Thursday, August 13, 2009

My official CE: Incursion predictions

I figure we're almost exactly 24 hours from the expected announcement of the first Cosmic Encounter expansion — see post below — so here's a quick guess at what we'll be seeing:

Title: Cosmic Encounter: Incursion.
Size: No more than half the size of the big CE box. Thinner, like one of the Lords of the Rings expansions.
New aliens: 20 to 25.
New mechanics: Hazards is a definite, as its already mentioned in the original CE rulebook. Rules and pieces for a sixth player will be added. I also expect to see one totally new mechanic (much like Tech was completely new in the original edition).
Price: Either $29 or $39, depending on how much of the new stuff is printed on heavy stock.

13 comments:

Adam said...

Well, that is basically my guess, too, though I have fingers crossed that at least one of the ship-less aliens (Zilch and Shark) will appear officially. Blank cards would be nice, too.

I pretty much just want more aliens, really, and for the most part that is what I expect. 20-25 aliens, at least one extra player set, hazards, and maybe some random new stuff on the side.

Big Head Zach said...

I'll go out on a pretty secure limb and guess that Cryo will be one of the aliens in the expansion. Just got a hunch about that one.

Unknown said...

Though I had submitted more of my powers, I wasn't notified of any being used for this expansion. :( They may yet being adding someone's homemade, but it's a given they're adding Eon powers that were not in the Fantasy Flight set. A couple of new powers based on Technology would be logical.

I do hope they are adding Lucre. It needs to be more useful than Eon but less clunky than Mayfair. Ideally, keep the Eon rules but alloy Mayfair options such as buying Flares from the unused Flare deck and discarding cards. 2 Lucre each should suffice.

I doubt Moons are in it. Technology already provides the same game effect niche, but maybe in a 3rd expansion ...

If the Hazard cards are anything like from Matt Stone's set, I'm not going to like it. I've played with them and found they add nothing to the game. They only add frustration, not funness.

TheDukester said...

I don't think Hazards are going to be like **anybody's** set. My instinct is that Kevin W. has something definite in mind that's mostly of his own devising.

Lucre and/or Moons is another interesting subject. My prediction is that neither will be making any sort of appearance.

Big Head Zach said...

From what I've seen of both Lucre and Moons, having read about but played neither, Lucre would extend the game length, and moons just make things way too chaotic (and don't get me started about the Cheese Moons...bleh).

Now, I'm all for variants which add structure to the game (currently reading the Dune boardgame rules, and Jack Reda's Cosmic Dune variant)...resource gathering as a mechanic interests me.

As for alternatives for moons, there's a discussion thread on BGG about having planets with special features (I'd call them "ploons"), that get randomly assigned to players at game start - and while some of them seemed goofy and off-putting, the spirit of the idea seems fun and interesting.

There's also a completely unserious variant that popped in my head over last week when I was playing with a group of friends in TN that I had shown the game a month before - in the time I was away, they had successfully acquired additional followers to the Cosmic cult, including their 10-year-old son. He's a bit scatterbrained and doesn't really know the rules himself, but he likes to bring his toy dinosaurs/robots/army figures to the table and pretend to ally with players. So rather than shoo him away and hurt his feelings, his father and I started ruminating on a "Children's Toys" variant which gives different modifiers to the game based on what kind of toys are available. Silly, random, but makes for a more friendly atmosphere when you got ankle-biters running around while you're trying to game.

(Once I have something concrete, I'll post it to BGG somewhere.)

Anonymous said...

I wouldn't be suprised if the big Kevin Wilson-related announcement was "The Sea of Blood" for Descent. (You know, one of Kevin Wilson's other game lines) Odds are good that he has been up to his neck in *that* for a while. I have observed anecdotally that FFG seems to be trying to shorten the spacing between announcing a game & releasing it.

I gather from some comments here an there that there are folks under NDAs that prevent them from talking about the next expansion but that it *is* coming. So I'm predicting no announcement at Gencon, but probably something on the website in time for Thanksgiving.

TheDukester said...

Of course it's coming, Anonymous (please make up a user ID next time).

Both Kevin and Peter Olotka have discussed the expansion OPENLY on very public websites. That's not the issue. The timing is the concern here, and, as mentioned in the post below this one, I'd be shocked if FFG is having this type of "state of FFG" address and not planning on mentioning it. Unless it's so far back on the production schedule that's it not worthing mentioning; I suppose that's always a possibility.

We'll know soon enough. The FFG seminar is literally happening as I type this.

Unknown said...

Speaking of toys ...

Matt Stone's set as a power called Godzilla that allows you to move a marke rof some kind around all the planets based upon an attack card you discard. What ever planet it lands next to, all tokens on it go to the warp. At one point there was an actual Godzilla toy used for the marker.

The Warp said...

Well, I was at GenCon, and I can attest to no CE news, though I did get to play it with Kevin and Ryan Barger (one of the artists for CE) and it seems like there's plenty of anticipation for CI.

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