Tom_Mc
5941
Cosmic isn’t for everyone. It’s a game that’s more about the players than the system. With the right group I love it.
Tom M
Between the various editions there’s way more addon content for pre-FFG Cosmic Encounter than post. Though no doubt they’ll eventually fix that. Personally, this (like Arkham Horror) is exactly the sort of swappable-parts game that I feel demands a steady flow of new parts to swap in. But then, I also don’t really enjoy the game with the default single-power-per-player. Combining them is where it gets interesting to me, and if you do a sort of semi-draft where you have three power choices, pick one, pass one, and dump one, it’s not -too- wildly unbalanced. Mostly.
Glad you like it! I usually stick pretty hard to Euro-games, but Cosmic Encounter is, strangely, my favorite board game. It’s the game that lets me understand the appeal of Ameritrash games. It’s works well with people who aren’t experienced board gamers, but becomes a completely different beast when played with experienced players. That plus the variety means it’s probably the most played game I own (that’s not a two-player game).
The biggest benefit of the expansions in my opinion is the extra player count. As strange as it sounds, Cosmic Encounter plays pretty great anywhere from 4 to 8 players in my experience (though it’s probably best around 4 or 5). Plus, some of my favorite species are in the expansion (such as The Lunatic http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/785184/point-of-the-lunatic or The Leviathan http://cosmicencounter.wikia.com/wiki/Leviathan). But how much that matters really depends on how much you play the game. The base set powers are already really diverse and fun.
I had no idea that there was a revision of BANG! called Samurai Sword. Anyone played it?
It’s a true classic, comes out more regularly with my group than any other game. And I believe it’s the game that started the whole “variable player power” mechanic we see everywhere now, way back in 1977.
I completely respect Cosmic Encounter; it’s a well-designed game and absolutely ahead of its time. I also don’t care to actually play it. I don’t like it’s level of screwage–the way your opponents can team up against you for petty reasons, the way they can totally disrupt your plans with a card play, etc. I think what was said above is true: With the right group, in the right frame of mind, it’s a great gaming experience. It’s not that I play with many people who are super douchy or anything–it’s the opposite. Cosmic Encounter is just too hyper-competitive of a game for us.
I’ve had my best and worst board gaming experiences in Cosmic Encounter. You’re right that it’s totally about who you’re playing with and how they can handle these things. A friend of mine told me he used to keep a Cosmic Encounter blacklist of people he wouldn’t invite over if they were planning on pulling it out. My plan is to get people cave to group pressure. If I’m not sure how someone will respond to it, I just make sure I have more people playing who know how to make it fun. Loud, gregarious schemers get everyone into the right mood.
Bought it and played it about a month ago. I think I like it better than Bang!. There is no player elimination, and personally I hate elimination, but if you like the elimination in Bang! then pass Samurai Sword up. Removing elimination means the game is won or lost on points, which can be anticlimactic. I don’t know, if I didn’t mind the elimination I’d probably like Bang! better. But I’ve played too many games of Bang! where me or someone else is out within the first 5-10 minutes (first round) only to have the game go another hour.
So maybe if you played Bang! and didn’t like that, you’ll like this better. It’s still a pretty good game to teach to people who don’t play a lot of games, and it’s still pretty light and random.
Played Battleship Galaxies, a game that I got in a math trade. It seems too simple with not many important decisions. Ship facing does not matter and there are no fire arcs. You can shoot in any direction. Basically, it’s the cards that give it depth, but usually the decision of what cards to play is pretty obvious, and the game seems to come down to the luck of the die rolls. Overall disappointing and I’ll be getting rid of it. Somehow.
I think it is a good game to play with a kid.
Yeah, it might be good to play with a 9 or 10 year old but I don’t play with children.
I also played Lords of Waterdeep (I also got that in a math trade) with one other person and man was that boring. I don’t think it would be much better with more people, just longer. The theme could be anything but the fantasy theme that is tacked on. You basically try to get different colored cubes to buy cards that give you victory points. You place a pawn on different spaces that give you cards or cubes yawn.
That’s part of why I haven’t tried to bring Lords Of Waterdeep when I visit my mother in law. The various buildings and quests seemed about as related to the actual game actions as, say, Dominion. I particularly felt that fighters / mages / clerics / thieves being currency rather than workers meshes poorly with the theme. I still have some interest in it since I just plain like resource management games.
Playing with kids keeps the hobby going ;)
@Gus and ioticus
Just curious what are your three top board games?
I played Liberte this weekend for the first time. Really neat game, though it doesn’t seem like it’d have legs. It’s a game about the French Revolution whose mechanics do a great job of selling its theme. It starts out as a game purely about elections. It uses something akin to a stock mechanic where players invest in one of three parties (the royalists, the moderates and the radicalists), one of whom will be elected the reigning power based on the players actions. Each player can invest their turns in one of three groups (making them more likely to win the election) and the player who invested the most in the winning group gains some points. That’s sort of the central part of the game.
But the deck is stacked. It’s initially split into an A and B deck which are placed on top of eachother. The cards from the deck determines which party a player can support. The first group of cards, the A deck, has very few radicalist cards. So the first election or two are really between the moderates and the royalists, but there’s enough radicalist cards involved to get their power base started. Once the players have moved through the A deck, they move into the B deck that’s stacked with powerful radicalist cards. Now the party is out in full force. But with the radicalists come a greater amount of action cards, such as the Guillotine which allows a player to kill any character a someone controls. Or worse, if the radicalists gain majority control, the Terror action cards are now usable (and well named). Characters start dying like crazy and the cards all become focused attacks. The games tenor changes drastically from a nice election style Euro-game to a bitter hate-filled kill-fest. This is further exacerbated by the introduction of battles, splitting players attention between who will win the election and who will win the battles.
Really neat design that completely subverts itself. You get comfortable thinking you have an understanding of what the game is, and then it completely upends that. But it does so in a way that’s true to its narrative inspiration. I think because it changes so drastically, it makes the game feel more bitter, and also more grotesque. The terror cards, for instance, seem so ridiculously powerful and crazy the first time they’re finally used, but mostly because you’ll become used to thinking you have more control over the game then you do.
It doesn’t feel like something I could play over and over again, however. Players are pretty constricted in what actions are available to them, and while you have interesting choices, I feel the lack of control and targeted attack cards end up making it a gang-up on the leader game with winner determined primarily through luck. Well worth the experience of playing though, and something I imagine will hit the table at least once a year.
Right now it would probably be:
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Runewars
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Mage Wars
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Mage Knight board game
Chaos in the Old World (only played this awesome game twice but once was with 3 people which I don’t think works well) should be on the list but I can never get 4 people together to play it :(
I think Battlestar Galactica might be on the list but I can never get 5 or 6 people together :(
Basically, I’m limited to 2 player games in this fucking city.
Card games:
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Star Wars LCG
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Android Netrunner LCG
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Lord of the Rings LCG
This tends to shift a lot, depending on how much experience I have with actually playing the game. Often I’ll get fascinated with a game that I don’t yet understand well, and it’s hard to say how I’ll feel about it once I’ve played several games. Ticket to Ride and Attika are both on my “I’ll play it if I must” list, but I remember being excited about them when they were new to me.
Of the games that I’ve played several times:
Space Hulk.
Ascension.
Race for the Galaxy. (It seems popular to sneer at RftG these days, but I still find it fascinating after hundreds of games).
Two games I’ve only played once, but would very much like to play more:
Ora et Labora. - like Agricola, this is a game where the theme really works.
Olympus.
Games which I like but which really aren’t on my “top” list:
Chicago Express. I’m not a big fan of games where bidding is crucial.
Railroad Tycoon. Same issue, and I don’t like the mechanic where income declines once your railroad gets big.
Saint Petersburg. Bidding again.
Games which are very well regarded but which no longer shine for me:
Puerto Rico. Too much depends on everyone understanding when taking a role is handing your neighbor the keys to the kingdom.
Tigris and Euphrates. Actually quite good, but very abstract. Also somewhat hard to teach since it’s so abstract.
Agricola. The scoring is too fiddly, it’s difficult to know how much a move really benefits you since the scoring table is complicated.
Race for the Galaxy is excellent, one of my favorite games, forgot about that. It’s hard to list just 3 games.
I have two categories of games:
Play with family:
Lords of Waterdeep (my kids love it ages 16 - 21)
Ticket to Ride (wife loves it, nephew and brother and kids like it too)
Acquire (surprising both my wife and mother in law love this game after saying they never wanted to try it - and my wife also loves Railroad Baron).
Resistance
Mystery Rummy
Wyatt Earp
Dominion (daughter loves this game)
Legendary (Marvel) - I just purchased but have not played yet. I expect this to be a big hit with my nephew who is 11 and I am sure my boys will like it too (they like cooperative games)
Kings of Tokyo (big hit with everyone)
Disc World (Martin Wallace) - fun if you have read the books my daughter likes this one too
Gosu
Airlines Europe (my favorite game right now)
Summoner Wars
Battlelore ( my two sons used to play this all the time)
Chess ( kids pay a lot with LOTR pieces)
Pandemic
Settlers of Catan
Board gaming group (my youngest son fits into this mold as well):
I just moved from NJ to SC but live close to Charlotte and there is a very active board gaming group - so this is a place where more complicated games can be played:
I would basically play any game with the group:
Battlestar Galactica (fun game)
Ogre (when it arrives - woo hoo)
Want to try:
Eclipse (have not played on iOS yet either)
Android Netrunner (my son and I can try this one day if I never get to play in the group).
City of Remnants
Exodus Proxima Centuri
Twilight Struggle
Clash of Cultures
Twilight Imperium 3 (played first one years and years ago - but would like to try this if I ever have eight hours to invest)
