Cosmic Encounter Board Game Review!

 

Ever since our children were toddlers we've always enjoyed taking some time to disconnect from watching TV/movies, or playing on electronics and sit down to enjoy some fun board games together. Not only are board games fun, but they can help teach your kids a number of useful skills. Since the days of my children being toddlers we have moved onto more advanced games since they are eight and twelve now. I want to share a few of our favorites with you starting off with a great game called Cosmic Encounter. There is a lot to cover so I will go over a large portion of the game, but won't go into every little detail.

You may or may not have heard of this game, I hadn't heard about it until last year, however this game isn't new. Cosmic Encounter actually has a long history and has gone through a number of changes since it first came out, the first edition came out in 1977, I wasn't even a thought to my parents at that point in time! The first edition was made for up to six players and had six aliens you could play as, the newer addition which we own (shown above) is suited to five players and has 51 different aliens to play as. Various changes have made the game better and better over the years to what we have today, if you want to read more on it's history you can check that out here.

Cosmic Encounter is a great game for a variety of ages and gaming levels, there are several different ways to play this ranging from easy to hard depending on your level of comfort with all of the pieces and rules. The out come of every game will be completely different depending on the players, a single person can win the encounter or multiple people can win at once if they decide to work together.

To start off the game you'll select which color you'd like to play as and collect your player pieces which include; 5 player planets, 20 plastic ships and one marker. How do you decide which alien you'd like to be? You have one of three options, look through all of them and pick one, randomly select a card without looking or shuffle the 51 flare cards (one for every alien) and pass two out to every player who will then select one of the two to play as. We've done all three of the options and have played the game at least two dozen times in the three months we've owned it and there are still tons of aliens that haven't been played yet, so there is still plenty of fun to be had. 

When we set up our game we usually lay our planets out in a almost oval shape, however you can place your planets out however you'd like. Every plant will receive four ships which are your moving and attacking pieces you'll need to try and win the game along with encounter cards (you'll start off with seven cards). The goal of the game is to conquer five planets that are not your own, you do so by drawing a destiny card from the destiny deck to see who you'll be attacking. The destiny deck helps prevent players from ganging up onto one person. 

Once you draw a destiny card to see who you'll attack, you will select one of their plants and place a Hyperspace gate pointed towards the planet (it is the piece above that kind of looks like the bridge from Thor). You are allowed to attack with up to four ships from any of your planets, to send them into the "attack" you'll place them onto the hyperspace gate. Once that is done you will both look at the number of ships you have in the battle and select a encounter card from your hand to place face down until both players are ready and you'll reveal them to each other. The number on the encounter card will be added to the number of ships you have in the battle and whom ever has the highest number wins, that is of course unless you have an alien that has a power to stop or chance the outcome of the battle. 

The loser of the encounter has to place all of the ships they had in that battle into the "Warp" which is the circle in the middle of the table. These ships are considered lost, however there are a number of ways to get your ships back and add them back into your fleet. The winner will then place the ships they had in the encounter onto the now vacated planet taking it over and moving their player marker up one slot on the track, once you hit five you are the winner of the game.

Each alien card has it's own ability, some are fairly easier to use while others can prove a challenge to use. As an example one of the characters has the ability to flip the outcome of the encounter, instead of the higher number being the winner whom ever has the lowest number wins and is why the alien is appropriately named "Loser". Another example of an alien power is one that has to try and self sabotage by losing and sending all of their ships to the warp, if they lose all of their ships, they win. Some of the aliens are monk like and are able to help out other players and some are down right evil and will drive you a little crazy by the end of the game. 

What is the play time? That all depends on the players, and the fate of the game. If you get the right alien and play it smoothly you can win in just a few rounds or if there is a number of sneakier characters the game can be prolonged so I would say a game can last anywhere from twenty minutes to over an hour. Price wise it might be a little much for some people at $50 (amazon), however the game is completely worth it if you play board games a lot because it has a hours and hours of fun to offer. There are several different editions and versions of this game, the older versions are slightly harder to play because they don't have the newest addition of the bottom half of the card which helps tell you how the rounds are played and when you are allowed to use your powers so I would suggest looking into the same edition we have. 

This has quickly become one of our favorite games because we can play a quick easy game or add in extra components to make it a harder game. It is easy to set up and easy to put away when we are done playing with it which is a big bonus, and it all goes back into the box smoothly 👍 unlike other games we have that never seem to go back into their box properly no matter how the pieces are placed back in.

 I hope you enjoyed this short review of Cosmic Encounter and I hope you'll consider looking into getting one of your own, it is a game not to be missed. I will share some more great board games with you soon. 

What are some of your favorite board games? Drop me a comment below and tell me what you enjoy playing.