien. Each alien has a special ability that helps you to win the game. Each player starts with his full twenty ships, starting generally four to a planet.
Each player starts with seven cards. These cards are a mix of the encounter cards and artifact cards, all with the same backing and coloration so there’s no physical difference between them.
To start, you load up the mothership, with up to four ships, and go through the warp to another player’s system. The system you go to is determined by the orders you receive. In a two-player game, the orders aren’t used. Each order has a color corresponding to one of the four colors the players have.
Once you move the ship to the planet you wish to attack, determine say by the number of defending ships on that planet, you can call for allies. If any allies join you, they add their ships, up to four, on the mothership. The defending player can also call for allies.
A player who helps conquer successfully a planet, gets to land his ships there as well as the player who attacked. The player who helps successfully defend a planet gets a card from the deck, or take a ship from the warp, up to the number of ships committed to the defense. So if you play four ships for defense and win, you can take two ships out of the warp and two cards or four cards.
To determine who wins an encounter, each player uses a card. There are attack cards and negotiate cards. The attack cards are a number. If both players play attack cards, you add that number to the total number of ships you have, including allies. Higher person wins, loser goes to the Warp.
If both players pick negotiate cards, you have to negotiate a settlement within a minute or each player gives up three ships of their choice to the Warp. In the games I played, we generally went with trading cards, allowing a player to set up a colony, or agreeing to allow someone to call us for allies for say two rounds. It works well and the time limit helps keep the game moving.
If one player picks a negotiate card and the other an attack card, the one with the negotiation card automatically loses, but the loser gets compensation. They get to take one card from the opponent for each ship lost to the Warp.
There are a few other things going on. When starting a round, you regain one ship from the Warp. Not an issue at first as no one has lost any ships. When you run out of cards, you get a fresh seven new cards.
In terms of artifact cards, they have their own effects on the game. For example, Cosmic Zap allows you to nullify another player’s Alien Power. On the other hand, the Plague automatically kills three ships of another player’s right into the Warp. One of my favorite, Mobius Tubes, brings all ships back from the Warp, as long as you have one colony.
There are several levels of strategy to the game. While playing, you only have twenty ships. To hold onto your home colonies is important to a point because if you lose three or more of your home colonies, your alien power is nullified until you regain at least three of your home colonies.
When thinking about allies, you have to insure that you really want them. Each time you call for allies and succeed, you’re also making that player stronger. Now this can lead to simultaneous victories if you and the other player take over your fifth colony at the same time, but it can also lead that player to gaining more colonies than you if he doesn’t call for allies as much as you.
The components are nice solid pieces but the ships, carriers, and mothership are nothing well crafted or carved, instead resembling caltrops that drop into the carrier or mothership. Solidly built though with little details on them for those looking. The art on the cards and systems is well done and each system is individualized. The board game comes with separate components for the pieces, which is a huge time saver at the end of the game as you can quickly put the game away, store it, and bring it out without difficulty in handing out the pieces. The instructions are clear and easy to understand, offering advice and even campaign notes for those interested in longer games.
I found the two-player mode too boring as my friend and I played for over an hour and at the end of that hour, we were nearly in the exact same shape we started the game in. The game kicks up when playing with three or four players as alliances and the differences in alien powers come more clearly into effect.
In the games we played, I once played a sorcerer. The sorcerer can switch the played cards. For example, if I think that the enemy has a higher attack card and I don’t, I can play a negotiation card and switch them. Useful. However, one of my friends was playing the pacifist in one game, and their power is that if they play a negotiation card and the enemy plays an attack card, they win.
On another game I played, I was the healer. I could prevent player’s ships from going to the Warp and for every player I helped, I earned a card from the deck. Very valuable for building up cards as you don’t get to draw cards unless you run out.
Another game, I was anti-matter. Here, in combat, instead of the higher attack value winning, it was the lower attack value.
That sounds cool, but the best one I’ve seen in the game has to be the clone. They don’t have to discard their encounter cards after playing them. So if they get a very high attack card, they can just keep using it. This makes them very dangerous and it’s a good thing that every character has it’s own special ability and that there are artifacts that can cancel an opponents special abilities.
I wouldn’t recommend this game for those looking for a good two-player game. In some cases, the alien powers are so evenly matched that you could be playing for a very long time. Cosmic Encounter is a great game when you’ve got three or four people itching to clash without the use of dice. The numerous alien races will allow each game to have a different feel to it and the alliances can add some depth to each encounter.
