Cosmic Encounter | Board Game Masterpieces

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] execute order 66 oh hello i'm adam from no rolls bar don't worry about that and welcome to board game masterpieces where we hand select a game we believe is an absolute essential purchase for any board gamer we give it the works a brief rundown of its history a deep dive review and how to play all wrapped in a beautiful bow [Music] cheers this episode we are looking at my personal favorite board game of all time cosmic encounter cosmic has become regarded as one of the pillars of hobby board gaming one on arrival broke a bunch of rules about game design but has since become a benchmark for replayability and raucous fun not despite of but because it's something of a wonderful mess and what i truly think makes it essential is i believe it has the potential to be not all the deceased or all the jedi but all of the board games in cosmic encounter you are all different alien races vying for total galactic dominance remember when yoda said was not make one great well off yoda turns out that little green nerd never played this board game because that's exactly how you become great you'll be acting as generals sending wave after wave of your own ships to war making alliances with other great powers and watching liberty die to thunderous applause so this is the starting setup and it doesn't look like much but it's got it where it counts kid you've got 20 spaceships of your color spread evenly across your five planets that make up your home system and look they're stacked on top of each other it's it's great which begs the question how do you stack yours are you the librarian the daredevil the piece of you just can't do anything right for sake so these five planets are called your home system throughout the game you'll be having battles or encounters in other people's systems trying to wipe out your opponent's forces and land your ships on their planet which gives you a foreign colony always nice to hear a british man explain about foreign colonies sorry about all that everyone else in the world by the way when you get a foreign colony your victory token moves up by one if anyone ever gets five that player instantly wins now if all these battles and territory grabbing reminds you a bit of risk well then aren't you a clever sausage because cosmic was actually designed by four friends in cape cod massachusetts bill eberly peter alotka jack ketteridge and bill norton with their inspiration being basically what if we took risk and made it not a chore originally published back in 1977 which is ancient for a hobby game by eon products a company actually founded by the designers themselves fun fact it was originally gonna be published by parker brothers aka darth monopoly but they eventually pulled the plug on the game claiming space doesn't sell what else came out in 1977. oh that's right no for real cosmic encounter and star wars came out the exact same year with almost the same exact title except this is what you get out of thesaurus.com to impress your teacher after it was released cosmic bounced around from publisher to publisher for the next 30 years loads of people had to go games workshop for a time mayfair has brought a pop and threw some plastic toys and neckers to hasbro of course the bloody did before in 2008 we ended up with this edition from fantasy flight games and this is the one that finally stuck this made the game feel complete up until this point cosmic encounter had gained a cult following because you know it's rad and we'll get to that but this is when cosmic finally arrived due in fact to this lovely little bit of graphic design see look here get nice and close in the fantasy flight edition of the game they included this little phase bar now this tells you not only when the card or alien power you're using can actually be played but it sets in stone the structure of a whole encounter basically a player's entire turn now this addition this phase bar is so fundamental to cosmic success and in interviews the game's original designers credit it with making the game finally work and kevin wilson the in-house designer at fantasy flight who added this little bit of graphic design he is listed on board game geek as one of the game's co-designers how fundamental this is it also provides a really clear and easy framework for me to teach you how to play cosmic because trust me to really understand the joys of cosmic encounter you're gonna need to understand how it works or rather how it's supposed to so on a player's turn they are going to have a star war a celestial contention a cosmic encounter he said it and each encounter runs like this first of all we have the regroup phase basically at any point in the game if you lose a battle your ships are destroyed by being sent to this circle in the middle of the table called the warp think a cosmic scrap yard what a piece of junk the regroup phase lets you take back any one of your lost ships and plop it back on any of your existing colonies welcome home then the encounter begins in earnest with the destiny face basically instead of choosing which player you want to attack this turn you're going to turn over the top card of this destiny deck and that'll tell you which player you have to attack instead maybe you'll have to attack red or maybe whoever's got the most foreign colonies or you could even turn over your own color and use that to boot off someone who's got a colony on one of your planet gear out of here right away this rule is awesome because someone has a terrible first turn against bullseye like a wamp round loses a bunch of ships then people can't just dog pile automatically on the weakest player that's no fun and right there risk problem number one fixed bravo cosmic encounter then begins the launch phase once you've worked out which player you're going to be fighting you use this cosmic ice cream cone of impending destruction to single out which planet of that colour you're going to attack protip go for the planet with the fewest ships on it once you are locked on target you choose up to four of your ships to send into battle they can be taken from any of your existing colonies for example i might send two ships so right now it's two ships versus my opponent's two ships and defender breaks ties so i'm just going to add one more now it's three on two and right now i'm winning now comes the alliance phase where each side of the battle starting with the attacker can invite players to ally with them and add up to four of their ships to the total come on blue be on the right side of history and this is where negotiation bargaining begging and outright threats come into the game and instead of in risk way if you're not involved in a battle you have nothing to do but watch in cosmic you can be involved in every single turn scheming bargaining reinforcing leaving someone to perish what help me pants this nerd oh no so [Music] every time you're engaged with what's happening on the board risk problem number two fixed bravo cosmic encounter what's in it for your allies well if your allies join you in attack they add their forces to yours if your side wins hey you get a foreign colony as well for that however if your allies join you in defense come on blue you son of a if your side wins you don't get a colony on the planet you just helped defend but for every ship you put at risk you get to draw one of these very important cosmic cards from the deck but adam what are cosmic cards shut up i'm getting to that cannot teach him the boy has no patience so now all the allies have been secured and all the ships have been put in play we enter the planning phase that's when each of the main players the main attacker and main defender must select one just one encounter card from their hand see at the beginning of the game each player is dealt eight of these cosmic cards from the main deck there's a bunch of different types of cards but the main type is encounter cards which comes in two main forms attack cards with values ranging from 0 to 40 and negotiate cards which are basically a white flag and a pleading look with your hat and your hands please don't hurt me i'm baby so during the planning phase each of the two main players not their allies takes one encounter card from their hand and plays it face down that's the planning phase over and done with immediately followed by the reveal phase where both cards are turned over if both cards are attack cards then you simply just add the amount on the card to the numbers of ships on each side and that gives you the total war value i guess the bigger number wins you know like any star war the attacking side has played an eight which gives them a total of 13. the defending side has played a 10 which gives them a total of 14. in this case the defenders win however at this stage if players have reinforcement cards in their hands this is both main players and allies they can play them like a volley of laser fire from a smuggler with a heart of gold you thought it off earlier the attackers play a plus five which bumps their total up to 18 beating the defenders 14. now let's blow this thing and go home they get to move in t deletedly t the defenders get and then whoo up they go another foreign colony together huzzah however if one or more players plays a negotiate card things are a little different now let's say the defense knows they're gonna be crushed and they play a negotiate card against the other side who play an attack card when a negotiate card goes up against an attack card negotiating player automatically loses the battle but they get a little something with their loss they get compensation which means that for every one of their ships that was destroyed they get to take that many cards at random from their opponent's hand oh sure you accept a defeat and let them just march right into your embassy but as you held the door you nicked their wallet if both players play negotiate cards then literally their allies just go home piss off blue that then leaves the main players to negotiate alone like literally a one minute timer start and both players just haggle out a deal maybe let's swap some cards or perhaps you can have a foreign colony in one of my planets if i can have a foreign colony on one of yours no way that's not the deal i am altering the deal pray i do not alter it any further let me have my fun so in risk you rolled dice and left it to chance in cosmic you manage your hand pick the right time to play the right card become an ally at the right time to gain more cards negotiate at the right time to maybe steal your opponent's best cards and yes sometimes you can have the best laid plan and there's always a bigger fish and that can be frustrating but it's a hell of a lot more tactical thrilling and daring than just rolling and hoping over and over again risk problem number three fixed bravo cosmic encounter a lot of cosmic encounter lives in these cards not only are there special cards you can play at random times for random bonuses like cursing some players or just a straight up nope card that says hey you know that thing you're trying to do take a lap chuckles but also there's just a whole bunch of game just here just right here i mean it's war meets poker you're thinking he looks confident has he played a big card i mean i've got a big card but i might need to save that for later maybe he's bluffing and playing a low card trying to lure my big card out of my hand but maybe he's playing a negotiator and i can maybe play and negotiate too and try and get a colony for free essentially without my allies getting one oh god maybe he's playing a big card now oh god i've come now once the cards are revealed and all the numbers and ships and reinforcements are finalized then we enter the last phase of an encounter the resolution phase if the attackers win all the defenders go to the warp sorry about that these guys move in and they get one more foreign colony one step closer on the path to ultimate galactic victory however if the defenders win instead then the attackers go to the warp sorry about that then the defending allies this guy sent two gets his two cards as a reward well done piss off blue and then these guys they get nothing but their home wasn't invaded and in a lot of star wars that's a plus if the attacking side wins that counts as a successful encounter and that player can have a maximum of one more encounter if they choose but if their side loses they've had a failed encounter and their turn is over it moves clockwise to the next player and the whole encounter process starts over all again at the regroup phase and right there you have a really solid game lots of scrappy warfare bluffing negotiations surprise reveals mean card play like that's a good enough little game but we can't leave it there because yes we've talked about why cosmic encounter is a better version of risk but we haven't begun to talk about why cosmic encounter is one of the greatest games ever made and that would be because of a wretched hive of scum and villainy that would be because of the aliens every player at the beginning of the game is given two random aliens and picks one to players for the rest of the game so every player will be a different alien and each alien has a different ability and ability some consider to be unnatural now these aliens are secret until their power is used for the first time in this grand well actually i think you'll find reveal slapping their alien race down on the table and suddenly it are is about a great many things because these alien powers are so op they shatter the basic rules of the game we're not talking about vanilla special powers like oh you're the wood clan so you get one extra bit of wood every turn i mean this power cannot be killed its ships can never be sent to the warp it's always operating at full strength it can't be killed and right now you're watching this and you've got one burning question right in the forefront of your brain how can i defeat a player whose special power is they cannot be killed and that kind of dilemma those kind of insane high stakes where the situation on a dime becomes elevated to sheer head in your hands unfairness all you can do is laugh and then you grapple with it and it's exciting and then you realize that every single player has a nuclear weapon up their sleeve that may not be as ostentatiously boss level as i cannot die but if they use it correctly i've got a bad feeling about this the masochist wins the game if all of their ships die how do you fight someone who wants to die the sorcerer can swap the players encounter cards in a fight do you send your best card against them hoping to bluff him into not swapping the cards or do you send your worst card double bluffing that maybe they will swap them the tick tock wins the game by doing a little dance and hoping that people share it wrong tick tock the tick tock wins the game if enough failed encounters happen so every time you successfully fend off an attacker you're actually one step closer to handing the tick tock the entire game let's look at an example encounter with these four alien powers now i'm green haven't revealed which alien i am yet ooh mysterious i'm going up against the red player who is the sorcerer who swaps encounter cards in an encounter now i'm only on two foreign colonies so i really need this win so i'm gonna send let's send four of my ships now i ask yellow because i got one foreign colony hey ally with me get in on this you know you want to but yellow says no they're gonna sit this one out the blue player already has three foreign colonies so i don't want to invite them because if i win this encounter with them they will get a fourth foreign colony and be one away from winning so i say uh no thanks but they go oh actually i am the parasite though which means their special power is they can join an alliance without being invited so blue says oh don't mommy i'm coming too this is fun suddenly this has gone from a fight i would like to win to one i pretty much have to lose so i say to the sorcerer look i only have high attack cards but if you swap the cards and use your power your you'll win this encounter and everything will be fine sorcerer looks at me thinking um is that true or is he bluffing maybe i actually only have low attack cards and i'm trying to win this encounter and i'll deal with blue down the road eventually sorcerer agrees oh okay let's swap these encounter cards boom thank god so red has 23 to my 11 total with all the ships and the points added up so we lose but i reveal tada i am the spiff so even though i failed this encounter because i lost by more than 10 i can crash land one of my ships on red's planet whilst mine and blues more importantly go to the warp which then ends up giving me that third foreign colony that i really needed and all the while because it's a failed encounter yellow just quietly reveals that they're the tick tock and they are one step closer towards victory the game was originally released with 15 powers but because the game's been around for decades between the first release of 1977 and the fantasy flight major reboot that was a full 30 years meaning there's 30 years of new powers bad ones being removed fan favorites coming back and now even without the expansions in this base box there are 50 tried and tested alien races well that did not spread like i thought it would running a mass on that for five player games which is the best player count for base level cosmic that's over two million unique combinations of aliens in every single time your path to victory is a new puzzle because everyone else is an overpowered bastard with all the expansions added to the game that comes to 160 total aliens more than in fact that's before you even get to the flare cards adam what are the flare cards so you remember in the beginning i said you're given two aliens to choose from well each alien has a corresponding flare card you take both of those that match the aliens you were given and those cards go in the deck as well if you get one of these flare cards in your hand like say the zombie even if you're not the zombie you can get a light or as it says on the card wild version of their power which is great for example the filch their power is they can steal a card that their opponent has just played from the discard however if someone gets their mitts on the filch flare card the wild power means that as long as they're not caught they can steal any card from the discard at any time it's legalized cheating this game is mental but what i hear you ask if you are the zombie player and you get the zombie flare card well then you get the super version of that power and that dello fellow guts is when sh gets real so you might be thinking how can a game with this many alien powers be balanced and the answer is it isn't of course it isn't cosmic encounter is lumpy sometimes wildly unfair and sometimes over before you know it because someone has an unstoppable power at the worst possible time and some gamers hate that for some gamers a game where you can fail through no fault of your own is bad design and absolutely cosmic encounter does not feel like a game that has been measured and trimmed with a fine scalpel by a clock maker until everything is in exact perfect harmony because to do that would necessitate making some of the powers less awesome instead cosmic feels like it was designed by who it was designed by a bunch of mates who thought wouldn't it be fun if you could do this and i love the transparent giddy joy of that cosmic emphasizes sensation over strategy and reactions over reliability and that trade-off is absolutely worth it which isn't to say that cosmic's all down to the luck of who's got what power the base system of cosmic encounter the foundational rules that the alien powers bend and break this risk style head-to-head of numbers versus numbers mitigated by negotiation mitigated by bluff by hand management by not being able to pick on the weakest player because of these destiny cards it's a robust enough system to survive all of these aliens and let you form or at least try to form strategies to achieve solo victory but if you don't want to if the combination of powers just happens to be making the game drag on cosmic encounter has a mechanic that i personally hate but i also recognize the game probably needs which is shared victories see in some games like munchkin where you can get close to the end but then pulled back at the last moment by another player then someone else tries to win they're pulled back and so on and so forth everyone being dragged backwards over a bed of gravel until fun is a name that i haven't heard in a long time then what can happen is two or three or four players can join an alliance they can all get five foreign colonies at the same time in one encounter they all win and the same go leaving maybe one person all by himself doesn't get a victory and you know it's fine and like yeah that's a really good fail-safe allowing players to call time what is essentially an unbalanced game before it outstays its welcome but also i hate it because adam doesn't share victories then there's the social element of why cosmic encounter rules these races all come with little bits of flavor text you can read out before you reveal yourself like a herald at a ball announcing the arrival of a new and terrifying foreign dignitary attacking vicious space monsters at incredible odds comes naturally to the valor of spiffs their cunning and carriage have let them save the day even when their doom seemed imminent let those who face them beware your power is framed with this character a backstory of cruelty or patience or heroism or animalistic rage or quiet mysticism that not only yes gives you an in-game real advantage but also something to role-play and because alliances form and break and rebuild and there's betrayals and hurt feelings and desperate grabs for power there's genuine organic storytelling here there is so much in this box strategy yes luck yes cruelty yes funny voices hell yes i also don't think a more replayable board game has ever been made because every single time you are overwhelmingly likely to get a different cocktail of aliens and therefore differently sized and shaped gears in a mechanism a puzzle that can only be solved not just with luck not just with negotiation and double dealing not just with bluff but most likely with all of them combined there are a lot of great board games out there but cosmic encounter is all the great board games it serves so many thrill centers introduces brand new mechanics every single game is as close to endlessly replayable as a game can get and serves as one of the great communal experiences in the hobby i cannot promise you a balanced strategic game but cosmic comes with such great social potential that i must demand that you at least give it a try do i do nuts give it a try and thank you for watching the first episode of board game masterpieces if you liked it check out no rolls barred more great recommendations for board games loads of fun silly things from the world of tabletop gaming and hey share this around on twitter facebook all those things why not and remember always remember the tagline to the channel get on board you

Channel: No Rolls Barred

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Keywords: board games, board games review, board game, tabletop, tabletop games, top 10 board games, games, best board games, game, boardgamegeek, board game geek, top ten board games, game news, most popular games, most popular board games, best games, popular board games, boardgames, no rolls barred, cosmic encounter review, how to play cosmic encounter

Id: oBdkO4JKzzE

Length: 26min 13sec (1573 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021