Haligamesian I: Cosmic Encounter

'Warlike and fairly dim, Humans are not seen as much as a threat' (Cosmic Encounter flavour text for the Human Race)

   All this Mars One news got me thinking of my favourite board game: Cosmic Encounter. Cosmic Encounter has had many iterations since its debut in the heady board game designing days of the 70’s. During that time board games were escaping from the stiff structure of the parker brothers and were embracing quirky design concepts that hadn’t been thought of before. Board games suffered from a loss of popularity during the 80’s and 90’s until the infusion of the Euro-game made board games ‘cool’ again, but that will be the topic of another blog post. Cosmic Encounter made its big splash during this time and went on to have a bajillion expansions. 

   The game is essentially a sexed up version of the card game war. The goal of the game is to get ships on five planets of your opponents, although the planets don’t have to all belong to the same opponents. These are known as foreign colonies. To do this, you fight your enemies by having ‘conflicts’ with them. The winner of the conflict is determined by who played the card with the higher number plus the number of ships they had in the fight plus their allies’ ships. Once you get to five foreign colonies you win the game! 

People complain about this game being too complicated, but really it suffers from a widespread problem of sounding more complicated that it actually is. It breaks down like this: You start with five planets, four ships on each. You draw a card to see who you attack, you send 1 to 4 ships to attack them. The attacker and defender both ask other players (some games can get as large as 8 players) for help, the people helping become known as ‘allies’. Attacker and defender play a card, whoever has the larger sum wins (in most cases). If the attacker wins, he and allies get a planet and an extra turn (but only 1), if the defender wins, the attacker gets nothing and the turn passes to the next player. Whichever side loses has to send all their ships to the warp and reclaim them slowly over the course of the game, so you don’t always want to send the maximum amount of ships.

I have the less awesome 1st print box art, but maybe it's best not to expose new time gamers to the awful power of the Parasite.

   What really adds value to the game is its variety. While I did boil it down to the basics for ease of conveying the point of the game, there is quite a bit extra. In terms of the cards, there are not just attack cards of ascending value. There are also Negotiate cards, which are green cards that basically say you are declaring peace. If they are opposed by an attack card, they automatically lose, if they are opposed by a negotiate card the players enter into negotiation, having a minute to decide on favourable terms (usually a colony for a colony, but it would be card for card or colony for colony AND cards). On top of that, there are other cards that modify combat, like reinforcements and artifacts. Losing a conflict? Throw down a +3 reinforcement card to add three to your side. Don’t like that your opponents are negotiating? Play a Quash artifact and send them packing, while they both lose three ships to the warp. Expansions add new cards like rifts, extra artifacts and event cards that also add variety to the game. 

Pictured, every time someone plays Quash after two players spend the full minute deliberating over their deal.

   On top of that, in every game you get to play as an Alien Race. These all have awesome flavor text (text adding to or supporting the theme of the game) that describe what your racial motivations are, how they bend the rules in some way, or add completely new rules. For example: The Zombie doesn’t lose ships to the warp, so they always send four ships in Combat. The Macron ships count as four ships each, they can only ever send one into combat, but attacking them is really difficult. More complex races are the Healer, which brings ships back from the warp for a free card and the Void, which remove ships from the game entirely when they are on the winning side of combat. 

   Some people argue that this game relies too much on randomness for its game mechanic. While it does employ a fair bit of random chance (who you are attacking is determined by a card draw, you draw your hand, some alien effects are random) I think the enjoyment comes out of seeing how your friends react each game, and part of that is thanks to the random element. Bitter enemies become allies of convenience when they can both attack the third guy out to win the game. The look of horror someone gets when their diplomatic offer of negotiation is met by a 0 value attack card. The face of rage when you just start the game and someone plays the Plague artifact card (yes, it is as bad as it sounds). 

   Although I have had many contenders for the top spot, I still think after five years of ownership, it is still my favourite game, and one of the best games on the market. This is of course depending on what your taste in board games is. If you want to know every aspect of the game is within your carefully plotted plans, this one might not be for you, especially when the person with the Loser power declares that the winner is actually the loser! 

Ultimately, it teaches everyone to get along, unless one of the player flips the table and storms out of the house.