Get your league on tonight!

It's Monday — and that means it's Cosmic Encounter Online league time! Tonight's aliens in the Alphabetical Aliens league: Sapient, Sorcerer, Trader, Tripler.

Set those alarms: tonight, 8E/5P.

Who will be king of the Cosmic mountain?

Things are still very, very close at the ongoing Alphabetical Aliens league at Cosmic Encounter, where six players have at least two wins, but only one has at least three. The latest standings, heading into tonight's action, can be found here.

Interested parties should also note that a new qualifying procedure is in place. Rather than set an arbitrary number of minimum games played to be eligible for the finals, the number will be determined by computing an average number of games played for all players. This makes much more sense, and it will allow a greater degree of flexibility (busy leagues will have a higher minimum-games-played number than less-busy leagues, but both will be using a valid method to determine the finalists). I hope this new qualifying procedure remains in place for all future leagues.

Alien strategy series submissions report

(Updated: Monday, 6/29)

Here's your new-and-improved submissions list for our ongoing alien strategy series. It's even conveniently color-coded:

• Soothing blue: submitted and posted;
• Soothing yellow: a submission has been received and will be posted soon-ish;
• Soothing red: I've been asked to reserve this alien (or, possibly, plan to write it up myself).

CE alien survey #26: FODDER

First appearance: Fantasy Flight Games.

Plain-English power: Play more attack cards under the value of your opponent’s card.

Loved by: People with a lot of lousy cards in their hands, Loser and Anti-Matter.

Loathed by: Aliens that like players who have a lot of cards in their hands, and anyone hoping to squeak by with a mid-range win (oh, and Spiff probably doesn’t like this cat).

Three ways to win as Fodder:

1. Play a low attack card, but not necessarily your lowest. You may be able to win the encounter with the card you just played, or at worst only one or two attack cards extra.
2. Use your negotiates in encounters you can afford to lose, especially against an opponent with lots of cards to choose from. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you have to play a negotiate when you don’t want to.
3. Be careful about having too many allies. Chances are good you can win some encounters alone if you have a lot of low and mid-range cards, especially when you know your opponent hasn’t invited a lot of players to his side.

Three ways to win against Fodder:

1. Be careful about playing attack 23 and 30. It’s easy for Fodder to stack up cards from his hand under those totals. Attack 40 is going to be a lot harder for him to match.
2. Pay attention to when Fodder is low on encounter cards. If he hasn’t drawn a new hand when you encounter each other, he probably doesn’t have much he can do. Go ahead and play for the big win.
3. A plethora of allies can make up the difference between your attack totals — just watch out for giving certain players too many gains.

At CE Online? No.

Anything else? This power was created by Jack Reda! Originally it was mandatory for Fodder to play his lowest card initially. FFG developer Kevin Wilson wisely decided that wasn’t really necessary.

— Submitted by Jack Reda

Bill leads at league; fix suspected

The ongoing Cosmic Encounter Online league is now halfway through the alphabet, with the standings still very tight.

(And, yes, another update will be coming soon; the fifth league session was scheduled for Monday night)

2032 CE world champion says "Happy Father's Day"

Here's wishing a happy dad's day to all of us who have little aliens at home.

(Check out the cool bib!)

A nice Cosmic shout-out from Bruno

I mentioned earlier that I was looking forward to Bruno Faidutti's upcoming Ad Astra boardgame, having long ago discovered that I generally enjoy his take on asymmetrical or variable-powers games (and thinking that AA had a bit of a Cosmic Encounter feel to it, too).

So I ended up with a pretty big smile today after reading Fantasy Flight Games' first preview of the game. In addition to discussing the basic engine of the game — which appears to be more Settlers than Cosmic — the article closes with the following statement from Bruno:

In the past twenty years, the board game I’ve played most is certainly Cosmic Encounter.

Booyah! Score another point for CE's legendary influence.

Monday league back to Monday-ing

After a couple of false-starts, the ongoing Alphabetical Aliens league at Cosmic Encounter Online completed its second session last week and is poised for another go-'round tomorrow, June 8. As a reminder: the new league is weekly and runs on Mondays.

Here's your early leaderboard:

• Two wins: Bill, Subby;
  
• One win: Amatecon, AP, Mesmer69, Zxzxi.
  

More detailed standings will be posted once a few more games are completed.