Review: Cosmic Encounter
Archiving my review of Cosmic Encounter from BoardGameGeek. It is no longer the highest rated game in my collection as of 2026. :-D
3 - 5 players, 6 with expansion, the more the better. About an hour to play, five minutes to teach, can be played casual, but is very strategic.
First printed in 1977, Cosmic Encounter is a classic (it even influenced the creation of Magic: The Gathering) that only gets better with time. While the mechanics are simple (a ādestinyā deck randomly determines your opponent for the turn, you choose one of their planets to attack, the player with the most ships wins the encounter), the game has several components to make it infinitely replayable.
First, each player has a race. Race cards each break the rules in different ways ā one might let you stack the destiny deck, another might allow you to cheat your way into an encounter, another might let you multiply as a disease to spread over multiple planets. There are 50 of these cards in the base game, and the expansion (which also gives you a 6th player) provides 20 more. Since each player only chooses one race per game, you easily have billions of different combinations you could play with.
Second, each player chooses their race between two cards they see at the beginning of the game. These are the āflareā cards, which will end up in the deck before the game starts. For example, I might have the choice between the Grudge and the Humans (mostly harmless), but no matter which I pick, both of those flares will end up in the deck. Each player will have a hand of cards from the deck that they use for different things ā from adding ships to their encounter, to zapping another playerās power, to recovering ships from the Warp. Most of these cards are discarded when played, but if you have a Flare in your hand, you can play it and still keep it around for another pass. Flares double the number of race-related powers you see each game.
Third, the game includes a Tech deck, providing cards you can research over time to give yourself Real Ultimate Power(TM), like destroying a planet. Each player only sees one Tech card per game.
EDIT: As noted in the comments, you get to choose Tech cards like starting races ā draw several, choose one. Also, if you succeed in your first encounter, you can either take a second encounter or a Tech card; of course, a second encounter is extremely powerful in a game that only goes to five āVPsā (foreign colonies), so Iād expect that youād still see very few Tech cards. Thanks to the commenters!
With all this madness, each game is significantly different. Some races seem flat-out bad, until you realize you can use their powers in very interesting ways. My dad played as the Philanthropist one game, who is allowed to give encounter cards (that add or remove ships to an encounter, or attempt to negotiate) to a player in an encounter. He couldnāt figure out how to make this help him until halfway through the game, when he started unloading terrible encounter cards (-10 ships? take it, go ahead) to his opponents. Since you must play an encounter card each turn, and you canāt reload your hand ātil you run out of encounter cards, all of these terrible cards would need to be used by his ā¦ beneficiaries.
One race allows you to join an encounter even if the main players (the offense, whose turn it is, and the defense, whose card was drawn from the destiny deck) didnāt ask you to do so. Normally, players must ask for allies, because an ally on the offense gets a colony if the offense wins, and five foreign colonies wins the game. In the endgame, people will often choose their allies very carefully, depending on whoās close to winning. This race can tag along for the win.
Cosmic Encounter is the highest-rated game in my collection, and Iāll always suggest it when I have an hour and a few friends around. Highly recommended for players interested in political, strategic games. If you buy it, get the recent Fantasy Flight printing and expansion, itās the best printing yet.