Cosmic Encounter

Sometime during our wanderings this weekend, Doc and I stumbled upon the most amazing garage sale ever. Amongst the many awesome things we found there, we got…

Check the awesome art

this awesome board game, Cosmic Encounter!

Cited as the progenitor of Magic: The Gathering (and many other games where the game-play changes every time you play it), it seemed too amazing to pass up. It also came with a bucket of expansion packs, but we thought it best to play the original game first before trying to comprehend the expansion packs.

I have enjoyed it thus far, but I have only played it with 2 and with 3 players. I imagine that it really starts getting good with 4 players, due to the ability to forge alliances with players, and team up against others.

You randomly draw one of a kabillion different wacky alien races (the original game only had 15 races, but the box we got has about 75 races), and that determines your alien power for the game.

Some aliens, like Void, have powers that seem frustratingly powerful; but if you have an alien like the Healer in play, then the Void really doesn’t seem so scary anymore. So I guess this really adds to the whole “a different game every time you play!” tagline.

So far, I like Guts of Glory better, but mostly because Guts seems more complex. Therefore, I will probably enjoy Cosmic Encounter more and more as we add more of the optional rules and expansion packs to it. I really love the old science fiction art by Dean Morrissey and the wacky vibe. I should also point out that Cosmic has more opportunities to be totally different each play than Guts has, due to all the different strategies that come with the different races.

To give you an idea of the sorts of issues that can arise during a play-through of Cosmic Encounter, I present to you this discussion on Void vs Zombie.

Guts of Glory!

I got to play Guts of Glory this week, which was a lot of fun. Doc had backed the Kickstarter to get the game, which is a boardgame set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where you compete for glory by eating various things. Things like tapeworms, spiders, and… the moon. The items vary in how tough they are to eat, as well as how much glory they reward you (if successfully eaten).

Doc photobombing my documentation attempts.

You can also sabotage your fellow players by chewing their items, forcing them to chew your items, or spewing unwanted items at them. Everybody in our group seemed to get pretty underhanded pretty fast. Which I think is the point.

Also, you apparently have to be the same colour piece as is indicated by the trim on your mouth board, but Dean and I did not want that so we switched pieces. Doc said we couldn’t do that, but we did anyway and nothing bad happened. You must understand, I NEEDED the pointy-teeth-forked-tongue board with the yellow trim, but I also NEEDED to be the really round and fat blue piece. Needed to be it. And apparently Dean needed to be the yellow guy with tiny feet. I guess what I am saying is, that Doc was wrong and you can switch up the pieces however you want.

And now Dean is photobombing my documentation attempts. That’s it, I give up on getting a natural picture of the game in progress.

Above all I intensely love the amazing artwork. I have a soft spot for post apocalyptic aesthetics, and of course this game has such a fun and goofy twist on it that I find it impossible not to love. I think I might be addicted to this game now.

Nobody ever did manage to eat the moon, by the way. Although there were many attempts, and it seemed to show up in every single game. Nobody swallowed the moon.