Cosmic Encounter review

Fantasy Flight Games | Strategy | 3-5 players | 120 minutes | www.fantasyflightgames.com 

Although Cosmic Encounter has been around since the 1970s, it has continued to evolve over the years and, arguably, Fantasy Flight’s version of the famous card is the definite edition.

The premise is simple you choose from one of 50 different alien races – each with their own unique and sometimes ridiculous special abilities - and then attempt to colonise the other systems in the universe so your little plastic UFOs are spread across the table.You have five planets at the start of the game, along with 20 spaceships and must then attempt to get five colonies on planets outside your home system.

This is done by attacking the other aliens and wiping them out using a series of attack cards. The attack cards are numbered to show your strength of attack and you can add extra ships from the stock into the fight, e.g. your attack card says 20 and you back it up with five ships. If you fancy playing a bit of politics you could persuade another player to join in the fight, like some kind of intergalactic sidekick. Next you and the defending players both flip over your cards and the one with the highest total wins, while the other has all their ships completely wiped. Yeah, it’s pretty brutal. However, instead of fighting you can choose to negotiate and in this case the losing player doesn’t lose their ships. 

Obviously the tactics are based around what cards you play and the number of ships you send out. If you send over five UFOs your opponent might rightly assume you must have a strong attack card but, of course, you could be bluffing in an attempt to get them to negotiate. 

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