One query from tonight's games, which feels like a missing piece of text from a race card: when the Siren is the offense, as their power is only limited to "Not Defense", presumably this means that they can choose to use their power to make themselves the defense? This not only feels thematically "wrong" (why would the siren lure their own kind to their death?) , but also raises the question of who now becomes the new offense? I can't help but feel that the power feels like it should be limited to "Not Main Player", but as it isn't, how is this meant to be dealt with? Obviously the S iren can't be both the offense and defense, so does the player whose colour was drawn in the destiny phase become the offense? Nothing on the card seems to explain this at all, unless perhaps I'm just being really stupid and missing something obvious!

Smooth session, only one question came up tonight:

1) If Fungus captured Vacuum's ships and this stack is sent to the warp, can Vacuum use his power?

One query from tonight's games, which feels like a missing piece of text from a race card: when the Siren is the offense, as their power is only limited to "Not Defense", presumably this means that they can choose to use their power to make themselves the defense? This not only feels thematically "wrong" (why would the siren lure their own kind to their death?), but also raises the question of who now becomes the new offense? I can't help but feel that the power feels like it should be limited to "Not Main Player", but as it isn't, how is this meant to be dealt with? Obviously the S iren can't be both the offense and defense, so does the player whose colour was drawn in the destiny phase become the offense? Nothing on the card seems to explain this at all, unless perhaps I'm just being really stupid and missing something obvious!

Hello rjb, thanks for all your questions! Are you referring to the Siren alien power sheet? Mine says "Not Main Player."

One query from tonight's games, which feels like a missing piece of text from a race card: when the Siren is the offense, as their power is only limited to "Not Defense", presumably this means that they can choose to use their power to make themselves the defense? This not only feels thematically "wrong" (why would the siren lure their own kind to their death?), but also raises the question of who now becomes the new offense? I can't help but feel that the power feels like it should be limited to "Not Main Player", but as it isn't, how is this meant to be dealt with? Obviously the S iren can't be both the offense and defense, so does the player whose colour was drawn in the destiny phase become the offense? Nothing on the card seems to explain this at all, unless perhaps I'm just being really stupid and missing something obvious!

Hello rjb, thanks for all your questions! Are you referring to the Siren alien power sheet? Mine says "Not Main Player."

Um... I'm afraid that mine very definitely doesn't.

Printing error?

You know what. When I said my copy said otherwise, I was referring to a reference image I found online. My physical copy also says "Not Defense." I will do some digging and get back to you!

Edit: Alright I did some digging. It seems it may have been fixed on a reprint of the expansion. Which means its prime FAQ material. Thank you!

From Cosmic Incursion rulebook: "Additionally, if a rift card is taken from a player’s hand (but not discarded), either as compensation or as the result of another game effect, the rift detonates..." A more detailed description what exactly the other game effects are would be helpful, most interestingly:

1) When Trader exchanges hands, do the rifts of his new hand detonate?

And also more generally: do rifts detonate if passed as part of a successful negotiation? That is to say, if I agree to swap cards with another player after both playing Negotiate encounter cards (or as part of a Galactic Council hazard etc.), can I sneakily pass them a few rifts to destroy their fleet?

1) What happens if you use Leviathan Wild flare and choose one of Pygmy's planets to be exchanged? Does the planet that enters Pygmy's home system become a Pygmy planet resulting in the evacuation of the surplus ships and does the leaving planet lose its ship limit? You could argue the answer is No, because Pygmy's power description says: "there can never be more than four ships on any of your planets", but not " home planets" and a planet changing its size is hard to imagine.

2) Same question as above: What happens when The Claw steals one of Pygmy's planets.

1) When Trader exchanges hands, do the rifts of his new hand detonate?

And also more generally: do rifts detonate if passed as part of a successful negotiation? That is to say, if I agree to swap cards with another player after both playing Negotiate encounter cards (or as part of a Galactic Council hazard etc.), can I sneakily pass them a few rifts to destroy their fleet?

I assume that rifts you give away do not explode since "giving" is not the same as "taking". If it were the same, playing Philanthropist would be even more powerful than it is already. Exchanging hands is somewhat a special case, therefor I am interested in a ruling on Trader the most.

I assume that rifts you give away do not explode since "giving" is not the same as "taking". If it were the same, playing Philanthropist would be even more powerful than it is already. Exchanging hands is somewhat a special case, therefor I am interested in a ruling on Trader the most.

That's certainly a possible interpretation, but of course the receiving player is still "taking" the given cards, and it might make just as much sense to rule a thematic reason for rifts' effects: they're inherently unstable, so their collapse is triggered by the move from one hand to another, rather than specifically as a result of the intent behind their transfer.

In that case, I'd imagine that the effect on gameplay would be to make players far more wary about accepting reward-backed cards in a negotiation, or indeed allowing the cards to be chosen by the "giving" player at all - we already often have negotiations in which a player will specifically ask for cards to be offered at random from the other player's hand (rather than by the "giving" player's choice), so this wouldn't change a great deal in that respect.

Plus there's of course a point about whether it might over-complicate rulings to define a distinction between "being given" and "taking", given the number of ways in which cards can change hands in the game?

As for the Philanthropist , yes, it would become more powerful if ruled this way - but this would be entirely dependent on the player having rifts in their hand (just as the Loser is far more powerful with a hand of Negotiates , etc.), which just gives the other players more to consider when inviting that player as a defensive ally (which is already the case for plenty of other races anyway!)

In any case, I do think the broader question is more about the rifts themselves in any situation, rather than specifically for the Trader , as the word "take" could be interpreted in several different ways in different situations for quite a few existing racial powers and game effects.

Personally, I think I prefer the idea of clarifying/redefining rifts as detonating whenever changing hands, as I think this avoids a lot of potential confusion as to what counts as "taking" as opposed to "receiving" - and of course it's always fun to offer players as many interesting ways to backstab or sabotage each other as possible!

Whoever compiles the list of questions should definitely study this thread, it lists and tries to answer about a dozen of important and tricky ones: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/897933/unanswered-questions-of-cosmic-encounter

Saves me the time to repeat them here. For me the most intriguing are those regarding the flare usage of Super Cyro , Super Human and Super Vulch . Three of the other questions, those about Temporal Anomaly , The Invader's extra encounter and Wild Sadist flare were asked here by rjb, too.

Still playing through all aliens, two related questions came up tonight:

1) If both main players reveal identical attack cards, does The Claw choose from whom it steals the planet, if they are identical to the card on its sheet? (Probably, what other options are there?)

2) If one main player reveals an attack and the other a Morph card, does The Claw choose from whom it steals the planet, if the attack card is identical to the card on its sheet?

3) Reborn's description says: "you may use this power to draw a card.", but unlike Remora omits "from THE deck". Was this done intentionally to allow Reborn to draw from the Rewards deck or is it an oversight? (I think it would be overpowered.)

One additional question raised during one of tonight's games:

1) When a card's effects are triggered by a player winning or losing an encounter by a certain amount, some cards (such as the Spiff ) specify that the effect only trigger if both players play Attack cards; but for those which don't specify this, do these effects trigger if a player loses by playing a Negotiate card? That is to say, if a player plays a Negotiate and their adversary plays and Attack 12, does the former player lose by 12 points as if they had played a 0 for the purposes of these effects, or does the automatic win not count as having an attack value, and therefore not trigger these cards? (The latter method is how we chose to interpret this, as it seems less likely to create ambiguities, and is consistent with the deliberate wording of cards like the Spiff power which do specify.)

Some clarifications about Trader.

The power says "before encounter cards are selected"

1) Can the trader announce a Kicker and then trade hands?

2) After Chronos uses its power, the encounter goes back to the planning phase and encounter cards are chosen again. Can the trader then choose to trade hands, and if so, does the "set aside card" count as part of the trader's hand?

#2 Example: Chronos plays an attack 14 and the Trader plays an attack 23 (the Trader chose not to switch hands). Chronos freezes the Trader's 20 and it is placed to the side. Now it goes back to the planning phase again. At this point, the Trader would like to switch hands. The way we have ruled it is that the "set aside" card remains set aside and the trader swaps his or her current hand with the Chronos player.

3) More generically, if any power causes one or more main players to select an encounter card again, does this give the trader the opportunity to use its power? (Assuming Trader is a Main Player or using the Super)

4) Is the Trader Super flare considered to be in the player's hand when the hand is traded, thus losing the super just by using it once? It seems like not since it is considered in play, but this might deserve clarification.

Thanks!

The follwing is quite confusing:

1) If Loser declares an Upset against Industrialist it seems that Loser almost always wins, because if he wins the encounter, he can "allow Industrialist to win" and then "after all other games effects are resolved" turn this loss into a win. Since Industrialist was allowed to win, he cannot add his attack card to his stack. Charming, but is this interpretation correct?

Are you referring to the Siren alien power sheet? Mine says "Not Main Player."

Edit: Alright I did some digging. It seems it may have been fixed on a reprint of the expansion. Which means its prime FAQ material. Thank you!

If the reprint actually says "Not Main Player," that's still not correct. The correct icon would be "Not Main Player or Ally." Normally it wouldn't matter, but if some other effect were to allow/force Siren become an ally early, then she shouldn't be able to use her power.

Some clarifications about Trader.

The power says "before encounter cards are selected"

1) Can the trader announce a Kicker and then trade hands?

2) After Chronos uses its power, the encounter goes back to the planning phase and encounter cards are chosen again. Can the trader then choose to trade hands, and if so, does the "set aside card" count as part of the trader's hand?

#2 Example: Chronos plays an attack 14 and the Trader plays an attack 23 (the Trader chose not to switch hands). Chronos freezes the Trader's 20 and it is placed to the side. Now it goes back to the planning phase again. At this point, the Trader would like to switch hands. The way we have ruled it is that the "set aside" card remains set aside and the trader swaps his or her current hand with the Chronos player.

3) More generically, if any power causes one or more main players to select an encounter card again, does this give the trader the opportunity to use its power? (Assuming Trader is a Main Player or using the Super)

4) Is the Trader Super flare considered to be in the player's hand when the hand is traded, thus losing the super just by using it once? It seems like not since it is considered in play, but this might deserve clarification.

1. Yes. All "before encounter cards are selected" actions (including both Trader's power and playing a Kicker) can occur in any order between the start of the phase and the actual selection of cards, subject of course to the Timing Conflicts rule.
   
2. Set-aside cards are not part of a hand.
   
3. There seems to be an unwritten general rule (which should probably go into the FAQ) that most powers can be used "once per specified context." If there is a repeat of the planning phase, I'd say the specified context came up again and Trader can use his power again. (This is also consistent with the time-travel theme; and the fact that Chronos says "All other cards played since the start of the planning phase return to their owners' hands" implies a general reset for everything Planning-related except the opponent's card.)
   
4. No, an in-progress flare, just like a set-aside card, is not part of the hand. The first FAQ actually states this:

Q: After you play a flare, at what point does it re-enter your hand?

A: Immediately after resolving its effect. So, for instance, when playing the Oracle Wild flare, you play the flare faceup in front of you, mix your hands together, get your new hand at random from the mixed cards, and then return the Oracle flare to your hand (since its effect is now finished).

5) The Butler wild flare. If player A hands the current encounter to player B, does player A have a second encounter if player B wins their encounter?

6) The Butler wild flare: any thoughts on the situation of player A handing the encounter over to player B, but player B drawing player A's colour during the destiny phase of the encounter? Clearly, player A cannot ally against themself, so assuming that player B's success gives player A a second encounter, this could lead to the rather odd situation of player A simultaneously winning and losing an encounter. Not exactly game-breaking, but definitely odd, and possibly best dealt with somehow.

In one of your sessions we too were uncertain how to interpret it. "After the encounter ends, play resumes from where it left off." is confusing.

Wild Butler has several problems and is a good candidate for errata.

As the offense, at the start of your regroup phase, you may choose another player to be the offense for this encounter by saying "After you, I insist." The encounter is then carried out as usual, except that player must invite you to ally with him or her if possible . After the encounter ends, play resumes from where it left off. If that player wins or deals, it counts as a successful encounter for you.

The "if possible" should take care of the situation where the flareholder ends up as the defense (and thus should not ally), as well as any future things like Negator or Silencer or whatever that might interfere with invitations. "Play resumes from where it left off" is problematic, since where play "left off" before the flare was used was in your Regroup phase! We certainly don't want to resume from there. Where we want to "resume" from is whatever would normally happen next if the flareholder had just finished winning or losing an encounter like his proxy did. If it was in lieu of his first encounter and his proxy won (or if he is the Machine , Lightning , etc.), then he can have another encounter. Otherwise, his turn is over.

According to its text, the flare flare is not inserting an extra encounter; it is allowing you to pick somebody else to "be the offense" for that encounter . So it still functions as your first or second encounter of your turn.

"After alliances are formed" cannot actually mean after the alliance phase, because effects with this label almost always have an Alliance icon, meaning it must happen during the alliance phase. Phrases like these effectively establish sub-phases within the phases. For example, from a timing perspective the Alliance phase has at least five distinct sub-phases:

1. "before allies are invited"
2. offense invites allies; defense invites allies
3. "after allies are invited but before alliances are formed"
4. allies accept/decline
5. "after alliances are formed"

An "after alliances are formed" effect does not require that any alliances were actually formed. All of these kinds of phrases are trying to pin down the timing , not set requirements on previous actions.

2) The Citadel : can its power be used more than once a turn if multiple Destiny cards are drawn (for example when a player draws their own colour and decides to redraw)? Or, again, should this instead be interpreted as "at the end of the destiny phase" (which is how we've been playing it)?

I think there is an unwritten rule that most powers work "once per specified context." Citadel starts out with "During each player's turn...", which seems to establish the context. Now, I believe that what the writer actually intended was "During each player's encounter " and thus Citadel is another alien that needs errata, but that's a separate point. Either way, I don't think this particular effect gets to work after each destiny draw, since the reference to destiny seems to be establishing when it happens rather than the interval in which is can be used one time. The interval seems to be "during each turn/encounter" (whichever was actually intended).

Completely agree that this one also needs errata. Certainly the author did not intend for them to all go into the discard pile and enter play! This should say "Then, remove the other nine flare cards from the game and ..."

Agreed. Fungus trumps every ship-saver.

3) FAQ 1.0 establishes that Shadow uses it's power for each destiny card drawn even if the offense draws more than one. Just to make sure: does this apply to Disease and Poison , too?

Yes, those powers are very clear. Disease says " whenever any other player's color ... is drawn" and Poison says " each time a card with a hazard ... is drawn." (I don't think these need to waste space in the FAQ.)

Another thing that I think needs to be clarified: what to do, exactly, when a race card includes a "Do Not Use With..." text?

(In fact, it's not even literally clear from the wording on the card whether it means not to use these powers in the same game, or not to combine them as a result of Precursor Seed, etc. - but I think it is fairly obvious that it means that they shouldn't be used in the same game... Perhaps this should also be clarified?)

Is the idea simply that the player (or players) with the "Do Not Use With..." instruction, on revealing their power/s and finding the conflict, discard their card/s and redraw a new one at random? Obviously, it would be unfair to give the player/s a choice of two new cards to pick from, given that they're now aware of the other players' choices.

For simplicity, this should mean "do not have the powers together in the same game in any way": not used opposing each other, not used together, not chosen at the start of the game, and not brought in later by some other effect.

It's unfortunate if a player loses his starting choices altogether just because somebody else has the alien that knocks his out, so I would recommend allowing at least a minimum choice:

During Game Setup, if a conflict arises because of a Do Not Use restriction, the alien that has the printed restriction is removed from the game. (The one without the restriction remains in play.) The affected player may then choose either to use the second alien he or she was dealt and rejected, or to draw a replacement flare from the unused flare deck and become that alien (redrawing if another conflict arises, of course).

Agree wholeheartedly. There are currently four such powers: Coordinator, Gambler, Magician, and Sadist. Gambler and Magician have really easy fixes to work with Sorcerer and Oracle, and players have been using the Gambler/Sorcerer fix for decades. The silly thing is, Magician already needs errata anyway so that it can coexist with its own flare, Wild Magician, which is guaranteed to be in the game! And the required errata will fix the Oracle interaction basically "for free." Here are the patches:

Add to Magician: If another game effect requires you to play your card first (e.g., Oracle, Wild Magician), you must do so. You then still use this power, but may not change the card you played.

Sadly, there's not really anything we can do about Sadist and Coordinator; they are pretty much stuck with their "tramp stamps."

Also, a lot of players have commented that Masochist really should say " Do Not Use with Healer. " As much as I hate tramp stamps, I am forced to agree; Healer completely makes Masochist into a non-power.

1) The Schizoid wild flare: the card specifies that players swap home systems and colours (and therefore presumably all ships, including foreign colonies, but not hands, racial powers etc.?) - but some questions remain: what happens to ships currently engaged in researching Tech cards? The flare doesn't mention anything about swapping Tech cards, but as ships of the player's new colour may be on a Tech card, it makes sense to swap these along with the planets in the home system. And presumably, space stations should also be swapped even though not explicitly mentioned, since they are attached to the planets being swapped?

Space stations swap for sure, since they are already part of the home system.

Tech cards are not actually part of your home system, they are an aspect of the player, so errata will be required to define how they should be handled. Potential options include (a) swapping uncompleted techs, (b) swapping techs still being researched, © swapping all techs, (d) sending researching ships back to colonies, and (e) requiring researching ships to return to colonies and/or transfer to researchable techs of the new player (new owner's choice).

Wild Schizoid creates other problems, such as completely breaking aliens that say "This power cannot be lost, stolen..." ( Horde , Pygmy , Symbiote ). This is why the template was expanded in Cosmic Storm, and Roach and Swindler say "This power cannot be stolen, copied, or separated from your player color through any means." The FAQ should probably say that Horde, Pygmy, and Symbiote should be understood to have the same addition.

I disagree that "at the start of an encounter" means any time during the regroup phase. Start means start ; if you've done a bunch of regular regroup activities, then the start window has already passed. All start-of-phase activities have to be done before any other non-start-of-phase activities; similarly, all start-of-encounter activities have do be done before any other non-start-of-encounter activities.

Unfortunately you are correct about Merchant's timing, and hired ships do actually "land on the planet." This was a design flaw and has other problems besides Saboteur (think about Gorgon; yuck). So probably errata is appropriate here. Might as well fix that problem and the missing reference to capturing all in one shot; something along the lines of "Any hired ship that goes to the warp , is captured, or is removed from the game is discarded. Otherwise, hired ships become normal cards again and return to your hand at the end of the encounter instead of landing on a planet ."

Hmm, now that I think about it, the following would be much more bullet-proof:

Any hired ship that should land on a planet becomes a normal card again and returns to your hand. All other hired ships are discarded.

This should take care of any weird situation that we forgot about or that comes along in the future.

(It's amazing how often analyzing a wording to figure out what is really the core thing we're trying to say will usually make it shorter!)

1) After an alien power has been cosmic zapped, do parts of the power that do not require a use still work or is the alien disabled entirely until the end of this encounter?

This is a tricky one. In general, zapping — or any other kind of power loss — has to shut off both use and non- use effects. (In previous editions of the game, there was no distinction between the two and so everything was deactivated.) Other ways to lose your power include having too few home colonies, and having it stolen/traded/discarded by something like Changeling, Wild Philanthropist, Plant, Wild Plant, Reincarnator, Wild Reincarnator, or Wild Sorcerer.

However, some aliens have certain "residual" or "automatic" or "cleanup" effects that still need to operate regardless of power loss. These are scheduled, enqueued, or required by a previous use of some other part of the game text, or needed for cleanup or to keep the game engine running. They continue to take effect regardless of power loss (mostly this only occurs if something weird makes you lose a home colony after your power has been used but before the "scheduled" effect completes).

Examples include Leviathan increasing his total after launching a worldship, and later sending that worldship back home, Loser affecting the encounter outcome after declaring an upset during Planning, Merchant counting hired ships in Reveal that were played during Planning and then returning or discarding those cards, Mirror reversing digits after declaring the reversal earlier, Seeker making an opponent honor the previously given answer, Deuce returning one of the revealed cards to hand, Fungus carrying his stacks around and then breaking them apart in the warp, Grudge ’s opponents discarding their grudge tokens, and Locust counting devoured colonies even after the power is lost.

After Cosmic Incursion came out, one of the playtesters told us that the internal instructions had been that "THE deck" always means just the cosmic deck. So Remora does not activate when a player draws from the reward deck (which is probably a good thing).

I'd like to suggest that you include a "real" printed copy of the updated and (hopefully) verified FAQ as part of the Cosmic Dominion expansion! (Actually, I'd like to see a giant box with room to contain and organize a fully-expanded FFG CE set with an omnibus rulebook, as was done with Eon Expansion #9.)

include a "real" printed copy of the updated and (hopefully) verified FAQ as part of the Cosmic Dominion expansion

I for one do not want to spend any money on an FAQ in an expansion that I could instead download from the internet for free. Everything they put in the box costs money to print and ship. For whatever that FAQ would cost, I'd much rather have new content (even if it's just a new cardboard token, or one silver plastic ship to use for The Prometheus.) It's all about opportunity cost.

I have my doubts whether this FAQ will be released anytime soon, but for the sake of completeness I would like to copy over this fundamental question that was discussed on BGG:

Cosmic Conflict rules say:

One more question regarding the hazard deck. Cosmic Guardian says:

While The Cosmic Guardian is in play, all attack cards higher than 20 are considered to be negotiate cards.

1) Is this effect applied before and/or after card modifying effects like Graviton , Mirror , Tripler or Wild Human ?

Here is a question about timing that I just had today in a game we played. I was playing as the Dervish and my friend who we will call Sam was invited to ally. He joined as an ally, then I said I am using my power to switch hands between the three of us involved in the encounter(Myself, defense and Sam). As soon as I indicated this he played a Force Field card to stop his alliance and withdraw himself. At this point am I required to still use my power or can I say I am not going to use my power since the Dervishes power is a may use power? If I have a choice I might not want to switch with the defense because I wanted Sams cards from his hand. I am just confused about this and how this would be resolved? Or does my power resolve before he is unable to withdraw as an ally and then he does so after.