Sometime in the early 1970s, a group of guys up in Cape Cod put together a game that they thought would be a negotiation and conflict game kind of like DIPLOMACY but a little more structured and shorter and with a science fiction theme.

They also hit on an absolutely brilliant idea that has become one of the cornerstone developments in hobby game design- each player would represent a different alien race with a special ability allowing them to break one or more of the rules games to their advantage. Richard Garfield was heavily influenced by this game when he was designing MAGIC: THE GATHERING and countless other designers before and after him have- whether they realize it or not- taken something from this game, one of the most significant and seminal designs in the history of hobby gaming.

The game is COSMIC ENCOUNTER, and unlike most games I’ve covered in these installments of Games From The Crypt you can’t buy it not because it’s hopelessly out of print and only available if you survive some high-dollar EBay gun down, but because it actually hasn’t been released as of this writing It looks like there’s been another resurrection down in the Game Crypt: COSMIC ENCOUNTER is back in print.

Strangely, those words seem almost anticlimactic to me. I always knew it would be back in print again even though it has been eight years since the previous edition was on shelves. It has been one of the more frequently reprinted games in the hobby over the years since its original release in the same year that STAR WARS first screened in cinemas. Yet copies of that original EON edition have fetched hundreds of dollars at EBay auctions (particularly when bundled with at least some of its nine expansions) while the mid-1980s Games Workshop and West End Games versions along with the early 1990s Mayfair edition have also sold for ridiculous prices.

The most recent Avalon Hill edition was widely panned by many fans who felt that version was too stripped down despite some amazing production work but at least it was still available through most of the early years of the millennium. And on top of all of this, the game has been printed in several languages and there has even been a fairly successful online edition run by one of the original designers, Peter Olotka. I’ve personally owned, at this point, three different editions of the game and it’s been some twenty years since the first time I played it.

Whether or not you’ve actually played the game, owned it, or even know about it in the first place it’s been around in one form or another almost literally throughout the lifespan of the board gaming hobby as we know it- to put it in perspective, the game is three years younger than DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS even though it was being developed as early as 1972. It may have not received the mainstream success and acknowledgement that D&D has, but its influence and effect is almost as important.

The game was nearly published by Parker Brothers in the early ‘70s but even back then, when the company was more willing to take chances and the mainstream board game market wasn’t completely reliant on a handful of familiar titles and licensed themes, the game was probably a little too maverick and revolutionary for a mainstream audience. I can only imagine that in some alternate universe there is a SCOOBY DOO themed edition of COSMIC.

It’s almost kind of strange though, to witness even today how accessible and strikingly modern COSMIC’s design remains. There’s no reason that a larger audience outside of the hobby could not immediately grasp and completely apprehend what the game is about, what they do in it, and how they win it.

It’s incredibly simple on paper. Each turn, a player draws a destiny card (or token, depending on the version you’re playing). This tells them which system they have to attack. So they look at that particular system, which contains five planets, and decide which one they want to invade. They round up their ships (which might be cardboard dots or plastic ships) and try to talk other players into helping them invade so that the winners can share the spoils of a colony on the successfully invaded planet. The defender- who hopefully has a decent stack of ships on the planet- tries to persuade the players to join his side for compensation rewards- the return of destroyed ships, cards, or promises.

Once negotiations are settled, both sides play an encounter card which is usually a number but it could be a Negotiation card. If one player plays a Negotiation card and the other a number, then the would-be diplomat gets to claim compensation in the form of cards for each lost ship. If both players attempt negotiations, then a deal must be struck involving cards, colonies, and unenforceable promises or both sides lose three ships. Total all that up and you have a winner. The first player to get five colonies outside of their home system by fair means or foul wins the game.