Cosmic Encounter 4th Edition Board Game by Fantasy Flight Games - Classic Intergalactic Conquest Strategy Game for Kids and Adults, Ages 14+, 3-5 Players, 1-2 Hour Playtime

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.

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!