My question is about the timing of when the defender draws a new hand during the planning phase. Is it at the beginning of the phase, or when he must actually a card? Point being, there is a flare (forgot the name at the moment) that is used before cards are selected that lets the flare player steal a card, and then check for any remaining encounter cards. If none exist, the player loses. Do all effects that state 'before cards are selected' trigger and occur before the defense is able to reveal his hand and draw a new one? We have a few rules lawyers in the group, and this started a heated debate...

A few effects and rulings only make sense if the defense's drawing a new hand occurs at the absolute start of the Planning phase. For example, this is the first edition where Trader is used in Planning, as well as the first edition where the defense draws a new hand in Planning. Too much coincidence; it's intended to prevent Trader from trading the offense a blank hand. With such precedent, drawing a new hand should go absolute first in Planning.

The FFG people better be still reading this topic for a FAQ update.

• It has been assumed based on product description that players will alter their compensation choices from seeing how many reward cards the target has. Does this effect (making a choice based on cosmic card or reward card) extend to other choosing effects like Magician and Wild Trader? Does it even extend to random discards such as Mite and the Plague? If not, is there a certain way of randomly discarding cards other than "shuffle them with eyes closed"?
• If Mind is asked by Seeker to reveal information about someone else's hand, is this a legal question? (For example, "does Pacifist have any N's?".)
• If someone gets a stack of ships from temporarily stealing Fungus' power, are they able to use the stacks as their total worth in combat, or do they have to re-steal Fungus' power to do so?
• What happens if a player has all of their home planets destroyed (Locust, Wild Guerilla, Wild/Super Locust, Omega Missile)?
• If Plant steals a power and then loses his own in the same encounter, is the power of the stolen-from player restored immediately?
• Do players have the right to know how many cards any other player has at any time? (For example, is Genius forced to be honest when asked about how many cards he has?)
• If opposing ships end up in the Void, are put into a Fungus stack, or get healed, can Ghoul still feast on them?
• When exactly is a player determined to have won the game? Is it the instant the win condition occours, the end of the phase, or the end of the encounter?
• Is the difference between a regular Negotiate and a Crooked Deal the same as the difference between an Attack 06 and an Attack 12? (That is, same card type, but different face value?)

Sorry for the stupid question but.... are the official answers to all of these FAQ questions posted anywhere?

Zomber said:

Some, but not all. The early questions in this thread are addressed in the official FAQ (although it suffers from many errors, contradictions, and confusing answers). Many of the questions here have gone unanswered; whether FFG is still reading this thread is impossible to tell, but it seems very unlikely since they haven't posted here in ages (and there has been no news of a new FAQ or even whether they intend to correct the errors in the first one).

To see the questions that have been answered, download the FAQ from this page: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp

For a review of the errors in that FAQ, go to BoardgameGeek (the best place to find good, crowd-sourced information on Cosmic Encounter): www.boardgamegeek.com/article/4670314

Ah... nice. Although as you've said, there are errors and contradictions in that document. Makes it tough to trust anything it says when there are such blatant wrong explanations:

Pacifist
Q: If Pacifist must play an N when Loser calls upset, does he get compensation?
A: Yes.

I mean...did they even have someone who has played more than 6 months answer these questions?

But thank you for pointing me in the right direction, Just-a-Bill. Someday I hope you'll be a Law.

Zomber said:

But yeah, there's some pretty bad stuff in the FAQ. I could have whipped up something better in an hour or two, and I'm sure a lot of other long-time or technical players could as well.

Toomai said:

Don't feel too bad, Zomber ... this one gave me whiplash, too. I originally had the same reaction as you in my FAQ review and Toomai had to slap some sense into me. (I guess my only defense is that I was worn out from all the research and the FAQ is so gnarly I just started expecting every entry to be wrong!)

For the record, however, that FAQ entry is still incomplete : the one-word answer is insufficient since the question is incomplete.

Part of the reason the FAQ is so crappy is that many of the questions are crappy. A good FAQ writer always rewrites the questions to eliminate potential confusion and misinterpretations. If they wanted to get away with a one-word answer (which the FAQ does a lot), then this question really should have been, "If Loser declares an upset and reveals an attack card, but Pacifist is forced to reveal a negotiate card, Pacifist wins and therefore loses because of the upset. Does he get compensation?"

Not only would the entry have been leak-proof, but folks like us wouldn't have gotten confused.

Blobchaser said:

Ditto! Amen!! What HE said!!!

/POKE

Come on already FFG put out a FAQ update. If you're going to continue to put out expansions then put out FAQ updates as well.

The past few years this is around the time when they announce a new Cosmic product. I would wait on that first. A FAQ update is more likely to come after a new expansion has been launched, as it will of course bring more questions with it.

I would say a FAQ update is not likely at all . We are about to get the FOURTH installment in this series and there has NEVER been an update to the 2009 FAQ, which is long past its expiration date (and was already defective the day it was published). If FFG gave a rat's ass about rules support we would be on version 2 or 3 by now. But they don't, so we aren't.

Even if they ever do publish a FAQ update, I can assure you it will already be out of date, as well as incorrect. Just get your questions crowd-sourced on BoardGameGeek and give up on this "comprehensive FAQ project" thread that FFG pays zero attention to. Otherwise you'll be waiting forever for something that can only disappoint. I suspect that's why they don't even try any more ... they know we will tear it apart on day one and yet again expose FFG's inability to write game rules that make sense.

Is the Saboteur allowed to look at his Saboteur tokens? And also at the start of the game he gets 3 per player, my friends and i had an argument that he had to place his three tokens in each players system, but the Saboteur player said he should be able to place them whereever he wanted meaning that in a six player game he could cover one players planets with detonate tokens. Thanks for the help

Saboteur can look at his tokens at any time. He does not have to put 3 in each player's system.