Can anyone tell me the selling points of this game? I'd like to know more about it.

The most important reason to buy it : I am your friend, so trust me !

More seriously, it's the third best rated game by my players (after Kingsburg and Arkham, fyi).

It's a simple game. Mechanics are explained in five minutes. BUT. It is **** complex, because every alien is different. So every game is different. It's easy to teach to casual gamers, because it always happens the same, it's just the special power of the alien played that is different, so people grasp it quickly.

And the most important, I think, compared, for instance, with our top 2 games mentioned above : it is a funny game. Meaning, you laugh - that is, except if your friends are dumb, or boring, of course...

Every game, people are excited and laugh a lot, like, for very simple things, but they're really excited : "he is the sorcerer, so, hmmmm, i'm gonna play, like... thiiiiis card" - putting the card very slowly in front of you, and the sorcerer watching your eyes, wondering if you're bluffing or not, and everyone around you yelling "he is bluffing !" or "he is not ! don't fall in !". That's the spirit of that game. I mean, at least, in our games. I've played that game with 15 years old kids, or 55 years old people, they ALL had big chuckles while playing. That's pretty rare, for such a complex game, eh ?

Oh, and yeah : the game is really pretty. It's very sober, you know ? But pretty. The aliens are designed by around three illustrators, and most of them are really beautiful and original. The set up takes two minutes, and people love to deal with their tiny plastic colored ships.

Oh, and, did I mention it was a revised edition by Kevin Wilson ? now THAT becomes a must-have

I think I'm done Cheers !

Cosmic Encounter is elegant brilliance. It isn't like Chaos in the Old World, or Arkham Horror (both of which are excellent games, btw) in that you won't be playing for hours and you won't pour over detailed rules. CE is easy to learn and fast to pick up, although the variants (such as the tech variant) will make it only slightly more complicated.

Where CE really shines is in the interaction. The base game is this - you pick a card detailing who you will attack (Destiny Card), then you decide how many (1-4) ships to commit to the attack. You ask other players if they want to ally with you (you decide who to ask), then defender asks who they want to defend them. The other players decide. Both the attacker and defender lay down a card - they look at the number on the card - add ships from both sides and the winner is the highest number. Sounds easy, and a bit "meh?" Well worry not - the REAL game comes from doing all this, but also adding in the artifacts, negotiation cards, and... this is the big one... the Race cards and special powers.

So you look at that stock turn - and it all plays out. Lets say you lay down a 10 and your opponent lays down a 15 - both of you have equal ships defending and attacking. Normally you would lose - but maybe you have a race that makes the loser actually win the battle, or maybe you have a race that switches the cards, maybe you have a race that allows you to glob more ships into an attack, or perhaps you have a race that WANTS to lose all their ships because they have a special win condition if all their ships are in the warp.

Suddenly you have a fantastic game - it is a game of player diplomacy (who do you ask to defend and attack), it is a game of player interaction (powers interact, but also players "band together" to help defend against the person who is just about to get the last colony needed to win), you have an unpredictable game (cards are drawn at random), you also have a highly strategic game (you decide how to use a certain power, you save the BIG card for attack and give up smaller cards in defense, you have to decide how many ships to commit to alliances or your own attacks). Most importantly, you have a game that is never the same game twice - I have played dozens, if not hundreds of games and it still feels fresh every time.

I hope this helps! I actually just got the FFG edition of CE (I had the Avalon Hill version) and it was WELL worth the money. This is truly the definitive set, IMHO - about 20+ more races (for a total of 50), nice modular board, good quality cards (a little hard to sleeve, still looking for the right size), nice UFO pieces.

Bael

CE was originally published in 1977 and has seen six different publishers over the last 33 years (Eon, GW, West End, Mayfair, AH/Hasbro, FFG). Any game that can survive 33 years and still have a fan base must have something going for it. When originally published, the "cards-break-rules" aspect was original and eventually one of the inspirations for Richard Garfield's MtG.

The game has simple mechanics at it core: pick a target, ask for allies, play a card, total cards and ships, high total wins. It's richness shows in the interactions between the aliens, cards, and personalities of the players.

After seeing the quality of the FFG version, I decided to retire my old Eon version (with all 9 expansions) and get this one. I forgot how fun this game was and now have the opportunity to introduce it to a whole new generation of board gamers.

@Bael:

I found some sleeves I like that fit well. I'm not affiliated with the seller (tbg_shop) in any way, other than the fact that I bought sleeves from him. You'll want the #2 card sleeves (link below), and he also has special sleeves sized specifically for the alien sheets. They fit my base-set aliens like a glove, but be aware that some players (myself included) have discovered that their Incursion aliens are 1 mm larger in both dimensions than the original aliens, and (in my case, at least) are too wide for the sleeves.

Also be aware that there's a fair amount of friction with the sleeves — my cards occasionally stick together, and I find it easier to shuffle them with overhand/faro/weave shuffling. But I'm more than happy to put up with that in order to protect my cards and make it easy to tweak my cosmic deck with whatever function I want to print on a slip of paper and slide in front of a real sleeved card.

Here's a link to a #2 card sleeve listing that's active as of today (03 Feb 2010):

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220549816577

Thanks Just_a_Bill! I actually found out that the Mayday USA Chimera sleeves also fit CE. The only place I could find them, for a reasonable price, was Thoughthammer, but Thoughthammer also had a sale going for the Pre-order of CE: Incursions... so guess what I did, to save shipping...

Great description, I think I will have to get this one. I have been teetering and you pushed me over the edge.

Just_a_Bill said:

Thanks Bill! He was sold out when I got the Alien Sheets. I just ordered these.

Reposting a short short version of my "4-Step Program To Embracing Cosmic As A Lifestyle Choice":

Level 1) Playing the rules: You're figuring out the phases in a turn, and the ways in which individual powers affect how those phases play out.

Level 2) Playing the powers: You start to understand how certain combinations of alien powers in the game drastically affect what actions people should take, what cards are poison to certain strategies, what cards are more valuable / less valuable, who should never be invited to ally, etc.

Level 3) Playing the hands: You're now intimately familiar with the deck distribution. You start planning which encounters you should bother trying to win, which ones you need to lose in order to raid opponent's hands, what order to play your encounter cards, when to genuinely seek negotiation/trade with other players, and when to trick allies with the "bait n' switch".

Level 4) Playing the players : You're now focused on tricking all of the Level 1-3 players into certain predictable behaviors, and then exploiting them. Ships are poker chips in terms of board position and mobility, and cards are a means to an end. You begin to see how particular players play their hands, and you can read whether those hands are strong, weak, diverse, focused, etc. You save a "Card Zap" for the inevitable "Emotion Control" or "Quash" that is being hoarded to prevent your win.

Level 4.5) With the addition of the Rewards deck, you hoard an additional Card Zap to stop the Card Zap being hoarded to stop your Card Zap. Effing meta.

The merrits of this game have been well expressed, but I'll add my assessment - if for no other reason just to show concensus. To sum up:

• The game is simple enough for casual gamers, but rich enough to constantly entertain the most hardcore of hardcore strategists. This is huge .
• The rules are simple (elegant) and easy to learn.
• The game offers very diverse playing experiences.
• The game plays fairly quickly - you can play ion a time budget or play it twice.
• Though best with lots of players, it also plays well three way without any problems often associated with three player war games.
• It is physically gorgeous to behold.
• It is highly social and fun.
• Being FFG, we can expect excellent support (there's one expansion and an official FAQ out already).

Cosmic Encounter is a true classic and one of my top three all time favourite games. FFGs version is generally revered as the best version to date (despite the fact that with expected expansions, it's probably only about 60% complete). I say buy it!