Why Do I Own This? - Part 5

Codenames: Pictures
How did I get it? I'm pretty sure this...

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"These days I tend to think buying my wife a game as a gift is a bad look, kind of like the time Homer bought Marge a bowling ball for her birthday."

*nods sagely*

I never know with my partner. She loves games but predicting her taste is really hard (just like everyone posting here, I'm sure!). Sometimes she just sees something and jumps on it (CO2 Kickstarter, Wingspan) but I wouldn't have known to get her Wingspan, that's for sure.

I've moved around a LOT in the past 10 years, and wherever I end up, I'm the guy with the boardgames.

I am used to, no matter what the game is, everyone ganging up on me because I own the game and I am the "best." I don't mind. I have more fun doing my damndest and losing to my friends than I would ever have steamrolling newbies.

My favorite thing about Cosmic Encounter is how it levels the advantage of experience. There's a running joke that many Eurogames are won by the player who knows the rules the best; CE, with all its vagaries, is won by table talk. Gamers and non-gamers alike, I have had folks request Cosmic Encounter on game night more than anything else in my collection.

san il defanso wrote:

Does Codenames Pictures succeed as much as the original? What makes Cosmic Encounter the best game ever designed? Also, is Cosmic Encounter the best game ever designed? Argue about it with me this week on "Why Do I Own This?"

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The best game ever designed? I can't declare that, but it's one of them, certainly. I often tell new players that CE is the foundation of modern, non-German game design. You want "variable player powers"? This is where it started. Plus, it made a point of breaking the rules, rather than confining the game to them. It's endlessly innovative and appeals to hardcore competitors and casual "have-funners".

Like you, my box could no longer take the pressure, but I've taped the bottom half twice to keep it together, even though I have to separate the top few aliens from the main stack to get everything to fit. Also like you, I will never part with it and consider the reprinting and continued support to be one of FFG's singular achievements.

I hope I don't have to turn in my F:AT card, but after trying multiple times to capture the magical experience that everyone else talks about regarding CE, I finally gave up and eBayed it two weeks ago.

Every time it was kind of fun but not really fun. Never felt like I had enough control to negotiate over anything because the system was so swingy.

I am happy to acknowledge the game's influence, but for me it's relegated to a fine game for its era that I gave plenty of chances to.

The lack of control is one of the things that makes it so great. It is also screamingly audacious, even decades on, that the game tells you who you have to fight and possibly saddles you with useless cards for the fight.

But when you get in that situation- the cone is aimed at someone whom you’ve buddied up with for a few turns and you have low value or N cards. Or you might be directed to attack someone who is far stronger and has an advantageous power over you. That’s when social skills, taking advantage of powers, and plain old slick-talking comes into play. You might not win the planet. But you might do something like swindle folks into joining a losing battle and putting a bunch of ships in warp. Or you could wind up negotiating out of it. And you might wind up winning with a trash card.

The game puts these hardships on you, and the fun is figuring out what the hell to do. You don’t have absolute control. But I think the most fun games of it are when people get creative and really leverage the diplomatic angle.

I don’t think folks discuss enough how utterly brilliant it is that the game dictates who you fight. That just completely flies in the face of wargaming logic, but it also creates a -different- strategic space. It’s also a self-balancing mechanic so that one player isn’t just wailed on for the whole game.

But I have seen people chafe at it, because they want to attack the weakest player or a player that has aggrieved them...but it just would not fit the game’s ethos or philosophy if you could pick your fights. The whole point is that it is essentially a random encounter generator.

And the correct answer is yes, Cosmic is the best game of all time. There is no other game as completely perfect, inclusive of its whims, quirks, and weirdness.

I don't need perfect control, but the whole shebang felt so random that there was nothing to grab onto to offer the other players. It felt like trying to negotiate over getting a six on a d6. It might happen, it might not, but either way there's no point in arguing about it.

Hopefully the person I sold it to enjoys it.

I mean, I get it, dysjunct. I've tried with a number of people who just weren't into it. They tried but it never appealed. There are a lot of people who don't want the randomness and mild chaos that the game introduces because that's not "playing a game" to them. For a lot of people, in games there are rules and everyone follows the rules, to one degree or another. Not so for CE, which is what appeals to a lot of other people. But, you play what you like.

As a fan of Cosmic Encounter, I think I sometimes struggle to clarify why I like it so much. I tend to emphasize certain elements of the game that I like, but the truth is that Cosmic Encounter is not so good at any one thing to be really mind-blowing from that angle. (I think the way its willing to scramble its own ruleset might be the only exception to that.) By that I mean that it's not a good enough negotiation game, or hand management game, or bluffing game to really be a good example of just that genre. It's real strength lies in its synthesis of those different elements. It really demands players who can play in all those genres in very fluid ways.

Dysjunct, I totally get your underwhelming experience with it, because the game really gives the players a shocking amount of control over what kind of game it is. Played with four or five players, who are all serious gamers, it can have a lot of depth and tactical richness. But you can just as easily make it a goof-off game where nothing means anything. The game shifts between those poles pretty suddenly too. If someone decides this game is going to be silly, it gets silly in a hurry.

Michael Barnes wrote: The lack of control is one of the things that makes it so great. It is also screamingly audacious, even decades on, that the game tells you who you have to fight and possibly saddles you with useless cards for the fight.

But when you get in that situation- the cone is aimed at someone whom you’ve buddied up with for a few turns and you have low value or N cards. Or you might be directed to attack someone who is far stronger and has an advantageous power over you. That’s when social skills, taking advantage of powers, and plain old slick-talking comes into play. You might not win the planet. But you might do something like swindle folks into joining a losing battle and putting a bunch of ships in warp. Or you could wind up negotiating out of it. And you might wind up winning with a trash card.

The game puts these hardships on you, and the fun is figuring out what the hell to do. You don’t have absolute control. But I think the most fun games of it are when people get creative and really leverage the diplomatic angle.

I don’t think folks discuss enough how utterly brilliant it is that the game dictates who you fight. That just completely flies in the face of wargaming logic, but it also creates a -different- strategic space. It’s also a self-balancing mechanic so that one player isn’t just wailed on for the whole game.

But I have seen people chafe at it, because they want to attack the weakest player or a player that has aggrieved them...but it just would not fit the game’s ethos or philosophy if you could pick your fights. The whole point is that it is essentially a random encounter generator.

And the correct answer is yes, Cosmic is the best game of all time. There is no other game as completely perfect, inclusive of its whims, quirks, and weirdness.

I hesitate to say there is one defining mechanic in Cosmic Encounter, but if I had to pick one I would actually say it's the hand management. Someone who is able to cycle cards and use them really well, especially outside of encounters, stands the best chance of victory.

Once I got to sit in on an online conversation with Peter Olotka, who made the point that it's really important to call the turns "encounters," because that really emphasizes the different direction the game can take. If you don't like fighting, and would rather come up with a mutually beneficial outcome, you can totally do that. That's why I feel like the idea of focusing on the conflict does the game a disservice. It's all those things at once.

dysjunct wrote: I hope I don't have to turn in my F:AT card, but after trying multiple times to capture the magical experience that everyone else talks about regarding CE, I finally gave up and eBayed it two weeks ago.

Every time it was kind of fun but not really fun. Never felt like I had enough control to negotiate over anything because the system was so swingy.

I am happy to acknowledge the game's influence, but for me it's relegated to a fine game for its era that I gave plenty of chances to.

Same.

I bought the game a few years ago (probably because of gushing reviews here on F:AT). I played it 5 or 6 times, and the game never once clicked for us. After that, I couldn't get it to the table because nobody wanted to play it. I kept saying, "But it HAS to be fun! Everybody says it's the best game ever."

I dunno. I can't even articulate why it flopped for us, but it did. I sold it off without much remorse. I can SEE the genius in the game. But we never actually FELT that genius, if that makes any sense.

Michael Barnes wrote: I don’t think folks discuss enough how utterly brilliant it is that the game dictates who you fight. That just completely flies in the face of wargaming logic, but it also creates a -different- strategic space. It’s also a self-balancing mechanic so that one player isn’t just wailed on for the whole game.

But I have seen people chafe at it, because they want to attack the weakest player or a player that has aggrieved them...but it just would not fit the game’s ethos or philosophy if you could pick your fights. The whole point is that it is essentially a random encounter generator.

As a Shadowfist player, I totally appreciate the random encounter aspect of Cosmic Encounter. Shadowfist is a CCG that is strongly inspired by Cosmic Encounter and Magic: the Gathering, which in turn is also inspired by Cosmic Encounter (and Wiz-War). Shadowfist is approximately multi-player Magic, except that you are fighting over the land. As in CE, Shadowfist players can invite allies to join either the attacker or the defender. Since Shadowfist doesn't restrict or randomize the choice of attack, most Shadowfist players tend to "attack the weakest player or a player that has aggrieved them," and it diminishes the game because the weakest player is often not going to have much fun. Sometimes players will gladly join an attack on the leader, and that can drag the game out. Cosmic Encounter eliminates both leader-bashing and preying on the weak, and the game is better for it.