Cosmic Encounter

From: Hasbro/Avalon Hill List Price: $40 Players: 2-4 Playing Time: 60 minutes  Type of game: Family strategy Skill level: 5 Complexity: 6  Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 25, Winter 2001

One game defined my college years. I can’t count the number of all-night sessions I spent playing Cosmic Encounter [Pet Peeve: That's Cosmic Encounter, singular.  Not Cosmic Encounters, plural. Read the box, people].  The most memorable ended with a game in which all players shared the win, each using a different method. The game has gone in and out of print, with each version having its own strengths and problems. The new Hasbro edition is no exception.

Each player begins the game with twenty ships, evenly distributed amongst the five planets in his home solar system. The winner of the game is the first to land on five planets in other players’ systems. This is accomplished by successfully attacking other players.

The ships are attractive resin pieces reminiscent of x-wing fighters standing on end. To attack, 1-4 of them are loaded into a large mothership which is then pointed at the target planet. Unfortunately, these ships don’t stack very well and are quite tricky to load into the mothership, often slowing the game down as the attacker fumbles with the pieces— a regrettable case of form over function. Each player also has a carrier ship (bearing a remarkable similarity to a motorcycle sidecar) into which he can load his own fighters, should he be invited to ally with either side. The attacker and defender simultaneously play cards which add to their forces’ strength, and the side with the higher total emerges victorious. Losing ships are sent to the galactic scrap yard called the warp. Winning attackers and allies land. Winning defensive allies collect new cards or reclaim ships from the warp. Winning defenders get no special reward— just the safety of their ships on the attacked planet and the satisfaction of repelling an incursion into their space.

If the battle looks hopeless, either side can play a Negotiate card and throw the fight. All negotiating ships are lost, but the negotiator plucks cards at random from his opponent’s hand as compensation. If both players decide to negotiate, all allies go home and the players have a minute to make a deal which can involve trading almost anything, including letting each other land on one of their planets immediately. If no deal is reached in time, both players lose ships to the warp.

That’s the core of the game, and by modern standards it’s not particularly noteworthy. In fact, luck of the draw plays a large role in the outcome, with a strong hand commanding a large advantage over weak ones. Cards can be stolen through Negotiations, but of course by the time you know someone has a good hand, they’ve already played their best cards. Allowing players to team up as allies in an attack helps to overcome this advantage, but allies contribute ships, not cards. If this was all there was to the game, it would have faded into obscurity faster than Crystal Pepsi. If combat is the game’s heart, its alien powers are its soul.

Trader can trade hands with his opponent. Oracle sees his opponent’s card before playing his own. Zombie’s ships never go to the warp. Parasite can join an alliance without being invited. There are twenty alien powers in all, each breaking the rules in a unique way. Players are randomly assigned a power at the start of the game, and these powers dramatically influence strategies and tactics— not just individually, but in the ways they combine and interact with each other. The game feels quite different depending on which powers are involved, and much of the game’s appeal lies in exploring their depths. If this sounds a bit like Magic: The Gathering, it’s no accident— Cosmic Encounter was one of Richard Garfield’s main inspirations for Magic. Some powers are brute-force powers, always-on and increasing a player’s strength in battle. Others are more subtle, requiring careful decisions about when and how to use them. Some can get you into big trouble if used poorly, while others are very difficult to use well. This variety is part of the game’s appeal. The basic rules of the game are easy enough to learn, but mastering all the powers and adapting to their combinations is a deeper challenge.

The original Eon version of the game, with all nine expansion sets, included 75 alien powers. Presumably, if the Hasbro game sells well, we can look forward to seeing an expansion with new powers, components for a fifth and sixth player, and some of the other elements from Eon expansions like lucre (money), kickers (cards which multiply an attack card’s value), and flares (powerful cards with special abilities). Some powers, however, may not be practical because of this edition’s components. The difficulty of stacking ships makes Fungus less likely, for instance. Then again, there’s no room for more than four ships in the mothership or sidecars, but the Amoeba power (which lets someone “ooze” any number of his ships in or out of battle) was included anyway. Go figure.

Whether Cosmic Encounter will sell well enough to merit the expansion is an open question. What you’re getting in the Hasbro box is a basic game. The gameplay of that game. through fresh, exciting, and remarkable in its day, doesn’t hold up to modern standards. The decisions to be made are too obvious, the field of options too narrow. Of the twenty powers in this set, only five give their owner something to do when not directly involved in a battle. A full half of the powers are passive, requiring no decisions of the player (although, perhaps, influencing them). The included powers seemed to be selected more for simplicity and ease of use than excitement or spice, a decision reflected in the somewhat staid gameplay. With Hasbro trying to appeal to a more mass-market audience, this decision makes sense. But that’s little consolation to gamers hankering for some Tabasco.

The airbrushed artwork on the alien power cards is attractive, but generic. The names and abilities of the aliens have nothing to do with how they’re rendered— each picture is completely interchangeable with the others. This homogeneity detracts from the powers’ emotional impact, and represents an enormous lost opportunity. Someone please find Dean Morrissey, the artist behind the best Eon art (Parasite, Silencer, Miser), and get him on the team.

The powers are printed on very thick cardboard stock, but are double-sided and meant to be inserted into the provided plastic stands. Unfortunately, this renders the popular hidden-powers variant more difficult. The colorful alien histories have been exiled from the power cards themselves to the margins of the rule booklet, where they’ll rarely be seen by most players. Each different rank of attack card now carries flavor text, however, and these cards are easily more attractive than those from any previous edition. They don’t appear to be of the same quality as Magic cards, however, and I worry about them deteriorating quickly.

It’s great to see Cosmic Encounter back in print, but my perceptions are seriously warped by the game’s importance to my college years. Had I first been exposed to the game today, I wouldn’t see what the fuss was about. This edition of the game is really for the family market, not gamers— and certainly not gamers who already own earlier editions. If and when an expansion appears, gamers would be well-served to take a second look. In the meantime, what comes in the box may be worth the nostalgia value to old Eon or Mayfair players without their own sets, but don’t expect to pull any all-nighters.