I think there has been an unofficial ruling regarding a flare that is played not being in your "hand", and therefore not being vulnerable to being discarded/taken as consolation/other card loss. My question is this: after you play a flare, at what point does it re-enter your hand? The next phase of the encounter? Resolution?

Does the Qax have to be re-researched when given, or can it be re-played as soon as the next encounter?

If Reincarnator loses Citadel, are the citadels discarded or not? (No one would be able to activate them if they stayed, but the cards wouldn't go into the discard pile.)

Do Clone, Filch, and Fido have any precedence over each other? (I'm guessing Clone has precedence since he keeps instead of discarding, while Filch and Fido can only claim discarded cards.)

Can the Omega Missile be re-used repeatedly in a very long game to eventually deprive a player of all his home planets? (Yes, it's purely hypothetical, but so is the Cosmic Quake in a way.)

If the Genesis Bomb is used twice in a game, does the second user simply move the planet to his own system, keeping all previously-placed ships on it? Can the Lunar Cannon and the Prometheus be "stolen" in the same way?

Do you have to reveal what card you take from the discard pile when you use the Delta Scanner?

Can Parasite ally with the defense even if the Energy Cloak is used? (Since the Energy Cloak only stops invitations, not allies themselves.)

Does Super Chosen have to be played before or after he looks at the cards he's drawn?

Can Observer, as an ally, lose ships outside the encounter? (Such as Grudge or Wild Void.)

If Spiff's total must be "10 or more less", why does his Super Flare say "lose by 5 instead of 10"? (I think I got 'em there.)

If the Qax forces Ameoba to ally, can he then play his Super and escape?

Does the Qax force Macron to bring 4 ships?

If two players make a deal to win the game, and Tick-Tock discards his last token because a deal was made, does he win alongside them? (This happened in a recent game and I ruled that, yes, Tick-Tock becomes part of the shared win.)

Is there a limit to how many ships Zombie can liberate at once as part of a deal? (I'm guessing no.)

If Shadow draws a Wild Destiny, can he kill one player's ship and then attack someone else? (Most likely yes.)

If the offense draws more than one destiny card, does Shadow pick off one ship for each card, or one ship for whichever card the offense uses? (I rule one ship per card.)

Can Human be zapped to win if both cards are Ns?

Not so much a question as a concern:

Masochist needs to be banned from being in a game with Tech, he doesn't seem beatable at all when he can place all his ships into Tech and constantly Negotiate. It is easy to stack all ships on one planet and win the game by using your Tech to send your remaining ships to the Warp with no colonies left. I have yet to lose a game with Masochist and Tech.

If trader is used to trade hands; then the wild sorcerer is played and trader is the power switched to the player who's hand was originally traded; can the 2nd player then trade hands back.

Basically is the limit on power use once per encounter per player, or once per encounter for the table - baring powers like Healer, Remora, Zombie, etc.

Will we ever see these FAQ? When I always look through those question, I would really loved to see the answers It just makes me feel that I don't know the game at all, which is a bit frustrating

Messianic said:

I agree it's maybe unbalanced as written. We've attempted to temporarily fix this in our house rules by allowing Mobius Tubes to be played by anyone between turns like it used to be in older versions of the game. At least that way someone might be able to head them off at the pass, so to speak. We also say that you cannot put more tokens on a tech than it's rating, so unless they have one of the techs with the X on it they are limited that way as well.

Not sure if I think it's a perfect solution yet but it at least slows down Masochist somewhat.

Next we plan on addressing Tick Tock which has yet to win a game in our house. The house rule we are testing out on that is you get two tokens per player. So instead of always 10 tokens in our 4 player games they only need 8 to win. It seems to help so far, but we are still "testing" it.

satyr said:

Or .........

You could try to win with Masochist by outplaying your opponents. If you play with Tech, there is nothing that says you need to put as many of your ships on it as possible to end up in the warp to win --- just try to play the regular way, it's quite fun even if it is difficult.

VasekVydra said:

I would like to second this sentiment. A number of really good questions have been submitted so far, and it would be good to get some sort of official document out there which at least addresses these questions.

I would think that given the complexity of the interactions between the numerous powers and cards, a document like this may never be "complete". Rather, it should be a living document, with updates being appended on a somewhat regular basis.

A couple of other minor suggestions, which you probably already have in mind: Organizing it with a section for each phase (for general questions), then one section for each alien race might be best. This way, questions that refer to a specific alien would be easiest to find. Sure, it would be a bit redundant when dealing with one racial power vs. another, since the question would be answered in the sections for both of those races, but that is a small price to pay for the sake of not slowing down the game while someone tries to find the answer they are seeking. Also, releasing the document in an easily searchable form such as .pdf would help tremendously in this regard.

This is a fantastic game, and FFG has done an amazing job with it! The ability to resolve the inevitable rules questions quickly and clearly and get the players back into the action only serves to help this game get back to the table over and over again.

Thanks, FFG!

Whatever they end up publishing, I will put on The Warp, and I'll have it indexed so you can quickly find the answers to your questions.

satyr said:

Really? I thought the timing was always the same for Mobius.

Adam said:

You may be correct there. It could have been a house rule for so long we only think we remember it being official. Either way we used to play Mobius's between turns and we may do so again to combat Masochist.

I think the Mobius timing is good as it is. It prevents players from being Too careless with their ships since they have to wait until their turn to play it. I would prefer to exclude Masochist from Tech games if it becomes a problem rather than changing how one of the core cards works. Just personal preference though. I don't like to tinker too much.

Adam said:

You don't like to tinker? My god man this is Cosmic, the whole point is tinkering and breaking the rules.

I hate to pull masochist from our games since it's kinda a neat power, and that leaves me only with what ? 49 powers ... maybe if I had the first expansion with another 50 or so powers in it I wouldn't miss one measely little power.. (hint hint hint developers)

And for the record I third or fourth the request that someone please put out a answer to these really good questions appearing here on FAQ. So motion is carried. We await.

satyr said:

While I too would like some answers to few questions I have, I did notice that a FAQ request was posted in all or most of the forums and I have also noticed that a few FAQ's have been released ... so I would guess that one is on the way for CE, but that whoever is compiling it is also very busy.

Yep. I'm working on it right now, but I have no shortage of other projects to do too. Still, you can expect it pretty soonish.

satyr said:

No, it really isn't. The aliens are supposed to "break the rules," but not the players. The rulebook is there for a reason, and I have had almost no problems with the game. In my experience, changing rules to try to "fix" a game generally results in more confusion because all rules are intimitately tied together; you change one, and it will affect the others. Of course, Mobius Tubes timing isn't the biggest change, but I was just saying I generally don't like to tinker. I don't think that timing change would really fix the problem with Masochist and Tech anyway. You're free to fool with the rules all you want; I just don't personally see the need.

Adam said:

+1 ... it's not the point at all .

FAQ coming any day now guys, just waiting for Peter to approve it now.

It's Faqtastic!

Well, I guess we can start asking the next set of questions now.

• When Miser plays a card that he then keeps (Flare, use of Wild Clone, etc), does the card return to the hand it was played from, or does it have to go into his regular hand?
• If Vacuum is healed, can he still use his power? Or must he use his power before Healer can choose what to do?
• If Reserve is zapped, does he keep the card(s) that he attempted to play?
• Super Clone uses the phrase "up to". Does this mean Clone can choose any number between the regular compensaion amount and double that?

This has come up twice in games we've played

When exactly is the game won? Is the landing of the 5th colony enough. For instance, Vacuum allies on defense, offense wins, does vacuum have the ability to use his power to force someone to loose ships?

Hi, my name is Steves (Montréal, Canada). My question is regarding the Alien KAMIKAZE

In short... can he send one ship to the warp, draw two cards from the deck. If he does not like what he sees send another ship to the warp and in that fashion send one by one his ships to the warp until he gets an interesting card. Or does he have to decidde on the number of ships to send in the warp from the beggining and cannot add more afterwards.

Thanks in advance

thanosquest said:

He must decide in advance how many ships he wants to sacrifice, and then draws the cards all at one time.