Hey guys, been playing the old EON version of cosmic encounters with my friends for years and somehow never ran into this problem before. Now I've got the new fantasy flight version and it's caused a disagreement.

We like to play with multiple powers, usually 3 power games, and today I drew the Antimatter, Warrior and Human.

The problem is that the warrior and human both state specifically that they add to the total of your side, and that the antimatter doesn't specifically say that bonuses from powers are reversed in the same way. My friends interpreted it as the warrior and human making the antimatter less powerful and I was allowed to discard the warrior (I was getting weaker with every battle) I kept the human because it's just too damned cool.

I believe that the human's +4 (and eventually +8 with the flare) and the warrior's experience should subtract from the antimatter's total, seeing as the antimatter has no choice but to invert all the cards in an encounter.

Your thoughts?

I think your friends made the right call.

Do you guys just deal 3 aliens each and you just play those? Or do you perform some sort of draft? I'd recommend the latter, if at all possible, to help ensure that nobody gets stuck with a lame combo. On those rare times that we play with two powers, we deal 3 Flares to each player. Each player keeps one as his first power selection, and then passes one Flare to the player on either side of them. From those two cards, each player chooses his second alien power. For a 3-power game, maybe deal 5 Flares and then do two rounds of drafting?

Lame combos are the risk you run, and yes- your friends were correct. Of course, you can willingly vacate your own colonies to the point where you lose one of your powers (you get to pick which one). Then you can drop the power that is working against the others... in that case, after losing so many encounters that you lose a power, I'd drop Anti-Matter, because Warrior will have piled up some points.

cheers for the replies.

You guys are probably right, it does seem the most fair to do exactly as is written on the cards...

More motivation for FFG to create an official multipower variant for an expansion pack I suppose

I do not believe FFG will ever create an official multi-power variant; the rules support would be horrendous. Playing with multiple powers is (and always has been) like going off the trail at the national park. Once you jump the railing, your welfare is not the park's responsibility.

Now, having said that, it is kinda lame that they published the Precursor Seed tech without explaining how to handle it. At a minimum, they should have clarified that Cosmic Zap affects only one power at a time, and defined whether or not the condition of having insufficient home colonies affects all your powers at once.