Cosmic Encounter from FFG

[Dragon]

Fantasy Flight Games will be releasing a new version of Cosmic Encounter. I took a quick peak at the rulebook to see what they had to offer. It looks like everything that the Avalon Hill version should have been but wasn't. The game will support 3 to 5 players out of the box, while the Avalon Hill version had rules for 2 to 4 players. That was a major drawback because the game was really not any good with 2 players and only marginally better with 3. Another thing in the FFG version that AH didn't offer was Flare cards and Tech cards. These add some additional spice to abilities thus affecting combat. These additions to the game, which were actually in the old Eon version, should keep games interesting and make it so that a power like Virus isn't going to take the game every time its at the table.

Cosmic Encounter image used in association with Funagain Games

According to one review that I read, it appears that Technology cards were something that Eon had promised long ago, but they were never produced. Cosmic Encounter has gone through many hands at this point and this may be the first version of the game that actually has those.

If you're interested in checking out the rulebook, here's the link: http://new.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/Cosmic%20Encounter/cosmic-encounter-rulebook.pdf

[Dragon]

Well... I'm resurrecting this old thread since I got this game as a Christmas present. (Thanks again Chris!)

I read through the rules tonight and looked through some of the cards. Although I haven't played it yet, I think I can say with confidence that this game is WAY BETTER than the Hasbro/Avalon Hill version. The Tech cards are an optional rule, but I looked through them and I don't think that they would make the game too complicated... it would just give us some more options to play with.

I also noticed that FFG has an expansion coming out soon which adds some new alien powers, reinforcement cards (including negative numbers, which I didn't see in the basic set), and the necessary components to have a 6th player.

[Dragon]

Last night we, Mac, TylerChuit, The Unnamable, and I,  played Cosmic Encounter. It was another great game where we saw some new powers come in to play, lots of flares were used, and a couple people really got decimated.

Mac had the Filch power, TylerChuit had the Miser, The Unnamable had Parasite, and I had Chosen. TylerChuit started off the game with the Filch flare, which helped him steal the flare card that The Unnamable had. I had the Chosen flare at the beginning of the game, which was nice being able to use the Super but once TylerChuit used the Wild Filch to steal a flare I was much more cautious about using my Super power.

Mac and The Unnamable were losing lots of ships to the warp early on. TylerChuit quickly had 4 foreign colonies and I was close behind. Mac and The Unnamable often join the defense just to try to get ships from the warp and some card, but that often backfired, especially near the end when both of them joined me and most of the cards in my hand were flares and Negotiate cards.

At the end of the game, I was tied with TylerChuit, but I had no attack cards. I made a decision to allow him to join me for an attack knowing that it would be a joint victory, but I thought it would be better for that than leave it more to chance that he'd get a shot at victory without me. With my Chosen power I drew a 6, which combined with our 8 ships and was strong enough to win the battle.

Afterward we discussed the Techs, which seemed to be too expensive to get into the game. We discussed a couple things briefly before TylerChuit made a suggestion that we allow players to put one or two ships into research each encounter. This could potentially cut the time to develop the Techs in half, but still requires the spending the originally designed cost of ships. I think everyone at the table agreed that it was a good option to try out next time we play. It's something I'm definitely looking forward to testing out.