played a very enjoyable 2nd game where we had 5 players. Four players were on 4 foreign colonies at the end with the other on 3 - exciting finish with the Spiff Alien winning the day.

I looked through the Alien deck out of curiosity and noticed the Parasite Alien. He seems pretty mean.

Do I have it right that he can just add 1 ship as an ally to every attack (invited or not) and if the attack wins he gets a foreign colony as usual? So the game could end in 5 turns with five successful attacks.

How do you react against this threat?

Chris

Parasite is a pretty mean dude. But there are a few ways you can shut him out.

1. When he's on the offense, don't ally with him. If he loses, success. If he wins, there's now a planet you can attack without worrying about him getting a colony with you. Also success.
2. When he's on defense, have everyone jump on the bandwagon and take out his planet. Not only did you just get a colony without him, but you took out one of his home colonies towards making him lose power.
3. When you're on offense and Parasite says hello, consider playing an N a bit more than usual. Or ask the defense if he's willing to deal (of course, some groups discourage this kind of talking).
4. Save the Force Field.
5. If you're Shadow or Hate, you can easily put the hurt on Parasite - he'll be forced to send multiple ships if he wants to keep his foreign colonies, which makes him lose more ships when the offense loses. Also try to target him as Vacuum (unless a more pressing threat is in the game).
6. Consider using your own colour destiny to punt Parasite off your home worlds. Not only does that make Parasite the defense, but he might lose a foreign colony.

Toomai said:

To elaborate on this, whenever you attack a player besides Parasite, chose a planet where Parasite already has a colony (as long as you don't also have a colony there). It's no good to ally with the offence of you already have a colony established on the target planet.

thanks for the input. The subtleties of this this game just get better and better the more I play. Just ordered the expansion yesterday and the card sleeves with the coloured backs arrived today in case the colour mismatch on the backs that I heard of comes true.

Chris

chris yates said:

Indeed. That's why we love it!

May I add what a treat it is to have a new player here keeping the boards fresh. Cheers!

well it's great that the forum is so responsive. My expansion arrived yesterday. Next week we're due to play Power Grid so no CE for a while - shame.

Chris

Just to add, though it might be obvious, don't let Parasite win!

Suppose Parasite has four external colonies, and you draw a third party from the destiny deck. You'd like to attack a planet where Parasite already has a colony and you do not. But there may be no such colony. In this case you should attack a planet where you and Parasite both have colonies. True, you won't gain a colony, but at least you can win and gain another encounter (or tech card), or lose and burn off a bad encounter card.

If Parasite has no colonies in that players system, do you best not to win the encounter at all; unless you have a Cosmic Zap, Force Fields, or four colonies yourself and don't mind a shared win. Sometimes you can't lose if you try, but do your best to do your worst.

Sorry, double post.