There we were with a large group all keen for Cosmic Encounter. It was a delightful sensation until I realised we were seven strong and only had six colours.

It was easy enough to use traditional playing cards or coasters for planets and quarters or bottle caps for tokens, but the real issue was destiny cards. Well somebody came up with the bright idea to use the special destiny cards as the seventh colour. While I am a big fan of special destiny it was even nicer to get to include everybody. It was a fantastic game too, I might write a session report on BGG.

One more thought - you can do this to add an eighth player post Conflict - simply designate one of the specials to trigger the Hazard deck.

We've been doing this since the base set. And there's always Shark and Zilch if you still have extra players orbiting around the table.

Three options for adding extra players when you have proxy ships and planets but no destiny cards:

#1 — Destiny rules for the n +2nd player (after assigning the special destinies to player n +1):

• whenever a player draws his own color, he can optionally treat it as n +2's color
• whenever n +2 draws a wild, he can optionally treat it as his own color

It's not perfectly balanced, but then neither are the alien powers. It's close enough to make an n +2-player game playable.

#2 — A variation on #1. You can decide in advance that one of the players has to be Will . Draw 2 n - 1 powers at random, add Will, and deal them out. If the player who is dealt Will chooses not to keep it, then any other player (starting to his left) can exchange the power they chose for Will. If nobody does so, then the player Will was dealt to must take it instead of his original choice. (I think somebody will want Will; it should be pretty competitive in a game with 7+ players.) When other players draw their own color, they may treat this as if they drew Will's color. Will may treat any destiny as his own color, so he can always encounter a foreign invader in his own system or reclaim an empty home planet.

#3 — Another option that's less attractive but scales up to 10 and preserves the special destinies:

Use a deck of playing cards. Number the players 1 through 10 (Ace equals 1, of course) and give each player his matching heart card to place near his planets. Use everyone's club, spade, and diamond cards to build the destiny deck, along with the Jack, Queen, and King of spades (Special Destinies) and the two Jokers (Wild Destinies). All the red cards (diamonds) are your hazard warnings.

This also gives you the option to fiddle with the DNA of the destiny deck, say by including more than three Special Destiny cards, or perhaps swapping out some spade royalty for diamond royalty so one or more of your Specials have hazard warnings.

Sheesh, I wish I had that problem...ever.

My plan to handle it, should I ever get around to it, is to purchase a second copy of Cosmic Incursion. I have all my cards sleeved, so I'd probably sweet-talk Bill or someone into sharing his Photoshop tricks with me so I could whip up Destiny cards for an 8th player. I'd paint the 8th player ships not in a solid color, but with a big X. That minimizes the chance of duplication with a future player color, and helps with any color-blind players.

Then I'd add more Rewards cards, and make about 12 new cards for the Cosmic deck to pad it a little for 8-player games.

Someday!

Kobold Curry Chef said:

Happy to help any time.

Kobold Curry Chef said:

That's a good plan, and if you left the underlying Orange color still showing but added an X in some other color, then you could also use them for Symbiote (Orange plus Orange-X) in a regular game of 7 or fewer players. Plus you could get some of those oversized sleeves for the alien powers and use your extra Incursion powers as matching backs for homebrew aliens.

All of the above is basically why I bought two copies of the base set and Incursion , and will likely buy two copies of Conflict . (I pretty much dumped my other gaming expenses so I can indulge my Cosmic idealism.)

Also, years down the road when this edition is OOP and going for $500 on eBay, I want to have backups of every possible component. (I guess I should buy a third copy of everything to sell for $500!)

I think my wife might bludgeon me if I bought any more copies of Cosmic Encounter, but it hasn't stopped me from making a new custom copy.