Cosmic Encounter 4th Edition Board Game by Fantasy Flight Games – Classic Intergalactic Conquest

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A quick rundown of this product’s key features:

DIPLOMACY AND STRATEGY: Enter the world of Cosmic Encounter, where diplomacy, strategy, and alliances are key to galactic conquest.
INTERSTELLAR COMPETITION: Lead your alien species in a quest to colonize foreign planets, but remember, every planet is ruled by someone, and you must use diplomacy or war to expand your empire.
EVER-CHANGING GAMEPLAY: With a new species joining the classic alien lineup, each game offers a unique experience, ensuring no two games are alike.
CUSTOMIZE YOUR EXPERIENCE: Cosmic Combos allow for themed matchups and customization, making the game suitable for various numbers of players.
SUPREMACY AWAITS: Forge alliances, defeat your enemies, and secure your species’ supremacy in this engaging and competitive board game.

Our Top Reviews

Reviewer: oversoul17
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Hands Down My Favorite Game
Review: I’m going to preface this review by saying that I own many board games and host a weekly game night at my house to play awesome games with my closest friends.What is this game?The galaxy is at war. You are the leader of a specific alien race. Use your special species specific powers to take control of your opponents planets and claim them as your own. Ally together and negotiate with others to help and hinder each other along the way. At its crazy heart, this is a card game, plain and simple. Yes, there are neat little planets and colony ships to mark who is winning, to “wager” in fights and such, but the vast majority of the action has to do with the cards in your hand and how you manage them. The strategy has to do with alliances forming and melting throughout the game. Also the crazy variety of different aliens with different powers to end up with ensures that every game will be different than the last one. First one to gain five colonies on five opponents planets wins.Should you buy this game?Probably! If you don’t mind a bit of randomness. This game provides for some truly epic moments. It’s a classic of a game. Strategic yet randomized. The best way to introduce it to new people is: “These are the rules, and this is how your specific power lets you break them.” By the way, the rules themselves are at MODERATE so you do have to have at least one person sit down to read through and know them before everyone gets together to play for a smoother teaching and learning experience. (Also, having a sheet with all the different phases of the game written down in order and moving a marker to the current one helps everyone better keep track.)My thoughts:What can I say? I have about 50 board games in my collection, and this one is the best of them all (my game group would contest this). It’s awesome. Every game is memorable. Every encounter tense. I’m always jumping at the chance to introduce it to new people and play it every time I can. I see a couple of people who have written reviews on here seemingly haven’t read the rules on the Alliance Phase. It is crucial to the games strategy and is by far my favorite mechanic. Hmm… trying to convey joy and fun through typed words is hard. Play this game, if you get the chance. That is all.

Reviewer: Ryan
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Fantastic
Review: This game comes with a ton of various colored UFO ships, cardboard planets matching those colors, matching scorekeepers, huge alien race cards, decks of cards, a gateway cone, and a huge dimensional warp circle.Players are dealt two cards from a “Flare” deck, which are powerful cards focusing on a race. The players get the matching alien race cards and pick one. All Flares dealt to the players are shuffled in the main deck and if there’s less than ten Flares, that many additional are shuffled in.The main deck is dealt to players, 8 cards, and players seed their five colored planets with four ships each.The second deck, Destiny, is drawn from until a color matching a player is revealed abs that player goes first. The Destiny cards are shuffled again.A third optional deck, Tech, has abilities players can research. They get two and pick one to start with.Player 1 draws a Destiny card after retrieving one ship from Warp and placing it on a controlled colony. This should match a color in play. Some are Wild (attack any) and some are special (attack who has least ships, most colonized, etc). This player is offense. The target color or player is defense. If using Tech, one ship can land on the upside down card. Techs are activated after a number if ships land on them as the card power requires.Offense points the Gateway triangle at a planet. The Gate is prepped with 1-4 UFO ships and offense asks players for help if wanted. Nobody answers yet, though.Defense then asks for help as well. Again nobody admits.Offensive help then places 1-4 ships on the gate, and then defense help follows.Players then lay down a card privately. It is an Encounter card: Attack, Negotiate, or Morph (only one Morph is in the deck – it copies the opposing Attack or Negotiate.) and things happen.Attack vs Attack: These have random numbers, 0-40. Add this to the total UFO pieces on your side. Players and Assistants may have extra cards (like Reinforcements, which alter totals on sides by a couple points) to influence things. If Offense wins, Defense hits the warp portal and offense and allies take the planet. If Defense wins, Offense hits the warp and the defense allies return home but get 1 ship from warp, or 1 card from the draw deck per ship they sent to reinforce.Attack vs Negotiate: Negotiate loses, Attack wins. The offense colonizes if won, warps if lost. Defense stays if won, warps if lost. Negotiator gets to draw one card from the Attacker’s hand as compensation.Negotiate v Negotiate: Allies return ships to colonies. The offense and defense have one minute to make a mutual agreement: card swaps, ship colonization that’s mutual, etc. If no deal happens, 3 ships per side must go to Warp.Then players score. Do you have 1-5 colonies? That’s 0, your starting point value. Do you have 1-2 colonies? Your race power is disabled until you get a third colony. Do you have over five? That’s one to five (6-10) points. Five points wins. I wish the warp had scoring saying 1-5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 instead of 0-5, though.Some alien powers and some cards only activate at certain phases in the game, but that’s the premise.I love that Cosmic Encounter doesn’t really have down time between turns. Every player is almost always actively involved when not offending or defending.There’s a learning curve here and several expansions, but they aren’t necessary aside from two have additional players. There’s tons of races here and I think if Fantasy Flight went with cheap deck expansions and separate huge alien race cards with Flares, the price points on those would feel safer for buying. As is this game is awesome and other than the Warp score bit I mentioned, I wish the UFOs looked different for flavor between players, but that’d add to the cost.This game is fantastic and I still recommend it to anyone!

Reviewer: DB
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Cosmic Encounter is another of Fantasy Flight Games excellent updated versions of a classic (originally released in 1977). As usual FFG give it a polish, straighten out some of the contentious rules and throw in some top quality components and excellent design work, bringing it to a new generation of gamers.In terms of rules it’s initially pretty simple. Each player has 5 planets – their home system. Each player also has a fleet of 20 ships. With each players ships beginning on their home systems (4 on each planet – a single ship on a planet representing a colony), the aim of the game is to get 5 colonies on planets outside your home system. In other words – attack the other players home planets to establish your own colonies there.Yes, that is quite straightforward, however the real fun of the game is the Aliens…..This game comes with a whole lot of Aliens. At the start of the game each player gets randomly dealt 2 Aliens from the large deck, and chooses 1 to play for the game. Each Alien has its own unique rule bending powers. And this is what makes the game endlessly re-playable. No two games are likely to ever be the same with such a wide and varied set of powers and skills available. Your choice of Alien will totally change how you think about playing.Further unique skills are dealt into a deck of cards which all players will use to perform all the interactions of the game. This is a game without dice!So, with your home worlds, your fleet of ships, your unique Alien power and your hand of cards you set about attaining cosmic supremacy. To do this you may form alliances, trick and deceive and totally renege on any agreement to ensure you rule supreme. You will use your Alien power to maximize your attacks, to confuse your opponents, to win you allies and defend your precious colonies – very important as to lose too many of your home colonies will see you lose your Alien skill. At least until you re-establish the colonies again!!The game can also have several winners, as the winning condition can be achieved by a number of players simultaneously.A fantastic package and a brilliantly unique game that has been around 3 decades and counting! This FFG set caters for new players right up to experts, and each game can be customized perfectly to suit the playing group. It expands further with 3 (so far) excellent expansions, each of which allows for another player to join in the madness (the core set is 5 player) as well as more unique situations and even more fantastic Aliens to make the game even more fun.A very unique experience and excellent fun. There is nothing quite like Cosmic Encounter.

Reviewer: Brett Austin
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Rules-wise, the game is very easy to play, with a rulebook of only 12 or so pages. I taught my group in less than 10 minutes and we were engrossed since the “get-go”. There are no dice in this game. It is a card game with funky ships, excellent production values, and a HUGE community support. This product shines with the Player to Player action. To get where you need to be, you must be confrontational but at the same time be willing to ally with them, situation permitting. Each player will be given a unique alien and that aspect alone will make this game replayable almost indefinately. Often the alien powers and the players decisions will bring about tons of hilarity and humourous frustration. Keep in mind though that this is a 3 player + game. I can’t see one getting away with playing with 2 at all.

Reviewer: Ruben isai Ponce barcelo
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Muy buen juego para pasar el tiempo con los amigos, la dinámica es sencilla y no son partidas muy largas. Tiene la particularidad de que existen muchas razas de alien por lo tanto ningún juego va a ser igual.

Reviewer: ssmb212
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great game fast delivery brand new perfect condition.

Reviewer: Anillys Osorio
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Buono

Price effective as of Apr 21, 2025 08:52:32 UTC

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