Tuesday 8th March

I enjoyed our Cosmic Encounter last night! Hope others did too.

A couple of people were asking about the expansions / optional elements. I think the main extra things that we didn't play with (but could in the future) are:

- Technology - you can (temporarily) spend ships to research technology to give you an extra ability
- Space Stations - you start with a space station (which you can trade) which gives you an extra ability / weapon
- Hazards - some destiny cards trigger a hazard which affects how things go in encounters either temporarily or permanently
- Reward cards - special 'better' rewards for defending allies which introduce various new types of cards
- Team rules
- The fact that there are nearly 200 separate freakin' aliens to choose from (the ones we had yesterday were mostly at the milder end of game-breakingness)

Would love to try some of these out separately or in combination :-)

PaulG wrote:I enjoyed our Cosmic Encounter last night! Hope others did too.

A couple of people were asking about the expansions / optional elements. I think the main extra things that we didn't play with (but could in the future) are:

- Technology - you can (temporarily) spend ships to research technology to give you an extra ability
- Space Stations - you start with a space station (which you can trade) which gives you an extra ability / weapon
- Hazards - some destiny cards trigger a hazard which affects how things go in encounters either temporarily or permanently
- Reward cards - special 'better' rewards for defending allies which introduce various new types of cards
- Team rules
- The fact that there are nearly 200 separate freakin' aliens to choose from (the ones we had yesterday were mostly at the milder end of game-breakingness)



Would love to try some of these out separately or in combination :-)

Yeh really enjoyed it paul thanks for running. I was convinced our game was 'broke' ans Sam was going to win regardless what we did but it didn't turn out that way !!

Jon M wrote:Yeh really enjoyed it paul thanks for running. I was convinced our game was 'broke' ans Sam was going to win regardless what we did but it didn't turn out that way !!

His alien power and that flare certainly made for a good combo... but the interesting thing about the game is that when someone has something clearly very powerful then there is still a lot that the other players can do (e.g. excluding that player from being an ally, ganging up against them). So often a great alien power or some good cards work against you. I had nothing particularly good (didn't even use my alien power) but got some dumb luck on my last turn that let me sneak victory despite some mediocre cards in my hand, because others had almost exhausted their hands.

Very much looking forward to playing with some of the truly game-breaking alien powers :-)

Trickerion was awesome. It's just such an engrossing game with so much going on. It's also a very punishing game and very easy to slip up (especially as the rules for point scoring are very particular in how and when you get points, but they can be modified every round by a different mechanic in the game).

Because of these things, I didn't really have the capacity to focus on much else while it was going on and still hold hope of winning. I feel I didn't really respond to a few people who came up to talk while the game was going on, so I apologise for that. I'm pretty sure one of them was Sam.

The game really is awesome. You have to just chalk off the first time you play it as learning the game though. I think I was talking to Tom on Sunday about Twilight Struggle suffering from a similar first game 'problem', and that being the reason I have been reluctant to play it yet. You have to spend 3 hours playing a game that you know you won't win so that in the next 3 hour game you play you'll know what's actually going on and have a chance of actually playing properly.

Jon M wrote:
Yeh really enjoyed it paul thanks for running. I was convinced our game was 'broke' ans Sam was going to win regardless what we did but it didn't turn out that way !!

"Balance is for weenies" - Peter Olotka, co-designer of Cosmic Encounter.

Yeah I heavily enjoyed our game of Cosmic Encounter. It was a lot of fun. Sam's hand consisting of purely of Shaggy Doo's wardrobe was a pain in the ass but ifeel that everyone avoided him so much after his early lead that it balanced it out. I definately agree that having the best power is not necessarily a good thing as you just get avoided or picked on.
Great game with great people.