I really appreciate these Beyond the Base Game videos. You're right that most other channels do not do anything like this. if they do, they're very brief. I love the deep dive you provide.
An upside of hidden alliances is that it speeds things up a little bit for that phase of the game. There's less banter, but also less indecision amongst all the players holding each other up. That's not a huge issue in a 5-player game, but it does make an 8-player game much more viable!
I actually believe Odyssey is the best choice for a first expansion. It’s the big sampler platter. You can try out all of the variants and see which ones you like and then it shows you which other expansions have that variant. It’s also perfectly good for new players to learn the variants because the campaign curates the implementation.
Jack, I love how commonly I find your comments on every Cosmic video. I'm starting to suspect you're routinely searching the game on TH-cam just to find any scrap of content or opinions on the game, which is exactly what I've been doing for a couple years now lmao. And thank you for bringing Odyssey into existence! I am really excited to play it, I just have to find some people now...
Many of the Odyssey variants I would not teach to new players, hell some of them I won't use period. And never would I throw a campaign mode on new players either. Also I wouldn't want to advise people to spend nearly £50 on a "sampler" to see what they fancy. Would you pay the same for a sampler meat platter?
@@TheBrokenMeeple Your meat analogy is not really accurate, because this particular "sampler" includes a lot more than just the sampling of variants. For starters, there are 42 alien sheets in Odyssey compared to say, 20 in each of the first three expansions (so more than double you were getting), and significantly more alien sheets overall than any of the other expansions. Odyssey also has the highest number and highest percentage of green alert aliens, which are geared especially towards newer players. Thus, Odyssey is actually the best value expansion of all seven, just in terms of aliens. It's also the best value for many other factors. You are getting essentially three expansions in one for the price of just under two of the other expansions in most outlets. None of the variants are particularly complex. No more so than something like Pandemic Legacy (and in fact, probably significantly easier than season two of PL). Having taught this game and this expansion to a lot of new players, I can't report ever having someone unable to grok a single variant. Keep in mind, we're talking about someone buying an expansion. If a player is looking for an expansion, they are probably ready for more than what is in the base game. If you are looking to expand on Cosmic Encounter, Odyssey is a fantastic first expansion, because it's entirely modular, and includes a massive number of variants (many of which can be further expanded by the other expansions, allowing a player to focus on those they like best if they aren't going to pick them all up anyway).
I recently played a game where we used a regular set of playing cards to allow a sixth player. Using numbered cards to represent the players, and picture cards for the wild/special destiny cards.
16:40 I'm confused by your example, I haven't played cosmic encounter yet, but I don't see anything in the rules about being able to offer players cards (or anything else) as an incentive for allying
Just ran a 5 player with rewards, hazards and tech. Rewards and hazards were really fun, but the tech still felt awkward even with all players being familiar with the game. The one thing I DO like about it, though, is it adds another layer of thought into the game by choosing whether to tie up ships to tech or combat. Kind of a cool mechanism!
@@TheBrokenMeeple I love the hazard deck. It adds more zaniness and creates more interesting combinations which leads to fun stories. Cosmic is all about the stories its games create, and the hazard deck has contributed quite a bit to my games in that regard.
Great review, very helpful. You mentioned you didn't like hidden alliances because you don't get negotiations between players when trying to get allies. I didn't think you could trade cards unless it was when both players played negotiate cards. Did I miss something, this would certainly change things
Hey there, really handy stuff to watch and keep up the good work. Now I hope this makes sense but I think the biggest problem that always keeps cosmic encounter back above anything else is the group. You really need the right crowd for this game and its surprises me who actually likes this! I have taken this to games nights with people thinking it’s right up their ally and it’s fallen in a heap, where I have taken this to other places and had a blast with a crowd I didn’t expect it would work.
IMHO the rewards deck is a must, the base game is naked without it. It really gives an incentive to being a defensive ally. Especially considering there are few opportunities to add cards to your hand, this really helps balance the game. I also love the hazards deck. CE embraces the chaos, and this deck only furthers that goal. I much rather play with hazards and wrenches than moons or space stations. And why not get Odyssey right off? CE is best played at 5, and this expansion gives you all the extras it would take 3+ expansions to get.
What I do like the ‘campaign’ for is using those age cards to randomly select some variants to play if I’m playing with veterans. When you know the game and the variants well, it’s nice to have a way to quickly and randomly choose a setup.
What are your thoughts on Super Rewards? I just got Cosmic Odyssey as it was on sale. After slapping it in with everything else... phew... you were not lying. It is almost an overwhelming number of content. I do like the idea of using the expansion box to hold content that doesn't get used, as that is where I have put anything other than the stations, rewards and tech cards. I haven't tried the Evolution deck, but it will be the first module we throw in if we play this a lot at our board game retreat next weekend.
Did anyone else pause the video at 2:11 to belt out the rest of the song? ... Hello my rag time gal, send me a kiss by wire, honey my hearts on fire, if you refuse me, honey you'll lose me, then you'll be left alone, oh baby, telephone and tell me I'm your own!
I thought Cosmic Odyssey had a lot of good thing about it, but there was also a lot of lazily designed elements, poorly communicated rules, and some random things just added way too many things that you had to keep track of unexpectedly. Lux was a poorly designed variant. That was the one that adds a resource, that you could either use to buy rewards or use your lux card's effect. On paper it seemed like a really fun mechanic. In reality, the best way to spend lux was always to buy rewards, at one lux per reward, if you were the only one who had lux. What happened, most of the time, when we played it, was that the offense, when they had lux in their regroup, was the _only_ one who had lux at the time (or they had 3 and the person they just successfully attacked had one). And that was their _opportunity_ to use the "everyone can buy for 1" declaration and they got 3 rewards. We found that it was _always_ better to do this than save it for your lux card's effect, and in reality, the lux card effects saw very little use. It was just a reward card-fest. There are random cards that just add too many things to keep track of, and make the game chaotic to a fault. For example, there's a new reward card that says "you are now playing double alien variant". Imagine you get this when you are already playing with tech, or new space stations, or evolution, or some combination of these things. We try to limit the new variants that make you keep track of things, but a (usually Cosmic Odyssey) card can just come out of the blue and double the number of things you have to keep track of. It can make the game take twice as long and cannibalize your whole night. Another example is a particular evolution card (btw I love the evolution variant, except for this card) that, when you have 4 ships on it, lets you get a random flare card whenever someone plays a flare card. So imagine 4 people have 4 ships on it... now there's an insane amount of flare cards in circulation, and every time someone plays one, 3 other people have to go get one. It is unnecessarily overwhelming. In a game where there's already some danger of unnecessary bloat, cards like these shouldn't exist. Maybe I am just dumb, but moons seem to be very ambiguously worded. It's not clear, quite often, when a moon gets used once in the game, or gets flipped over and has multiple uses. The rules seem to suggest they're one-time use. But some moons explicitly state that they get flipped over and have multiple uses. But other moons _don't_ say this, but have an effect that only really makes sense if they _do_ get flipped over and have multiple uses. So you sort of have to just ignore the rules and judge each one on a case-by-case basis. Then there are the "new permanent" hazards. There was already a permanent hazard type (orange banner) before these new ones were introduced, and when a second permanent hazard was drawn, it replaced the first one.. But this "permanent" one is a _different_ kind of permanent (yellow banner), and it's unclear how it interacts with old permanent. I think CO adds a lot of new, great stuff. But the design of it was a little bit lazy, and the scenarios created by some cards were not very well thought out.
I agree with you, the first expansion HAS to be Incursion. It adds another player and the awesome rewards deck. And I think the SECOND expansion should definitely be Odyssey! It gives you SO much of practically everything, more aliens, more rewards, and every variant you could be interested in. And then if you ever need more, which sounds a little bit ridiculous, you know where to get more of your favourite mechanic! But the first, definitely Incursion for those 6 player games. Just played one and it was chaotic, but I loved every minute.
Me I’m one of those guys who buy the expansions just for the aliens and their flare cards, and pretty much nothing else. I play the main game but without the tech cards. Definitely buying dominion just so I can piss all my friends off by playing as the bride.
Really wish they would just sell aliens from each pack. Our group has little interest in making cosmic more complicated (we use base, minus tech, with rewards deck) but the aliens from each expansion would be great.
Might I ask how your storage situation is? I'm planning to get all the expansions eventually. I see you have the broken token insert, is that enough to store all the aliens and base game cards, alien tokens, flares, etc; and the Odyssey box for all the variant tokens and cards? Is that enough? Or will I need to invest in a box? An eighth expansion is planned, so do you think the box would still fit even more, with the broken token insert?
The insert was enough up to a point. But a lot of the newest expansion stuff and a bunch of aliens have to sit in the Odyssey box. So I need both currently. I'm not interested in another expansion!
@@timothystevano2994 yeah, I guess on the bgg forums, someone (it might've been Jack Reda-the designer of Cosmic Odyssey) said that they had some leftover aliens and variants that they planned to put into an 8th expansion.
Hopefully, they will find a way to break out some of the items from Cosmic Odyssey into separate packages. I like the idea of the evolution cards but the rest are not my cup of tea,
But Cosmic Conflict has arguably the best set of Aliens. Cosmic Storm has the worst set of Aliens, most of them are either Aliens that just don't work or rip-offs of already published Aliens. The Moons variant was made so you can add only the type of moons you like and not the others. I removed the cheese moons from my copy of the game.
Yeah... sponsored video that encourages you to buy cosmic storm before a lot of other much better expansions... and you wonder why when storm is universally credited as the worst expansion out there and permanently in bargain bins... steeply discounted...
This board game has the worst expansions in any I have played. The additions are so stupid and make a smooth game too messy. I just get Incursion and never lost a second of sleep longing for any other one They should have just made really small pack expansions with some extra races or a few cards here and there to add to decks. really keeping it small
I really appreciate these Beyond the Base Game videos. You're right that most other channels do not do anything like this. if they do, they're very brief. I love the deep dive you provide.
I appreciate that!
An upside of hidden alliances is that it speeds things up a little bit for that phase of the game. There's less banter, but also less indecision amongst all the players holding each other up. That's not a huge issue in a 5-player game, but it does make an 8-player game much more viable!
I actually believe Odyssey is the best choice for a first expansion. It’s the big sampler platter. You can try out all of the variants and see which ones you like and then it shows you which other expansions have that variant. It’s also perfectly good for new players to learn the variants because the campaign curates the implementation.
The add ons to old variants though introduced some more complex cards/stations etc then the original expansions did.
Jack, I love how commonly I find your comments on every Cosmic video. I'm starting to suspect you're routinely searching the game on TH-cam just to find any scrap of content or opinions on the game, which is exactly what I've been doing for a couple years now lmao.
And thank you for bringing Odyssey into existence! I am really excited to play it, I just have to find some people now...
I agree Jack. If I introduced Cosmic to new players and they asked about the best first expansion to get, I'd say Odyssey for the amazing variety.
Many of the Odyssey variants I would not teach to new players, hell some of them I won't use period. And never would I throw a campaign mode on new players either.
Also I wouldn't want to advise people to spend nearly £50 on a "sampler" to see what they fancy. Would you pay the same for a sampler meat platter?
@@TheBrokenMeeple Your meat analogy is not really accurate, because this particular "sampler" includes a lot more than just the sampling of variants. For starters, there are 42 alien sheets in Odyssey compared to say, 20 in each of the first three expansions (so more than double you were getting), and significantly more alien sheets overall than any of the other expansions. Odyssey also has the highest number and highest percentage of green alert aliens, which are geared especially towards newer players. Thus, Odyssey is actually the best value expansion of all seven, just in terms of aliens. It's also the best value for many other factors. You are getting essentially three expansions in one for the price of just under two of the other expansions in most outlets. None of the variants are particularly complex. No more so than something like Pandemic Legacy (and in fact, probably significantly easier than season two of PL). Having taught this game and this expansion to a lot of new players, I can't report ever having someone unable to grok a single variant. Keep in mind, we're talking about someone buying an expansion. If a player is looking for an expansion, they are probably ready for more than what is in the base game. If you are looking to expand on Cosmic Encounter, Odyssey is a fantastic first expansion, because it's entirely modular, and includes a massive number of variants (many of which can be further expanded by the other expansions, allowing a player to focus on those they like best if they aren't going to pick them all up anyway).
This was a great idea for a video. Thanks, Luke, I really enjoyed this.
Appreciate the feedback thanks!
I recently played a game where we used a regular set of playing cards to allow a sixth player. Using numbered cards to represent the players, and picture cards for the wild/special destiny cards.
Nice idea! 👍
16:40 I'm confused by your example, I haven't played cosmic encounter yet, but I don't see anything in the rules about being able to offer players cards (or anything else) as an incentive for allying
Just ran a 5 player with rewards, hazards and tech. Rewards and hazards were really fun, but the tech still felt awkward even with all players being familiar with the game. The one thing I DO like about it, though, is it adds another layer of thought into the game by choosing whether to tie up ships to tech or combat. Kind of a cool mechanism!
Tech is more fiddly yes, though I find the hazard deck just a little arbitrary.
@@TheBrokenMeeple I love the hazard deck. It adds more zaniness and creates more interesting combinations which leads to fun stories.
Cosmic is all about the stories its games create, and the hazard deck has contributed quite a bit to my games in that regard.
can someone confirm if it includes the ''special ships'' from the old expansion?
Special ships?
@@TheBrokenMeeple yes the ''special'' ships from an old expansion. One fighter ship or something like that and a cargo ship
Never saw anything like that in afraid
@@TheBrokenMeeple its from cosmic dominion expansion the ''special ship'' variant. i wonder if this variant is included on the cosmic odyssey
Great review, very helpful.
You mentioned you didn't like hidden alliances because you don't get negotiations between players when trying to get allies. I didn't think you could trade cards unless it was when both players played negotiate cards. Did I miss something, this would certainly change things
Hey there, really handy stuff to watch and keep up the good work. Now I hope this makes sense but I think the biggest problem that always keeps cosmic encounter back above anything else is the group. You really need the right crowd for this game and its surprises me who actually likes this! I have taken this to games nights with people thinking it’s right up their ally and it’s fallen in a heap, where I have taken this to other places and had a blast with a crowd I didn’t expect it would work.
Cosmic encounter has certainly dropped for me as it just never has the group ready to play it and sift through all the bloat that's in it.
IMHO the rewards deck is a must, the base game is naked without it. It really gives an incentive to being a defensive ally. Especially considering there are few opportunities to add cards to your hand, this really helps balance the game.
I also love the hazards deck. CE embraces the chaos, and this deck only furthers that goal. I much rather play with hazards and wrenches than moons or space stations.
And why not get Odyssey right off? CE is best played at 5, and this expansion gives you all the extras it would take 3+ expansions to get.
What I do like the ‘campaign’ for is using those age cards to randomly select some variants to play if I’m playing with veterans. When you know the game and the variants well, it’s nice to have a way to quickly and randomly choose a setup.
What are your thoughts on Super Rewards? I just got Cosmic Odyssey as it was on sale. After slapping it in with everything else... phew... you were not lying. It is almost an overwhelming number of content. I do like the idea of using the expansion box to hold content that doesn't get used, as that is where I have put anything other than the stations, rewards and tech cards. I haven't tried the Evolution deck, but it will be the first module we throw in if we play this a lot at our board game retreat next weekend.
Honestly I just prefer to use anything to do with the rewards deck and leave it at that.
Did anyone else pause the video at 2:11 to belt out the rest of the song?
... Hello my rag time gal, send me a kiss by wire, honey my hearts on fire, if you refuse me, honey you'll lose me, then you'll be left alone, oh baby, telephone and tell me I'm your own!
Ha ha - I do love that scene! And you just made me sing the song out again!
I thought Cosmic Odyssey had a lot of good thing about it, but there was also a lot of lazily designed elements, poorly communicated rules, and some random things just added way too many things that you had to keep track of unexpectedly.
Lux was a poorly designed variant. That was the one that adds a resource, that you could either use to buy rewards or use your lux card's effect. On paper it seemed like a really fun mechanic. In reality, the best way to spend lux was always to buy rewards, at one lux per reward, if you were the only one who had lux. What happened, most of the time, when we played it, was that the offense, when they had lux in their regroup, was the _only_ one who had lux at the time (or they had 3 and the person they just successfully attacked had one). And that was their _opportunity_ to use the "everyone can buy for 1" declaration and they got 3 rewards. We found that it was _always_ better to do this than save it for your lux card's effect, and in reality, the lux card effects saw very little use. It was just a reward card-fest.
There are random cards that just add too many things to keep track of, and make the game chaotic to a fault. For example, there's a new reward card that says "you are now playing double alien variant". Imagine you get this when you are already playing with tech, or new space stations, or evolution, or some combination of these things. We try to limit the new variants that make you keep track of things, but a (usually Cosmic Odyssey) card can just come out of the blue and double the number of things you have to keep track of. It can make the game take twice as long and cannibalize your whole night. Another example is a particular evolution card (btw I love the evolution variant, except for this card) that, when you have 4 ships on it, lets you get a random flare card whenever someone plays a flare card. So imagine 4 people have 4 ships on it... now there's an insane amount of flare cards in circulation, and every time someone plays one, 3 other people have to go get one. It is unnecessarily overwhelming. In a game where there's already some danger of unnecessary bloat, cards like these shouldn't exist.
Maybe I am just dumb, but moons seem to be very ambiguously worded. It's not clear, quite often, when a moon gets used once in the game, or gets flipped over and has multiple uses. The rules seem to suggest they're one-time use. But some moons explicitly state that they get flipped over and have multiple uses. But other moons _don't_ say this, but have an effect that only really makes sense if they _do_ get flipped over and have multiple uses. So you sort of have to just ignore the rules and judge each one on a case-by-case basis. Then there are the "new permanent" hazards. There was already a permanent hazard type (orange banner) before these new ones were introduced, and when a second permanent hazard was drawn, it replaced the first one.. But this "permanent" one is a _different_ kind of permanent (yellow banner), and it's unclear how it interacts with old permanent.
I think CO adds a lot of new, great stuff. But the design of it was a little bit lazy, and the scenarios created by some cards were not very well thought out.
I agree with you, the first expansion HAS to be Incursion. It adds another player and the awesome rewards deck. And I think the SECOND expansion should definitely be Odyssey! It gives you SO much of practically everything, more aliens, more rewards, and every variant you could be interested in. And then if you ever need more, which sounds a little bit ridiculous, you know where to get more of your favourite mechanic!
But the first, definitely Incursion for those 6 player games. Just played one and it was chaotic, but I loved every minute.
6 is th max I would do, above that and it gets a bit unwieldly - though until I fix my Destiny deck I can't even do 6!
I am looking to get just the basic Cosmic Encounter, but can't find it anywhere :/
Have you tried ZATU games? or Kienda?
Me I’m one of those guys who buy the expansions just for the aliens and their flare cards, and pretty much nothing else. I play the main game but without the tech cards. Definitely buying dominion just so I can piss all my friends off by playing as the bride.
Do the new translucent stack well with the old solid ships?
Yes they stack fine.
Thank you! Great video and a great video series concept. Love it.
Really wish they would just sell aliens from each pack. Our group has little interest in making cosmic more complicated (we use base, minus tech, with rewards deck) but the aliens from each expansion would be great.
Might I ask how your storage situation is? I'm planning to get all the expansions eventually. I see you have the broken token insert, is that enough to store all the aliens and base game cards, alien tokens, flares, etc; and the Odyssey box for all the variant tokens and cards? Is that enough? Or will I need to invest in a box?
An eighth expansion is planned, so do you think the box would still fit even more, with the broken token insert?
The insert was enough up to a point. But a lot of the newest expansion stuff and a bunch of aliens have to sit in the Odyssey box. So I need both currently. I'm not interested in another expansion!
Eight expansion? Where can I get the info on that? I've thought Odyssey is the last CE expansion.
@@timothystevano2994 yeah, I guess on the bgg forums, someone (it might've been Jack Reda-the designer of Cosmic Odyssey) said that they had some leftover aliens and variants that they planned to put into an 8th expansion.
Man, I can find Cosmic Incursion expansions that is at a reasonable price 😭 any advice?
Search bring and buys or ask on Facebook if anyone has a copy with expansions included that they would sell cheapo.
Thanks for the video, is the campaign replayable, and do you keep the same alien power each time?
Repayable yes.
Hopefully, they will find a way to break out some of the items from Cosmic Odyssey into separate packages. I like the idea of the evolution cards but the rest are not my cup of tea,
Not me being a complexity pervert dreaming of training/tricking others into playing everything all at the same time
Hey duke which is your favorite racing board game
Probably Snow Tails or Downforce
Does that insert fit everything or up to Dominion only?
It won't fit everything no, but I got all the small box content in it I believe with some box lift.
But Cosmic Conflict has arguably the best set of Aliens.
Cosmic Storm has the worst set of Aliens, most of them are either Aliens that just don't work or rip-offs of already published Aliens.
The Moons variant was made so you can add only the type of moons you like and not the others. I removed the cheese moons from my copy of the game.
Now do memoir 44
Don't even own the base.
Yeah... sponsored video that encourages you to buy cosmic storm before a lot of other much better expansions... and you wonder why when storm is universally credited as the worst expansion out there and permanently in bargain bins... steeply discounted...
FFG business model is annoying. I'd rather be able to buy extra player sets, individual feature expansions and alien packs separately.
This board game has the worst expansions in any I have played. The additions are so stupid and make a smooth game too messy. I just get Incursion and never lost a second of sleep longing for any other one
They should have just made really small pack expansions with some extra races or a few cards here and there to add to decks. really keeping it small
They have milked it to death now!