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Topic	another year of tabletop rankings and writeups
SeabassDebeste 01/02/20 3:49:52 PM #76:	118. Cosmic Encounter (1977) Category: Player vs Player Genres: Negotiation, hand management, combat Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3 Game length: 60-120 minutes Experience: 2 plays (2015, 2017) with 5 players Previous ranks: 40/100 (2016), 68/80 (2018) Summary - Each player assumes control of an alien race attempting to colonize other players' home planets. Your goal is to be the first player to colonize a certain number of planets. You get to colonize a player's planet if you successfully attack (or support an attack of) that player. The attacks are randomly decided and cards are used to enhance the attack and defense strength of those planets, and players can pledge their ships to causes of others' attacks or defenses. Design - While it sounds like a space opera, Cosmic Encounter is much lighter in tone than that. The "destiny deck" determines who gets attacked and is this gentle reminder not to take the game too seriously. (The wacky alien powers and incredibly swingy combat cards are another reminder.) It winds up mainly being a game where you play cards with really big numbers (that generally dwarf the number of ships being pledged on both sides). Experience - I was hesitant to play CE the first time, with a few friends but a rando at a meetup as the game's introducer. It became one of the few games I had ever won at that point, probably responsible for boosting its ranking here. That said, it didn't feel very satisfying. My second play was... fine. Better company, but the game just doesn't make a strong impression on me. Perhaps it hurts that the rhetoric around the game is that the only real win is an individual win? In any case, the raucous negotiation, which I assume is what's supposed to make the game fun, has never materialized for me. Future - I really don't know how this game can rise much. It's not particularly unpleasant, but the upside seems rather low. Would play it maybe a few more times, but mostly to solidify my opinions, and perhaps not as much expecting great things. --- yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness <cite>SeabassDebeste posted [p:932372967] in another ye... [t:78284791]...</cite> <quote>118. Cosmic Encounter (1977) Category: Player vs Player Genres: Negotiation, hand management, combat Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3 Game length: 60-120 minutes Experience: 2 plays (2015, 2017) with 5 players Previous ranks: 40/100 (2016), 68/80 (2018) Summary - Each player assumes control of an alien race attempting to colonize other players' home planets. Your goal is to be the first player to colonize a certain number of planets. You get to colonize a player's planet if you successfully attack (or support an attack of) that player. The attacks are randomly decided and cards are used to enhance the attack and defense strength of those planets, and players can pledge their ships to causes of others' attacks or defenses. Design - While it sounds like a space opera, Cosmic Encounter is much lighter in tone than that. The "destiny deck" determines who gets attacked and is this gentle reminder not to take the game too seriously. (The wacky alien powers and incredibly swingy combat cards are another reminder.) It winds up mainly being a game where you play cards with really big numbers (that generally dwarf the number of ships being pledged on both sides). Experience - I was hesitant to play CE the first time, with a few friends but a rando at a meetup as the game's introducer. It became one of the few games I had ever won at that point, probably responsible for boosting its ranking here. That said, it didn't feel very satisfying. My second play was... fine. Better company, but the game just doesn't make a strong impression on me. Perhaps it hurts that the rhetoric around the game is that the only real win is an individual win? In any case, the raucous negotiation, which I assume is what's supposed to make the game fun, has never materialized for me. Future - I really don't know how this game can rise much. It's not particularly unpleasant, but the upside seems rather low. Would play it maybe a few more times, but mostly to solidify my opinions, and perhaps not as much expecting great things. --- yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness</quote> ... Copied to Clipboard!
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