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Nothing gets the noise levels rising and people involved more than a game of Cosmic Encounter. With hundreds of aliens, numerous expansions and a really fluid, interactive rule set, every game is a laugh out loud barrage of emotion. My boys love it, I love it and we have decided to round up our top ten aliens in Cosmic Encounter. While we don’t have all the expansions we have over 200 aliens and our favourites may differ from yours but that is what is great about Cosmic, every alien is great in a certain situation and people enjoy different things.
My boys just like to screw each other over, I like to keep mine a secret as long as possible and others like different win conditions. Here is a list of our uncanny favourite’s. Bear in mind this is a group list, all aliens are great in certain situations and this was an incredibly hard list to produce. Each alien also changes when you have its super flair ability. Cosmic Encounter is such a great game, there is so much variety and so many aliens to choose from. This was a very large task to take on but a very enjoyable one.
Top 10 Cosmic Encounter Aliens
10) - Pentaform - Cosmic Dominion Expansion
This alien is just bonkers. It throws a game that is already insane into complete disarray. You are technically five aliens and you evolve or devolve between them as you increase or decrease your foreign colonies. It can be powerful, weak, useless or amazing. Sometimes all at the same time. It even has players giving you colonies or taking them off you to make sure you are currently in a weaker stage of your evolution. It's a really fun alien to play.
9) - Disease - Cosmic Incursion Expansion
Disease has the ability to spread through other players home galaxies. The power is fun, easy to play and watching your ships ooze across other players galaxies is brilliant. Also, the power does something else that goes unnoticed. In our house, for some reason, players rarely target foreign colonies on their home systems, they just want more points. When Disease is in play, due to his nature they normally try and get rid of him quick. This alien really changes the dynamics of the game and I love playing him.
8) - Masochist - Cosmic Encounter Base Game
I love aliens that have new win conditions and I love playing Masochist. He wins if he loses all ships. It's quite hard to do but it is so much fun. You go into every fight just trying to lose. You go in swinging fists without worrying about the consequences. Plus, everyone else who is trying to win battles now has to think twice when fighting you. Masochist, in my opinion, is one of the most fun aliens to play in the whole game, even though you are trying to lose.
7) - Symbiote - Cosmic Incursion Expansion
One of my boy’s favourites. He just loves having twice the amount of ships as everyone else. Having double the about of ships makes losing them less worrying and you can throw them around willy-nilly. Being able to lord over the rest of the players with double their ship number certainly makes you look more powerful, even though I think it's a bit artificial. There are far more powerful aliens, in my opinion.
6) - Pacifist - Cosmic Encounter Base Game
Pacifist is not very powerful, at least on the surface. What you get though is the ability to win battles by playing negotiate cards. If you are someone like me, who time and time again ends up with a handful of the stupid things, this alien will, quite often, win you the game. Pair this with some funny shenanigans of bluffing you have a negotiate card so other players play them and you have a hilarious, killing machine. Even though he is called Pacifist, which is weird.
5) - Oracle - Cosmic Encounter Base Game
This is a strange one, not an extremely powerful ability but its ability to help first-time players and players is really helpful. Players who are overwhelmed by this constantly shifting madness that is Cosmic Encounter will really be guided into the game more smoothly by being able to see what cards their opponent is playing. My other half never truly ‘got’ Cosmic Encounter until she played the Oracle. Now she loves it, so while the Oracle is not that powerful, it is a good starting point for new players. Cosmic is, after all, a tricky beast to learn to play.
4) - Saboteur - Cosmic Conflict Expansion
Another choice from my boys, the ability to booby trap each other is too good to leave out of the top ten. Your ability to trap players, bluff and mess with their minds is both funny and quite powerful if used correctly. Not one of my favourites but my boys love this one.
3) - Leviathan - Cosmic Incursion Expansion
This alien is one of my favourites. It's not even got that great a power I just love the look of my boy’s faces when I turn over their destiny card. Leviathan lets you send a planet into battle. Yes, you heard that right, a planet! It adds 20 to the battle so it just scares everyone off. Brilliant!
2) - Void - Cosmic Encounter Base Game
My youngest boy loves Void. The ability to completely remove ships from the game, especially his brothers was always hilarious. There was shouting, arguing and dodgy deals to try and stop your ships from being destroyed forever.
1) - Virus - Cosmic Encounter Base Game
In a couple of games we had to test some of the chosen aliens, it seems Virus came out, easily, as the overall winner. The ability to multiply your number of ships in the encounter instead of adding them is so powerful. My oldest lad was Virus in the last game we played and most of the time, I did not even want to fight him. Haha, good times.
Honourable mentions -
Squee - Cute and deadly.
Zombie - Basically immortal.
Joker - Can change card values.
Dictator - Forcing three-way negotiations is really funny.
Gambler - Who doesn’t like a money-free gamble?
Loser - Turns the game on its head.
Genius - Alternate winning condition, a lot of fun to play.
Arcade - Another alternate win condition, I do love those aliens, they keep the game very fresh.
Healer - Returns other players ships, good for making deals.
Bride - One of the most hilarious aliens in the game. Marry your opponents, make them do what you want, then divorce them and take half of their cards as alimony. Splendid.
Warrior - Level up with XP, like a video game. Quite fun to play.
Explorer - Find new planets and add extra ships for your exploration exploits.
Macron - Four times more powerful ships, simple yet powerful.
Right, that is enough Cosmic talk for one day. Doing this feature really showed me how good a game Cosmic Encounter is. It still stands the test of time and there is no game like it.