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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!kscott
From: kscott@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Kevin Scott%Kuntz)
Newsgroups: net.games
Subject: Re: games magazine...
Message-ID: <647@ucsfcgl.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 20:25:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucsfcgl.647
Posted: Fri Sep 20 20:25:18 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 18:50:27 EDT
References: <446@decwrl.UUCP> <1472@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: kscott@ucsfcgl.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
Organization: UCSF Computer Graphics Lab
Lines: 54

>In article <446@decwrl.UUCP> wong@whoaru.DEC (What? Me worry?...) writes:
>>They left out Cosmic Encounters!
>>I really don't know why anyone would play anyother game...
In article <1472@uwmacc.UUCP> oyster@uwmacc.UUCP (Vicious Oyster) writes:
>    Aaaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!  Another raving testimonial without a 
>single bit of information about what the game is actually about!

  Cosmic Enounters is One of the games I've enjoyed most, and I've played
quite a few games.  It is best if you play with the same group so that you
learn the potentials of powers and flares together, and don't have some
expert who runs the show.  As you play the game more, it grows funner
and you play the game more, and ...   a vicious cycle.  When I was
an undergraduate, we stopped playing any other game and generally were
playing 3 games a night, until the owner of the game (and all the expansions)
threw it away(!), due to it's effect on his studying.
  The premise of the game :
     You have five planets in your system(spaces, units, whatever.  The game is
supposedly aimed at scifi types, it could just as easily been written as
straight forward descriptions but the scifi bit lends some humor and mnemonics
to the game) which you defend from other people's attacks, and you are trying
to win a game by colonizing other peoples planets.  You have tokens(armies,
fleets, semantics) which you use to conquer other planets.  You can form 
alliances, to help take over or defend a planet.  The rules are quite simple
as to how a turn takes place and the battle is done by playing one round
(1 card) of war.  Now the bad part, the rules change.  And they change 
differently  for each player.  Each player is randomly given powers
by a big card defining what kind of alien race(s) his system is.
Some of the wild cards in your hand may also force the game to proceed in
a certain way.  And then there are the flare cards... which give you
additional ways to break the rules.
  Bugs:  There are times when two players ways of breaking the rules conflict,
i.e. one player has the ability to play two cards against one in the war,
but another player is entitled to see what card the other player plays
before he chooses his card.  Does the person who must show his card to
the other player have to show both cards?
But the definitions of the powers each player has are well defined
(considering), and as long as you play with the same set of gamesters you can
write down what supercedes what

  Opinions on playing:  Buy the deck of flares, additional powers, but
 save your money on buying the lucre expansion set.
It is best to give a player 5 alien races at the beginning of the game and
let him choose two to play the game with.
Copy your original cards (not the playing cards, the ones that detail the
powers of each alien race) with a copier and keep the originals safe, this
keeps the cards from becoming marked (a brown stain on the back of a virus
power will alter the way everyone else chooses their powers if they see it).
This is also a cheap way to aquire expansions :-).
Never use too many flares unless you are playing a weird game for the fun of 
trying a game with lots of flares.
Don't play the game allowing superflare powers unless the flare power is 
useless in conjunction with the main power.
-- 
two to the power of 638 and falling ...


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