I recently created a card game version of Cosmic Encounter, which we finally got around to testplaying this week.



Each player has their own deck of cards, which include 4 different aliens in each deck. Each alien has 4 cards with different values (from 1 to 4), which takes the place of using tokens.

You start the game with your 4 home planets (which come in 4 different types with symbols on them to differentiate. Each of your alien cards has a "Destiny" indicator at the bottom that shows which planets you can attack . Additionally, each alien has an Encounter symbol at the bottom (Square, Circle, Triangle, Diamond). These correspond to your Encounter cards.



The Encounter card here has different values depending on which alien card is played with it. If it were Virus, the Encounter card would be worth 12. For Pacifist, it would be a Negotiate (aka Compromise). When challenging a planet with no alien forces on it, the defender would use the "Planetary Defenses" value.

Each player's deck also includes a number of non-Encounter cards:



Artifacts (aka Edicts) have 4 values, depending on your role in a challenge (Offense, Defense, Ally, or Uninvolved). The Cosmic Zap/Un Zap is a separate card. Additionally, there are Kickers, and one Flare for each of your aliens in your deck. If you have an alien face up in play, you must use the Super value of your Flare. Otherwise you must use the Wild heading. Flares are not discarded after use (only when you must draw a new hand).

Some additional differences from normal CE:

At the start of your turn, you may discard up to 4 cards from your hand and replenish that number from your deck. At the start of each of your challenges you may play an Alien card from your hand onto one of your colonies.

The first image above shows an encounter in progress. Yellow is attacking Blue. Green has allied with Yellow. Red is allied with Blue.

My head is exploding. Is there a full list of cards and a complete ruleset available?

Yehuda

P.S. I'd insert snark quip about how Magic: the Gathering is already the card game equivalent of Cosmic Encounter, but from your title, you alredy know that.

Jack:

Genius!! With CEO down, I guess the creative juices have been flowing. So...when and where can I buy/download/steal a copy for myself and one for Peter and Greg?

P.S. Remind me next time I have a secret, I can trust TheDukester to keep it!!

I am going to dive into the long process of making PDFs to download, so others can try it out too, and then start making adjustments to the rules.

It game play, it feels very much like Cosmic Encounter. I may need to create a lot of "optional" rules, especially regarding how many aliens you have in your deck. I would have won the last game I played if I'd played down my Parasite alien card rather than rescuing one of my Anti-Matters (upon whom I was relying too heavily).

As of now I have 4 decks (Red, Blue, Yellow, Green). I also have thought about how to add in a 5th player. Right now I have a 5th alien card for each one of the aliens (Value 0). The 0 Alien has the home system color in its Destiny field, and the replaced alien has Orange to attack. This version would require 5 external bases to win.

I haven't yet tried it with two players, but I am sure it can be done. It's just that the alliance component wouldn't be utilized, which I feel is key to Cosmic. Time will tell.

I have to say, when I saw the thread title I thought White Wolf were doing an rpg version...

I've downloaded the decks -- are the rules available anywhere?

I'm writing them now. I hope to have them done tonight, and uploaded (but I will also post them online somewhere for immediate release).

http://redamedia.com/warp/Cosmic_The_Encounter_rules.pdf

I was just wondering -- has anything new been done with this? I'm about to order some colored card sleeves and wondering if I should include orange. :-)

I haven't been able to get 5 people to playtest the new stuff yet, so I haven't posted anything.... but it's on the horizon!