Cosmic Conquest Card Game Review
Sometimes you just don’t want an hour set up and rules teach. Sometimes you don’t want to have to watch a video in preparation before you get to play a game at the end of the week with friends. Sometimes it starts to dawn on you that maybe you’re just one of these gamers that likes to finish a game in a session instead of rushing the last two rounds while the community care taker looks on, tutting and checking their watch. Cosmic Conquest aims to provide you with a small slice of memory game fun in a very small box and still leave you with enough time to have dessert afterwards.
We’re looking at a hidden roles here, with four in total, humans, robots, aliens and the Harmonium. The first three looking to dominate a system of nine planets while the last one is looking to keep peace in the galaxy by making sure that no one else wins. If this is all sounding like an epic space opera ready to be played out through intrigue and manoeuvres and battles then you’re right, as long as you’re observing it the same way that an astronomer views a star from a distance. You’re seeing the overall plays but not seeing the detail in the conflict that occurs, almost clinical and sterile in nature. Commands are made and casualties mount up and we never see the carnage involved. The system of nine cards is laid out before you in a circle of planets ready for you to be playing cards onto.
Gameplay is simple, but is overall quite clever. Your role is kept hidden from other players but you all draw from the same deck which contains a mixture of Humans, Robots and Aliens plus a few other choice effect cards that prevent or cause additional destruction. You’ll start with two cards in your hand and on your turn you’ll play one of them face up on one of the nine planets, and then play passes onto the next player. Your card only resolves straight away if you are playing a vapourise card, otherwise it sits there until the deck is exhausted and the you move on to round scoring.
Once all cards are played then each of the planets are resolved, with the total for each faction calculated and the winner placed on top of the pile, unless there is a draw and the Harmonium wins with peace and calm, and claims that for its own. The Harmonium faction adds a different twist which I appreciate, I don’t remember playing a game where you win by making sure everyone else ties, which is different and refreshing. Though for player count, this really is the faction that ideally wants a fully active four player to get the most out of it. You then have the choice to keep everyone as the same faction, or if you want to, mix it up for the next rounds to keep everyone guessing. Though I like the idea of everyone knowing what everyone else is aiming for, as that is when the laser knives come out and things take a turn for the aggressive.
Cosmic Conquest is forcing a memory game on you, as you try remember which planets have which cards played on them and which planets you want to try to dominate to make sure you’re scoring the end of game points. Regardless of the number of players, the full deck is always in play, so even at lower player counts, there is a chance that factions that neither player control might win a planet for that round. It is like dealing with a dummy player that only sits around to gather up the points at the end, and you need to take into account on your turn. It highlights again that Cosmic conquest is one of those games that benefits from the full rota of four players, and it’s going to be that game that you either start the evening off with or end it on once you’ve demolished your heavier cardboard main course.
Cosmic Conquest is added to the pile of games where you’ll suggest playing when you’ve got a spare thirty minutes to kill. In its favour, it doesn’t require a huge amount of time to learn, and it has those that want to try to take their time to plan and remember and play are going to get something out of it just as much as the play and hope crowd. It’s small enough to be played on a coffee table and its design is both clear and easy to understand. Cosmic Competency in a little box that is going to being some smiles, creating moments at the table where you trounce other players, watching there invasion plans amount to nothing, or you’re sitting back grinning as the Harmonium, as everyone has lost because they ended up giving peace a chance.
You can find out more by visiting https://www.curiouscats.uk/products/cosmic-conquest-a-fast-paced-memory-and-strategy-card-game
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