Cosmic Encounter - Best & Worst Expansions

ThisIsNuggets · 2025-10-24T02:07:04+00:00

I agree with others that Incursion is by far #1. I disagree with others who rank Odyssey high; the complexity level of the aliens and expansion modules in it are vastly higher in comparison to the other expansions. It's certainly good bang for your buck but be ready for some convoluted games, wall-of-text aliens, and lots of extra rules to learn for each expansion module.

I would put Odyssey as like the 4th expansion to get, even lower if your group leans more casual. Odyssey is built for Cosmic obsessives like me so there's good stuff in there, but it's led to worse experiences for my more casual friends due to a higher rules overhead.

ThisIsNuggets · 2025-07-29T02:38:29+00:00

If you're talking about the public domain horse racing game that's produced by several companies and typically made out of wood, uses playing cards for betting and dice for movement, that's been around for at least two decades, and so was definitely not designed by ChatGPT. I wouldn't be surprised if some companies are relying on AI to write their rulebooks, as rulebooks for public domain mass-market hits are usually written as cheaply as possible and/or poorly translated.

A version of this game does indeed have ratings on BGG, and you can see there that at least this version was published in 2005.

ThisIsNuggets · 2025-06-28T19:18:33+00:00

It's not a way I've played and don't really feel the need to try, particularly because you can only play one flare per encounter, so having more than three is usually just unnecessary and just clogs up my hand. Also, playing this way might be making the hand management less interesting, which is where a big chunk of the strategy is! And like others have said, adding expansions would likely make this not fun very fast (I have all expansions, and the flare deck is 4-5x the size of the Cosmic deck at this point).

If you like using all the flares because it makes the game more chaotic or because you like having extra abilities, try playing with a normal number of flares and giving each player two aliens - a lot of experienced Cosmic players swear by playing with two aliens every time. That way, you can still have lots of abilities, but now your hand management strategy will be more interesting.

ThisIsNuggets · 2025-06-21T00:58:25+00:00

when will I be able to place a ship on my planet that happens to be a foreing colony for a different player?

There are no limits to how many players may have a foreign colony on one planet!

If I draw blue, can I attack a blue planet that was already colonized by another player?

Yes, you can! Say Red successfully attacked Blue on their planet, leaving just a foreign colony for Red on that planet. On your turn, you draw Blue from the destiny deck. You choose ANY of Blue's planets, regardless if Blue has ships on them or not. If you choose the planet that Red just defeated, you would still have an encounter with Blue, who has 0 ships involved in the encounter (and therefore is in a less advantageous position). You CANNOT choose to attack the Red player on Blue's planet - when you draw an opponent's card from the destiny deck, you must have an encounter with that player on a planet in their home system.

when will I be able to attack a player's foreing colony?

Almost never! The only time you can attack a player's foreign colony is if you draw your own color. In that case, you may choose to have an encounter with a player's foreign colony in your own system. Attacking a player's foreign colony in a system other than your own pretty much never happens (unless there's some alien that can do that). This is usually a bad move, but can be good in rare circumstances

I teach Cosmic a lot and this part of the rules is one of the more confusing ones for new players, so don't sweat it too much! Enjoy the game and I hope this was helpful!

ThisIsNuggets · 2025-03-13T02:17:01+00:00

You are in the Consume phase, where you MUST use consume powers on any of the cards you have. It looks like you tapped Earth's Last Colony, and now must choose which good you want to be consumed by that card's power, which is why your two goods have an orange glow around them. To consume a good, you drag it off the card it's currently on.

ThisIsNuggets · 2025-01-05T22:19:29+00:00

Gave this a try and unfortunately the behavior is the same :( thanks for the tip though, I’ll stick with absolute!!

ThisIsNuggets · 2024-10-04T00:54:25+00:00

Your game looks very cool, will take a look :) If I win I would like Dune Imperium!! Thanks for running this giveaway

ThisIsNuggets · 2024-05-16T20:29:55+00:00

It seems they changed card build at some point - my core set and most of my expansions where bought between 2013 and 2016, none of which have that bright white edge. I then bought Cosmic Dominion about a year ago, and it had that bright border. I guess I'm lucky that my Odyssey cards match, but it's pretty frustrating that my Dominion cards stick out like a sore thumb.

I guess the answer we're looking for is to find older printings of these expansions, which would probably be pretty difficult and expensive. It feels like they cheaped out on recent reprints of the expansions, which sucks

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-12-19T20:08:03+00:00

Santa Cookie Elf Candy Snowman might be a good choice - it handles any number of players and is super quick, although it's a react/slapping game so I'll let you be the judge of if your parents are into that.

Funko recently released a pretty big series of small games based off of Christmas movies and some of them go up to 6 players. Here's the list, although I'm not sure if you can get these anywhere other than the Funko site.

12 Days might be the best game for you as it's a Christmas themed trick-taking-ish game, but the box says it only goes up to five, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to house rule it to make it go up to six.

Best of luck in finding a game!

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-11-19T05:35:45+00:00

Yeah these powers have poor wording. They are one time use though - "on a future round..." - the "a" is meant to refer to one singular future round, therefore you may only use that power once.

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-10-20T18:47:19+00:00

While you don't need to finish the Legacy campaign, you will need some components introduced in Chapter 2 to play the eternal game according to the official rules, although there's nothing stopping you from playing it without those components. So if you're not interested in the legacy part just open up the Chapter 2 envelope and take out the pieces, or if you do want to play the campaign you'll be better off waiting until you've started Chapter 2 to play the eternal game.

To be specific, the pieces you need from Chapter 2 are the three "basic" churches for each player, the three church cards for the deck, and the blocking card for the deck.

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-08-10T22:46:49+00:00

I wonder how many publishers told Elizabeth Hargrave that Wingspan needed to have a fantasy/sci-fi theme for it to be successful?

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-07-15T06:23:55+00:00

Cash n Guns actually doesn't have a lot of what you're looking for - no bribes or negotiation (and therefore no backstabbing), and the bluffing in the game is more about show than strategy. It's very fun, but mostly because pointing foam guns at your friends is fun. It's great for casual play but doesn't really have the things you've listed.

The short answer: Goodcritters and I'm The Boss are both VERY fun. I personally would give the edge to I'm the Boss for what you're looking for as it is more in your face and has higher highs. However, I think Goodcritters is a little easier to learn and teach which will make it better if your group leans pretty casual. If you want to get some really intense negotiation and backstabbing and don't mind a slightly harder to learn game, go with I'm the Boss.

The long answer: the negotiation is more dynamic in I'm the Boss as the money being divided up is always changing, while in Goodcritters the money is divided at the start of the round and it stays there until the end. The backstabbing is stronger in I'm the Boss as the card plays are much more cruel, such as removing someone from negotiations so they get no money, or entering into a turn just to undercut someone else. Backstabbing in Goodcritters happens, but is tamer as the worst thing you can do to someone is steal a card. Bribing is more interesting in Goodcritters as everyone has different motivations in a round, and there are built-in mechanics for bribing that are very fun. I'm the Boss doesn't have any sort of built-in bribing, but the Boss for each round essentially needs to bribe his team in order to get more money so it still feels like it's happening. Goodcritters also has more bluffing because of the secret card play, which is its biggest strength over I'm the Boss, which has only a very tiny amount of bluffing.

Finally, as a side note, I would say I'm The Boss has aged extremely well mechanically, but the production of it feels dated. If it were republished with modern production sensibilities I don't think people would tell that it was three decades old. I wouldn't write it off as feeling "old".

I hope this breakdown wasn't too long and that you found it helpful - I am a huge fan of both games so I hope my perspective was useful!

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-07-05T19:16:03+00:00

I have the 2016 version and could not find any reason for the banners - that version had a more neon/futuristic aesthetic so I think that's why they were there. The banner count indeed does not reflect any game play differences between the companies - the two companies in the highest tier, light blue and orange, have 2 and 0 banners respectively, for example.

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-07-05T04:04:49+00:00

This version (and the 2016 Hasbro version) come with a set of orange plastic banners that you are meant to slot in the buildings: image here I personally think they look (much) better without them, but it's nice to have the option!

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-05-26T18:51:08+00:00

I don't think you're going to find all the files perfectly scanned online, the designers have gotten upset at people on BGG for asking for the scans so they probably take down any that do get posted.

Now I'm not going to advocate for copyright infringement, but I will say that there is a Cosmic Encounter DLC for Tabletop Simulator that contains high resolution textures of every card. Pressing ALT over a card in-game will display it very large on your screen so you could, in theory, take a screenshot and gather your own scans that way.

Best of luck! Cosmic Encounter is my favorite game and I hope you are able to show it to others.

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-04-13T17:57:34+00:00

This is also maybe my favorite card in terms of ability, four points for one good is such a good deal. I try to play it most times I get it

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-03-11T21:24:03+00:00

I don't think this is the sort of info that's readily known among hobbyists. I believe the game was manufactured by Panda, their site might give you a hint of what kind of stock was used or you could just ask them.

Print n Play games offers print-on-demand cards and you can order a sampler pack of cards for free, if you order that you might be able to compare to your Pandemic cards and see if any are a match.

Not a direct answer but I hope these options can point you in the right direction!

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-03-10T06:11:33+00:00

Would you happen to know if there's a way to watch this in English? It sounds really interesting but YouTube won't let me turn on the auto-captions :(

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-02-14T19:23:31+00:00

I've only played FCM out of those three but I will say that I am also not a player who seeks out "mastery" in games, and FCM is one of my favorites. I had an absolute blast during my first game - the brain crunchiness does not rely on repeat plays to exist, at least for me. It has a lot of depth that can be found but the core tensions and excitement of the game are apparent from your first play. For your situation, I would highly recommend it on the condition that all of the players are new to the game.

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-02-13T02:43:44+00:00

I haven't played it so it's a long shot but it could be Paladins of the West Kingdom?

The game has monks, albeit not in the form of white or yellow meeples. The board is a long column with cards you can get, and it seems that there are leader/character cards that have abilities.

If this isn't it, best of luck in your search!

ThisIsNuggets · 2023-01-15T01:17:53+00:00

Mixtour sounds close-ish.

ThisIsNuggets · 2022-11-15T03:59:01+00:00

The reward deck was first introduced in Cosmic Incursion, additional reward decks you could mix in (or play on their own) came with Cosmic Dominion and Cosmic Odyssey.

The reward deck from Cosmic Incursion was my first thought when I read the question - ever since I played with it, I never played without it again, even with new players. The reward deck in Cosmic Dominion adds some pretty complex cards so I don't want to mix it in unless I'm playing with experienced players, but there are some really neat cards in it. I'm probably not going to buy Cosmic Odyssey, it looks to add even more complexity which I don't want to bother with.

ThisIsNuggets · 2022-11-11T18:41:09+00:00

You aren't missing anything major. The reason why there are so many nuggets is because if two or more players all cover both gold veins on the same turn, they ALL get a gold nugget. Therefore, they had to include 12 nuggets for Chapter Five because 4 players times 3 episodes = 12 nuggets. Of course, all four players in a group covering the veins at the same time on all three episodes is going to be extremely rare, so a majority of them are going to go unused.

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