24
Jan

The Vintage Gamer #3: Cosmic Encounter (BG)

   Posted by: Jim   in Board games, Podcasts

By request, and by desire, I cover the cult game Cosmic Encounter, originally published by Eon and designed by Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka.

Show notes:

  • Thoughts on overall format and upcoming shows
  • My Cosmic Encounter history
  • Detailed description
  • Some comparison of the various printings
  • Session report and general thoughts

Links:

Final Thoughts:

After I finished recording, I of course found some minor mistakes. First, the original Eon game came with 15 alien powers, not 20 or 25. Secondly, the cone used to indicate which planet is being challenged is the hyperspace cone, not the warp cone. Third, you don’t need to challenge to take over a moon if no one is already there — you can just move in. Also, alliances can’t occur when challenging for a moon. Finally, I forgot to mention that on the back of the standard planetary hexes, there are additional boards that you can use that give you even more special abilities. See here for some examples. For all of these commissions/omissions, I plead complexity as an excuse. Cosmic Encounter: It’s not just a game, it’s a game system.

Oh, and I’m aware that there have been other reprints, but I thought I’d just cover the big three.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 at 10:52 am and is filed under Board games, Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 comments so far

Shaun Klein
 1 

Not to nitpick, but I have a small correction: you said that you had a couple of instances in your last session wherein the challenging player didn’t put any tokens into the cone, as well as mentioning putting “a large number of tokens” into the cone. Neither of those is allowed (barring powers, of course) — the challenging player must put at least one token into the cone, and may put no more than four in. Allies (on both sides) are subject to the same limitations.

Other than that, great show. ๐Ÿ™‚

January 24th, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Jim
 2 

Aha, we missed that. Good to know, thanks.

Something that I forgot to mention in the session report: we also missed the fact that the compromiser gets to take cards from their opponent. That changed the tone of the game a lot. In particular, Laser becomes less desireable when you’re taking the chance that you’ll lose cards.

January 24th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Rob Ritchie
 3 

Hi there,

I subscribed to your podcast because Mer recommended it on GFAG, so I figured I’d give it a listen. I like what I hear! I am primarily a role-player, because frankly I always have trouble understanding complicated board game rules; but I think you really have a knack for explaining them. I’ve never played CE before, but after listening to this episode, I think even I could make a pretty good showing.

Thanks for a great podcast, I look forward to future episodes.

January 31st, 2006 at 3:11 pm
Peter Olotka
 4 

A player just joined CE Online mentioning this PodCast, so I tracked it down. Its always great fun to find CE popping up in random locations around the world. Once I was playing wtih a CE Online member from Brazil and he mentioned the Brazillian version of Cosmic. I replied that we never licensed a version for Brazil. We wound up trading. I sent him one of the new Hasbro Avalon Hill versions and he sent me the 1980’s PIRATED VERSION by the Brazillan company. Well expansion set 6 did have a Pirate in it so perhaps we needed a version dedicated to the PIRATE.. By the way, that alien has a great insider bit of trivia that is only obvious to players who read the History. ๐Ÿ™‚

April 5th, 2006 at 11:42 am
Jim
 5 

Thanks, Peter, glad to hear that this podcast has influenced people to check out a great game.

So… what’s the trivia behind the Pirate?

April 19th, 2006 at 5:48 pm

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