Hello. I love Cosmic Incursion! I have some questions. So far:

Crooked Deal:

• Are thesecrads classed as negotiate?
• If I get Plagued, do I have to throw away a Crooked Deal and a regular Negotiate, or just one of these?
• If I play Emotion Control, does this change a Crooked Deal to a standard Negotiate, or does it remain a Crooked Deal?

Plant:

• If your opponent has more than one power (Precursor Seed), Do you steal just one power, both, or your choice?
• When you "steal" a power, does the opponent temporarily lose that power?

Kickers:

• Do these change the cards value before other game effects are applied (such as Trippler's thrice , or Calculator's equalise )?

Reward Deck:

• Is there a special rule for "randomly" selecting cards from a hand with mixed backs? (I've brought this up elsewhere, but it bears repeating I think).
• A main player can get an advantage if they notice their opponent is playing an encounter card with one back vs the other (before they've played theirs). Is this a legal tactic, and if so who must play a face down card first?

Thanks for the continued support!

Crooked Deal: The difference between "Negotiate" and "Negotiate: Crooked Deal" is analogous to the difference between "Attack 04" and "Attack 20". When you are Plague'd, you just lose one attack and one negotiate.

Kickers: I thought there was an official ruling on mathematical precedence once in an issue of Encounter magazine, but I can't seem to find it right now. Add that to the list of things that FFG needs to straighten out for us.

Random selection and different card backs: Pretty much the only (consistent) way to make sense of random selections now is to interpret "randomly" to mean "without seeing the faces of the cards". You can target reward or non-reward cards if you want to, but if there are more of the targeted type than you get to select, then it'll be random which ones you are getting. But, if I only have one reward-back card in my hand and you know what it is (and you want it), then when you are allowed to take a card from my you essentially are guaranteed to get what you want. (For this reason I'm finding that the Rifts often are not a sufficient deterrent to keep my good cards from getting stolen from me risk-free.)

Toomai said:

The other day i held a croked deal, emotion control, and kicker x3. I was very tempted to use them to force an opponent to lose twelve ships, but I was only fairly sure it would be legal.

Plant was in that game. I'd used precursor seed to gain an an extra power, and now held Trippler and Mirror. Then sombody played wild Sorcerer forcing me to switch with Plant. Lacking a specific rule I gave up both my powers. Later I used Plant to steal Mirror but not Trippler. I'm not sure if any of that was done correctly.

I'd like to know for sure about kickers.

As for telegraphing your intentions via card backs, if you lay down a reward card, your opponent knows it can't be higher than 23. This is handy information. Previously it didn't matter which player laid a card down first, but now there are times when it might. If somebody has seen your hand, this might allow them to pigeon hole you. I assume that planning is meant to be simultaneous,

Just_a_Bill said:

That makes the most sense, but I would like to see that in official print. This would affect Mite's power as well as compensation, nerfing it somewhat. This will be even worse if FFG ever prints Laser.

As for Rifts, I think their purpose is to make reward cards, in general, less desirable when stolen than they are when taken from the deck. And they do that.

If your opponent knows you don't have any Rifts, than obviously they can't provide a deterrent. They only work when your lien doesn't know what your reward cards are, or knows that some but not all of your reward cards are rifts.

The point to Rifts is so that players choosing compensation don't just take the reward cards all the time; this suggests that compensation is pseudo-random. But effects like Mite and the Plague should be completely random (in my opinion, anyway), since no one is "controlling" which cards are being lost.

Toomai said:

The point of Rifts could just as well be to deter players from taking compensation from anyone who has drawn reward cards. It's only by assuming compensation is pseudo random in the first place that suggests the purpose you've given.

Are you sure you mean Plague - there nothing ever been random about Plague, not in this version of the game.

As for Mite and Magician, etc, I think there should be one and only one definition of 'random', or a more elaborate errata will be needed. It's been suggested on BGG that random should now mean "without seeing the card faces". This is elegant. Either way, we need an official rule, I think. But if I were FFG I would hold off on a FAQ update until most f the issues come to surface.

crimhead said:

Toomai said:

Magician's choice is technically random too.

But FFG needs to errata the word 'random', or else make a special rule for Compensation. Either way, we certainly don't want a seperate rulling for each relevant power. If random means random for Mite, random should mean the same thing for Magician.

Changing all instances of random to mean " without seeing the faces " has the advantage of eliminating the need for dice, coins, or other randomisers.

I think we'll find that the ruling is simply that Reward cards can be targeted or ignored as the choosing player sees fit. Remember, not everything in the Reward deck is all that good. You can target someone's Reward cards for compensation and find yourself with a lot of negative attack cards, which under most circumstances are not good to have.

This is good for compensation. Do you have an opinion about other random situations such as Magician or Mite?

My guess is that random will mean you don't know the value of the card, but a reward card could be targeted or ignored. Magician's wording of "choose one of the two cards at random" is just an odd bit of phrasing. The cards are face down and Magician doesn't know the value of either. I would suggest that again, Magician just takes the one he wants. You can put a reward card down as one of the two, but it really doesn't mean anything if that player doesn't already know what reward cards you are holding (possible, but rare). "Hmm, he played a reward card and a normal encounter card. Does he expect me to just take the reward card and end up with his -04? Ha! I'll show him and take the other card." That's very cosmic.

I believe trying to enforce some system of picking numbers or rolling dice or grabbing cards under the table is just goofy. The presence of the Rifts suggests to me that you are supposed to be tempted to pick the reward cards whenever there is a "random" card loss, but that you are also supposed to always think twice and figure the odds of getting a Rift. That too seems more cosmic to me.

The Warp said:

Agreed. And that's not the only problem:

Who's going to go through every "random" effect in the game (including those that use the word random and those that don't) and decide which ones let you see the backs and which ones don't? How will this be implemented? As a simple patch-rule that makes sense in a lot of cases but also creates some counter-intuitive examples; as a very detailed rule that makes logical sense in every case but is fiddly and complex; or as a big nasty chart that has to be consulted in every instance?

No thanks. Letting Mite's opponent choose the backs of the three cards he's keeping is not a problem at all (it's a mini "after-reward" for going to the reward deck in the first place) and is a very small price to pay to keep from mutating random selections into something downright ugly. (Please don't make me dislike these new card backs any more than I already do!)

The original Eon version and Mayfair edition required you to use kickers first and then apply any other effects.