Cosmic Encounter - First Play!

22nd November 2022

Tuesday is here again and that means we're with the Woking Gaming Club at The Sovereigns for a evening of gaming.

Space... is it the final frontier? I mean it's pretty large with enough room for separate civilisations to expand without impinging on each other's territory. Except in Cosmic Encounter, it's not! Players take on the roles of one of numerous alien civilisations with the purpose of invading other player's planets in this game of bidding and bluffing.

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What's in a game?

• The warp: The warp is where defeated ships go! This is a large circular tile that depicts what I suppose is a spatial whirlpool. It also has a track to manage player scores.

• Planet tiles: These are smaller circular tiles and there are 5 in each player colour of which there are also 5, thus 25 planet tiles in all.

• Hyperspace tile: This tile is sort of triangular in shape and depicts hyperspace travel through some of space gate.

• Alien Sheets: Each alien sheet depicts a different space-faring civilisation.
  Each sheet contains an illustration of the alien race in question and below the illustration will be listed the race's 'power'. This power is that race's unique special ability which frequently allows the players to break some of the game's rules in some manner or other.
  There are 50 alien sheets, which is quire a lot! It also means there's a lot of special powers and combinations thereof that can possibly be in play.

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• Spaceships: These are meeples shaped like classic flying saucers, which is quite cool. Would that then make them 'feeples' or 'seeples' or perhaps 'UFOeeples'? There are 20 in each player colour.
  Interestingly and also conveniently, they stack on top of each other.
• Player tokens: All of the game's tokens are made of card and there are quite a few types of tokens, most of them specific to certain aliens sheets 
  Colony token: There is 1 each of these in every player colour. They are used in conjunction with the warp tile to track a player's progress through the game.

• Cards: Cosmic Encounter uses a variety of cards.
  Destiny cards: This deck is used to determine who the active player will attack.
  ​Encounter cards: By far the most numerous type of card and form the cosmic deck. As the name suggests, these are used during encounters between players. They contain cards numbered 1-to-40 as well as 'negotiate' and 'morph' cards.
  Artefact and tech cards: These are cards that can also be used during encounters and add extra effects or actions to an encounter.
  Flare cards: Flare cards are specific to each race and pertinent flare cards for the aliens in play are added to the cosmic deck. Unlike most cards, once a player has a flare card for their alien race, it is not discarded when played.
  Reinforcement cards: These can be played after the encounter cards have been revealed to alter the outcome.

The component quality is all good, the tiles and tokens are made of suitably sturdy board while cards are average.
The spaceships are plastic with a nice bit of detail and being able to stack them keeps the game area relatively clutter free.

In terms of art direction, the tiles are colourful and mostly ​space-themed with the planet tiles looking like well, planets. The hyperspace and warp tiles are appropriately cosmic looking.
Artwork is used sparingly on cards with space (SIC) given over to text instead.
For the most part, illustrations are reserved for the alien sheets and used to represent the various different alien races. This artwork is fairly good with a lot of diverse and interesting sci-fi artwork.

Cosmic Encounter has little in the way of iconography, numbers are used on encounter cards but otherwise text is used to convey information.
​Nothing here is tricky to understand

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How's it play?
Setup

• ​Players:
  Alien sheet: Shuffle the flare cards into a face-down deck and deal 2 to each player.
  Each player should then take the alien sheets corresponding to the flare cards and choose one sheet for this game, players should take any tokens relevant to the sheet they have chosen.
  Home system: Give each player the planet tiles and space ships in their player colour.
  Each player should put out their planet tiles in a row, they should then stack 4 spaceships on each tile.
• Central playing area:
  ​Warp tile: Place the warp tile in the middle of the central playing area.
  Players should place their colony tokens at the '0' starting spot.
  Destiny deck: Remove cards that would refer to any unused player colours for the game and shuffle the remaining into a face-down deck.
  Cosmic deck: Add the flare cards for the chosen alien sheets to the encounter cards then shuffle them into a face-down cosmic deck.
  Starting hand: Deal 8 cards face-down to each player.
• First player: Determine the starting player.

On to play
In Cosmic Encounter players will be trying to create colonies on other players' home systems in the form of land their spaceships on those planets while also preventing their own system from being colonised.
The game employs a traditional turn order with the active player resolving their turn before the game progresses to the player on their left.
Each turn consists of 6 phases.

• Regroup: The active player may retrieve one of their spaceships from the warp (If possible.) and add it to a planet in their home system.
• Destiny: A card is drawn from the destiny deck and immediately resolved.
  Colour: If a colour card is drawn from the destiny deck, the player with that player colour will be the active player's target for their 'encounter' (Or attack really!).
  In some circumstances, the active player may target one of their own planets if it has been totally overrun by other players.
  Wild: If a wild card is drawn, then the active player must choose which player to target.
  Special: These are unique cards that have specific outcomes. If a special card is drawn, it will contain text to explain how it is resolved.
• Attack!: The active player takes the hyperspace tile and points the er... pointy end at one of the planets in the targeted system. Then they add 1-4 spaceships sourced in any combination from any of their planets to the other end, signifying how many ships they commit to the encounter.
• Alliances: Now the active player who is considered the attacker may invite any number of other players to join with them in the attack.
  ​The targeted player who is now considered the defender may also invite any number of other players to join with their defence.
  Once invites have gone out, the invited players may choose to accept or decline the invitation. If a player is invited to both sides, they must choose one side only or decline.
  Any player that accepts the invitation to form an alliance must commit 1-4 of their ships to their alliance's side by placing them on the hyperspace tile or alongside targeted planet respectively.
• Planning: During this phase both the attacker and defender choose a card and play it face-down.
• Reveal: Now both player simultaneously flip their cards face-up and calculate their values which is the card's value plus the number of spaceships committed to the encounter.
  Usually, whoever has the highest total value wins the encounter, ties go in the favour of the defender. However, there are several ways this can change. 
  Reinforcements: After cards are revealed, reinforcement cards may be played to alter scores, this can be done the attacker, defender or any of their respective allies.
  Negotiate: If either the attacker or defender has played a 'negotiate' card, they immediately lose the encounter but as compensation, they get to take cards from their opponent.
  Double negotiate: If both attacker and defender played negotiate cards, then they get 1 minute of real-time to actually negotiate an actual settlement between them!
  If they fail to reach a deal, then both players lose 3 spaceships to the warp tile.
  Morph cards: When a morph card is played, it 'adapts' to have the same value as the card played by the opposing player, essentially negating it.
  Resolution: Once all cards and special abilities have been taken into account and a winner has been determined, the results must be resolved.
  • Attacker wins: If this is the case, all the defender's ships (And those of their allies.) are placed on to the warp tile.
    All of the spaceships committed to the attack by the attacker as well as allied attacker's spaceships are placed on to the targeted planet. Each respective attacking player gets to advance their colony token 1 space on the score tracker.
    Finally, if the successful offensive was the player's first action, they get a second.
  • Defender wins: If this occurs, all of the spaceships committed to the attack by the attacker and their allies are sent to the warp tile.
    The defender's spaceships are unaffected and those committed by allies are safely returned to their planets.
    The score tracker remains unchanged but allies of the successful defender also get to recover ships from the warp tile and/or draw cards as a reward.
• Next player: Once the active player taken their available action(s), play moves on to the player on their left.

There are some other situational rules and variants but this pretty much sums up the essence of what goes on in Cosmic Encounters.

Endgame
The first player to reach 5 on the score tracker wins!
Because of alliances and such, it is possible for more than one player to reach the 5 score at once. if this is the case, all those players share the victory.

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Overall
​Mechanically, Cosmic Encounter is straightforward, at its core it's essentially a single blind bid auctioning game albeit one where players bid within the constraints of their limited hand of encounter cards in order to win encounters
On a basic level, a player only has to win 5 bids to win the game.

There is of course more to it than that.

It's vital that players will have to exploit the stronger cards in their hand and mitigate the risk from weaker cards. High value cards are obviously useful because they can win encounters but weak cards can also have a use.
A low value card can be used as a bluff or ruse to flush out an opponent's higher value card, potentially altering what a later outcome might be. Or, if a player think's they're going to lose, why not throw the lowest value card into the mix? 
Negotiate cards can also prove useful when a player knows they are going to lose and can be used to not only fill their hand but deplete the cards of an opponent.
Managing the luck of the draw is vital for victory.

The alien sheets can throw some real curveballs into the game and how players behave. Some of the sheets provide some really radical changes to strategies.

For example; in one game I played as the 'Spiff' who have the ability can crash land a spaceship on a planet if they are a part of an attack that loses badly.
It suddenly introduced a whole new dynamic into attacks which involved the Spiff (And I involved the Spiff with as many attacks as I could!) because defending players were now faced with the conundrum of having to worry about winning too big which might mean playing a lower value card instead and the risk of doing that meant that they might just flat out lose if I played a high value card! Choices, choices!

With 50 different alien sheets available in the base game (With more in expansions.) it means there will be a lot of variation in games and a lot of unique interactions from game-to-game. 

The rules for the destiny deck can also throw a curveball into the game.
I feel one of the primary purposes of the destiny deck is prevent a 'pick on a player' tactic and in this regard it does it well.
It also means that game has constant shifting alliances, 2 players have been allies in a previous turn but the destiny deck could quickly have one targeting the other in the next run.

This brings me to the next thing that's really strong in Cosmic Encounter; which is player interactivity.
Players will be bidding and bluffing against each other, forming temporary alliances, looking to exploit their abilities and take advantage of their unique ability and circumstances as they might arise.
I also think that the quality of the experience the game provides will in part rely on the people playing it. If players buy into the somewhat boisterous, confrontational and luck-based gameplay, then it'll be a positive, enjoyable experience. 

I will add that this game has a lot direct confrontation between players and a hefty dose of 'take that' that goes on as well.
If you find this sort of thing unappealing, it's probably a safe bet to say that you won't like this game and to be fair, sometimes I'm not in the mood for this kind of game.

Otherwise, it's hard to find fault with Cosmic Encounter, the rules are quick to learn and presents players which meaningful decisions to make whenever they attack or have to defend - which is reasonably often, they'll also be faced with whether to join alliances or not and deal with the outcome of those decisions.

Cosmic Encounters is a lot of fun to play and worth trying.