As some of you know, Cosmic Encounter is one of my favorite board games of all time. My geek heart nearly exploded with joy when I learned that Fantasy Flight, one of my favorite companies, had secured the rights and was going to release a new edition. Upon entering the dealer’s hall at GenCon, I made a beeline to the Fantasy Flight booth. “Encampment” might have been a better word, given the enormous area they took up.
The guy running the demo (drat, forgot his name) was one of the main designers involved in the new edition, if not THE guy. I chatted with him a bit about his vision of the game, what they were keeping, what they were throwing out. Then I got to play a few rounds!
THE GOOD: This is Fantasy Flight, so that means gorgeous art and tons of expansions. The game could not be in better hands.
At first I was leery of the free-floating alien systems as opposed to the large hexes. After some of the new features were described to me, this turned out to be a genius decision, full of possibilities.
The game comes with 50 alien powers, about 70% classic, 30% brand new.
Comets and Reinforcements are included.
THE BAD: Gameplay is a mixture of the Mayfair rules and the Eon rules, so there are things which are second nature to Cosmic players which must be unlearned. For example, once you have a Flare, it stays in your hand until you have to discard it. You can play it over and over. So now the hand size is 8 cards instead of 7.
I was unimpressed with the simplistic, almost abstract, space ships. They are round, UFO-looking affairs. On the plus side, they are stackable, like checkers.
No Reverse Warp Cone. “Something for the expansion,” the guy said.
There’s a score track so you can see who is close to winning. This is an optional device that will never see the light of day at my table. A huge part of the game is keeping an eye on how close your opponents are to winning.
THE WEIRD: Okay, this is a major change. They’ve added Technology cards which represent new powers you can gain later in the game if you research them. You research technology by committing units. So now you have to decide whether you can spare units from planetary offense/defense to get some cool upgrade. I approve of this in concept and will have to see how it pans out. One of the technologies is essentially the Death Star, a planet killer that takes out an entire world disc. Hence the modular planets.
Overall, I am still very happy with what I saw. The rounds I played were very familiar and I wasn’t faced with anything too jarring.
The game should hit stores in November or December! Excitement!