COSMIC ENCOUNTER
Where No Game's Gone Before
What is Cosmic Encounter?
Cosmic Encounter is a unique beast. It has the body of a tabletop game, the mind of a strategy game, and the soul of a party game. Material advantage in Cosmic only gets you so far. In order to achieve victory, you also need social skill and a little bit of luck.
The goal of the game is to get five colonies on any of the planets belonging to other players. A colony consists of one or more ships, meaning a single ship on another player’s planet is worth the same as twenty. Players take turn as the offense, targeting a randomly chosen player to act as the defense. The other players can be invited by the offense and defense to support them. The players involved in the encounter then play cards from their hands to gain combat power, with the higher total winning. After combat is resolved, players receive a prize based on which side won. The offense and allies each receive a colony on the targeted planet using the ships they committed, while the defensive allies receive rewards for each ship sent. Regardless of who won, the losing side loses all of the ships they committed. Play continues in this manner until one or more players reaches the predetermined amount of colonies needed to win. For more information about how Cosmic is played, consult the Official Rules.
What Makes Cosmic So Special?
Cosmic Encounter was one of the first tabletop games to introduce the concept of asymmetrical multiplayer, pioneering a concept that would give rise to well-renowned classics like Magic the Gathering and Illuminati.
Cosmic challenged the old ways of board games established by chess, Monopoly, and Scrabble which put everyone on equal footing, instead opting to give everyone different advantages. Cosmic gives everyone a unique ability to “cheat” in a specific way, a “power” that allows everyone to have an impact on the game whether or not they win. These methods of cheating are combined with the sci-fi theming to frame each one as the unique power of an alien race, which grants a potential roleplay factor in addition to engaging gameplay.
Cosmic is a social experiment, a beautiful ice breaker at parties, a means of gauging someone’s personality and seeing what kind of gamer they are. The game at its core is simple, but that simplicity provides a bedrock foundation for permutations to build upon. The game is 1/3 strategy, 1/3 luck, and 1/3 social, meaning players that are better tend to win more often, but no one’s victory is ever guaranteed. Classic Mario Party stuff. In addition to the uncertainty of victory, there are a host of other idiosyncrasies that the game offers. Resource management is important, but resources are not strictly good. Some alien powers are more useful than others, but being too powerful can backfire since everyone will gang up on you. Helping others and betraying others can both be powerful tools, and both can backfire spectacularly.
That all said, the game would host merely a fraction of its true potential without the appeal of the alien powers. With the mantra of “no two games are the same”, everything about Cosmic’s design facilitates extreme variance between sessions, despite every turn of Cosmic following the same predetermined routine. A general game of Cosmic requires 3-5 players, with the total number of possible players technically being infinite (though the fun factor tends to drop off at 7-8). Because each game involves so many players, even if you only had five powers and five players, you could squeeze out 126 different combinations before you had the exact same power combination twice, and even then the game wouldn’t go the same way the second time. When you consider that the current iteration of Cosmic has 196 official powers and thousands more fanmade ones, it is easy to see how this game can become a game theory rabbit hole.
Naturally, I have spent a great deal of time studying the game’s design and what makes it interesting, particularly when it comes to the different powers and how they influence the game. When I first played, I was captivated by the design. I perceived the game to be a flawless masterpiece, somehow managing to create a scenario where everyone was overpowered, meaning no one was.
Nowadays I have more a realistic appreciation for the game of Cosmic, despite still finding it to be the pinnacle of game design. However, my appreciation has shifted from mere admiration to analysis and theorycrafting. Like many who take an interest in the game, I have been inspired to iterate on the existing framework, taking what works and changing what might not to see if it can be improved to maximize engagement. Even among those who dogmatically stick to the official rules, there are a number of unofficial “house rules” that are commonly used to account for some of the game’s shortcomings, especially when it comes to many of the alien powers. My project simply employs that concept on a much wider scale. My project is to create my own personal Cosmic Encounter.
My Cosmic Project
The way I see it, everyone has their own take on the way that Cosmic Encounter should be. In reality, this is true for all games, but Cosmic’s depth drives fans to be especially opinionated. The powers, the rules, the restrictions, the lore, all of these details give would-be developers ample room to tweak the game as they see fit, and a lot of potential thorns to poke at people that might otherwise enjoy themselves.
Cosmic Encounter: Blutooth Edition (name pending) is my own personalized form of Cosmic. While it does not remake or reimagine the game from the ground up, it employs a skeptic’s philosophy when it considering its components. That is, I add nothing to the game without first questioning if it should be there. The goal is to create a version of Cosmic tailored to my own sensibilities, with the notion that something which appeals to me will likely appeal to others. My Cosmic is not in any way authoritative, as I do not own the game or have any stake in it beyond personal interest. If you, as the reader, happen to take interest in any of my ideas, feel free to pick and choose whichever bits you like and apply them to your own Cosmic. Or better yet, let my ideas inspire your own.
Click the gate below to enter my Cosmic universe. Just be warned. You may find it rather alien.
Helpful Links for Cosmic Fans
Information on official current release of Cosmic Encounter by Fantasy Flight Games.
Unofficial glossary on official Cosmic Encounter terms, as well as rulings and house rules. Created by Bill Martinson.
Full database of all official Cosmic aliens, as well as thousands of unofficial ones. Created by Jack Reda.