Cosmic Encounter

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cosmic Encounter
King of the Stars
Game materials from the Hexagames edition
Game materials from the Hexagames edition
Game data
author Bill Eberle ,
Peter Olotka ,
Jack Kittredge ,
Bill Norton
publishing company Eon 1977,
ASS 1985,
Games Workshop 1986,
Mayfair Games 1991,
Hexagames 1991,
Avalon Hill ( Hasbro ) 2000,
Fantasy Flight Games 2008 a
. a.
Publishing year 1977, 1985, 1986, 1991, 2000, 2008
Art Board game
Teammates 3 to 6 (some issues 2 to 4)
Duration 90 minutes and more
Age from 12 years

Awards

Origins Award : SF or Fantasy Board Game 1991
German Games Prize 1992: 6th place
Game of Games 2001: Hit games with friends

Cosmic Encounter is an American board game in which the participants have different game skills and verbal interaction is important for the course of the game. It is considered a classic, for the first time players had different playing skills. Dune is a further development of the game.

Gameplay

The participants embody an alien race and control 5 planets of a planetary system and 20 spaceships. To win, 5 more colonies must be established in other planetary systems. The game board has a modular structure depending on the number of players. Drawing a card determines where the player may attack. The attacking and the defending player may ask the other players for assistance. The attack is carried out using a number card, helping ships are added to the result, the highest number wins. If the attack is successful, all players involved in the attack can land on the system, so the help has its price. Other event cards can influence the outcome of an attack. In addition, each alien race has a special power . Depending on the game version, there are up to 100 different races with different powers. The individual skills are very different and have a decisive influence on the course of the game (e.g. the zombie , never loses spaceships, the mirror swaps the numbers on the playing cards) and design each game differently due to the different constellations.

The modular game board and hyperspace cone of the Hexagames edition.

History of origin

Around 1970 the Americans Bill Eberle and Peter Olotka invented the game, but could not find a publisher. Jack Kittredge and Bill Norton joined them two years later . In 1977, the writer Edward Horn self- financed Eon Games and Cosmic Encounter was published in the United States. The game sold very well, with numerous official and unofficial expansions released. In Germany, the game was an insider tip. In 1985, ASS Altenburger published the board game under the title King of the Stars in Germany, but could not build on the success of the US version. In 1991 Mayfair Games released a high quality reissue that included all of Eon's expansions. In the same year Hexagames licensed the game from Mayfair Games and released the game in Germany. In 2000, Hasbro reissued the game on the German market. It is a slimmed-down version for four people and contains a lot of plastic. Fantasy Flight Games then released the game in 2008.

In the USA, the rights went to West End Games in 1986 , Mayfair Games in 1990 and Avalon Hill in 2000 . In 2003 Peter Olotka started an online version of the game.

Playing cards and pieces of the Hexagames edition.

Others

With the success of the trading card games in the 1990s, Cosmic Encounter experienced renewed popularity, as Richard Garfield declared the game "[Magic's] most influential ancestor is a game for which I have no end of respect: Cosmic Encounter." praised.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ King of the Stars in the Luding games database
  2. ↑ The history of Cosmic Encounter ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at cosmicencounter.de @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cosmicencounter.de

Web links