So, I got Cosmic Encounter and both expansion in last night.
1) Amazon packaging was horrid. Base games box was scuffed and dented pretty badly. One of the expansions box was actually crushed. Luckily components inside survived. FF game catelog didn't.
2) Artwork is pretty awesome on the cards. There are a couple I don't really care for, but for the most part, it's pretty dang nifty. The new version of the game still didn't correct an old error where it is obvious the artwork for virus and zombie were switched. Luckily someone on BGG has mockups that correct this issue.
3) Man, some of these alien powers are awesome. I've only played a couple of 5p games so I've seen 10 of the 90 powers in play, I can't wait to see some of them in action.. they just look like so much fun. Most of the ones I've played with had a minor change in strategy, some of them change the game completely. Bang! has player powers that can slightly alter gameplay.. but for the most part you still play the game roughly the same way no matter what your character is. The Alien powers really do affect your entire strategy for winning.
My favorite one is "The Claw" which lets you put a card face down. Anytime someone plays that exact card, you get to steal one of their planets and put it in your home system and any ships on it go to the warp. It's not going to happen a ton, but the planet counts as one of the 5 you need to win the game and makes it exceptionaly hard for other players to keep their special power.
Some other really cool looking ones are Leviathin that lets you launch a war world against an opponent (you literally get to send an entire planet through the jump gate for a +10 attack plus any ships on the planet). So cool.
4) components in this game are amazing. I've looked at some of the earlier versions.. and the stuff from the 70s, 80s and 90s is all pretty crappy looking. The Avalon Hill edition looked really nice, but it looks like that was a case of form over function with a lot of plastic crap that was cumbersome to use but looked awesome. The stackable ships, individual planets and lack of a true "board" just make the game scale so well.
5) Been reading a ton about future expansions. It looks like there are 3 more planned which will take the game to 150 aliens(!), 9-10 players (!) and should reintroduce some mechanics from older versions (Moons, Lucre, reverse planets, comets).. but from what I understand, these were pretty divisive mechanics.. I guess the up-side is if you don't like a mechanic you just don't play with that expansion. They are very much so like the Allhambra/Carcassonne mini-expansions where they can be combined in effectively any way you want.
6) I really like the connection to nerd history this game has. There is something nifty about playing a game that college nerds gathered around until the wee hours of the morning over 30 years ago and have been doing ever since. A lot of the games I did this with (Risk, Axis and Allies, Monopoly) are just not games I want to play anymore and very few games from bygone era's really hold up very well. It's nice to have a nice, light quick game that has effectively been in play since my parents were in college.
I think this is very likely to become our new go to party game. It takes about as long to play as Bang!, player interaction is much better and there is no player elimination.. so double bonus. Sadly, 2 members of my regular game group (girlfriends brother and sister-in-law) are moving to Dallas so game nights may be fewer and farther between. Though, I imagine road trips will be fairly frequent between us going there and them coming here.
