Flash Review — Cosmic Encounter

Players: 3-5
Age: 12+
Playtime: 60-120 min
Complexity: 5/10

You’ve heard of it, you might even have played it: the game’s been around forever in various incarnations, starting with Eons Publishing back in 1977. The current edition is from Fantasy Flight Games (illustrated above), which is not only still in print – 12 years down the line! – but just got a seventh expansion in the form of Cosmic Odyssey.

With the right crowd, Cosmic Encounter is an absolute riot; there’s a reason it’s been reprinted and refreshed countless times since its inception. And whereas the original could overstay its welcome, the modern version makes it possible for five experienced players to get it all done in less than an hour.
(Of course, if you start piling various optional modules on top of the base game, your cosmic mileage may vary.)

The base game’s overview is ludicrously simple, to the point of sounding almost asinine.

• Each player represents an alien race vying for cosmic supremacy.
• On your turn, you’re told which opponent to attack; you then pick one of their four planets as your target.
• You commit 1 to 4 ships to the attack and invite some players (or all, or none) to join you, while the defender does the same.
• You and your opponent each play an attack card: each participant adds their card’s value to the number of ships on their side, and the higher total wins. Losing ships are sent to the trash, while a victorious attacker earns one colony on the target planet (and so do their allies!).
• First player to establish five colonies wins the game.

Simple, right?
Except that the game throws every monkey wrench it can in its own cogs, which – again, given the right crowd – turns Cosmic Encounter into something that feels like a hilarious, semi-tactical party game.

For starters, each player gets to use their own, personal alien power, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM BREAKS THE GAME. (Really: When players read out loud what their powers do, heads start shaking around the table, because the powers are clearly out of whack. All of them.)
Also, the deck is littered with crazy cards that do all sorts of things, such as canceling another player’s power, making the lower total win, adding trashed ships to the fight, switching out dying ships with an opponent’s… And many of those cards you can play when you’re not even involved in the current encounter.
(“I thought you said you wanted to remain neutral here?!”
“I say a lot of things.”)

Backstabbing is so rampant and expected that you can’t help but feel disappointed when nothing of the sort happens. And of all the times I’ve played this – a lot of sessions – only a handful of games did not end in an upset. Those were the boring ones.

If you can handle chaos and a few sharp knives between your shoulder blades, give Cosmic Encounter a shot. I doubt it’ll be your last.

Most easily forgotten rule: If you fail your first encounter, you don’t get a second one.

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