Review of Cosmic Alliance

Blurb from the publisher: 'Coordinate and conquer!

This is not a standalone product. A copy of the Cosmic Encounter Core Set is required to play.'

What you get: Your USD 24,95 or equivalent will buy you Cosmic Alliance, one of the six expansions for the Cosmic Encounter game line. It is reminded that the Cosmic Encounter 42nd Anniversary Edition is the game's current base game and the newest iteration of the 3-5 player classic boardgame of exception-based aggression, simultaneous bidding, hand management, bluffing and deceit. Depending on the number of players and their familiarity with the game's nature, expect a game to last around two hours. The present expansion can be purchased autonomously of any other expansion. No expansion is a prerequisite for another.

In addition to the 2 pages of rules that can also be downloaded from the publisher's website free of charge, the game contains the following: 54 cards (24 Large Group Cosmic Cards, 21 Flares, 3 Destiny, 6 Schizoid), 20 Alien sheets, one Player Colony marker, 5 Player Planets, 20 plastic Ships, and 38 Horde tokens.

Gameplay: Cosmic Conflict includes the components for a sixth player (or seventh or eighth, if you also own Cosmic Incursion and Cosmic Conflict). The 20 new aliens cover all levels of difficulty, with 4 easy ones, 9 moderately difficult, and 7 hard. They include the Pygmy (his colonies count as half for other players), the Extortionist (randomly acquires half of the cards that a player draws), and the Remote (remotely controls opponents' ships and forces them to ally with him).

The new Flare and Destiny cards are similar to those found in the base game. The Large Group Cosmic Cards support games with seven and eight players. In lower player counts, they can be used to add extra randomness into the game. All cards bear the mark CC. One can thus easily distinguish them from the cards of the base game and those of the other expansions.

The Team Cosmic variant allows the players to play in teams of two; the potential unpaired player can also be accommodated. Players sit as opposite to one another as possible. Few rules change. Characters cannot have Encounters against their partners, partners are automatically invited as allies, while, when a player wins a foreign colony, he can hand it to his partner instead. The game is won when both partners have won enough foreign colonies or have fulfilled an alternate victory condition, and no, you cannot show your cards to your partner, even though you can publicly talk about them.

The Cosmic Quake is an optional rule that first appeared in Cosmic Conflict. Whenever both the draw and the discard pile are empty and a player cannot draw new cards, all cards are reshuffled, including the cards that the players hold in their hands. Each player then draws eight new cards.

The strong points: Another plug-and-play expansion, and that's good! The only new rules are the ones relating to team play, and these are nothing but minor modifications to existing ones. You won't need more than a few seconds to integrate the expansion's components to the base box as well as explain the few new rules.

Six to eight players (if you own Cosmic Incursion and Cosmic Conflict), woah! I am not certain how easy it is to find eight people with a good understanding of this game, yet if everybody is up to spec and understand that they need to be involved the game can be enormous fun. The rules for team play are also interesting. You don't need to have such a large group in order to give it a go. Those who enjoy cooperative and semi-cooperative games will enjoy the challenge anyway.

Setting team play and large groups aside, the expansion is about adding more-of-the-same. At times the difference between some of the new races and the ones in the base game might feel marginal, on the other hand however most things on Cosmic Encounter relate to nuance. Seldom do people enjoy playing the same factions, and I say that in the full knowledge that the game itself recognizes their lack of balance.

The weak points: I keep on writing this expansion after expansion. Cosmic Encounter is a particular beast. You may like or dislike it for what it is, this cannot however be changed by an expansion. This is more about thinking on your feet and making the best out of the things you already know, than about strategizing for the far future. There's chaos, there's playing the players, there's grudges and slapstick comedy. If you didn't like all that in the first place, I don't see why you will like it now.

Depending on how often you play the base game you might or you might not need this expansion. If it lies in tatters, this expansion is a valid addition. If you play once a year for the laughs, you can probably live without it. The more-of-the-same elements are cool, they don't however make it an absolute necessity. If you are not in interested in either team play or in playing with up to eight players, you might not need it.

The expansion has not been brought in line with the current, 42nd Anniversary Edition base game. There are no suggestions on how to use certain aliens with others, there are no combos, there is nothing... at least not inside this box. Scour the net for more info on how to create interesting matches.

The plastic components' production values were also not aligned to those of the new base game. Two years after that box's publication and eight full years after the publication of the present expansion, the sixth player tokens in the expansion remain opaque as opposed to the new edition's transparent, shiny ones. Seriously? The issue is not just aesthetic, mind you. Basic human psychology suggests that the guy with the different, more visible tokens, will be targeted more often. This shouldn't have happened.

The box/insert combination is once again a joke. If you sleeve your cards, the components fit only if you arrange them chaotically. This is a typical case where the publisher cares about the components getting to you, but not about you keeping them safe and usable forever. Oh, man.

The price is expensive for what the game includes. Frankly, it should have been around the USD 15 to 20 mark. It shouldn't be impossible to find it at those prices as opposed to its catalogue price.

Conclusion: If you enjoy team play, or if you would like to play with humongous groups of friends, Cosmic Alliance is the Cosmic Encounter expansion to buy. The additional more-of-the-same are a nice icing on top of a tasty cake.

For more info on Cosmic Alliance visit Fantasy Flight Games at https://www.fantasyflightgames.com.

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