Cosmic Incursion - In Stores Now Hot

ME WANT!!!

I was hoping for a pre-holiday release date.

Most excellent. ;)

Lou Reed is wrong. There is Christmas in February.

Dibs!

Any source for this date? I can't find it on FFG's site. Blogs are citing boardgamenews, but BGN itself doesn't cite anything but that preview...I don't see any date on the preview.

This is the official FFG date, it was on the press release that the sent me.

Needless to say, this is as good as bought.

Ahh.

I was hoping I could have this by New Year's Eve (yay for drunken gaming), but the basic game will still do nicely. :)

So does anyone have this in their hands yet? I need the 6th player.

I introduced 4 non-gamers to Cosmic a few weeks ago after a long night of drinking. I was ready to crash but my friends wanted to play a game. They said they wanted to try something new so I broke it out and dumbed it down just a touch. Huge hit and we played a second game immediately after the first.
I never thought it had much crossover appeal as it's pretty gamey but everyone loved it.

Any experience with Incursion being misprinted? I think folks are complaining that the alien cards aren't the same size as the base game and that the reward cards have slightly different colors than the encounter cards.

Grabbed this last Friday and hope to get it on the table tonight. Looks like it adds some fun things.

Beware that some of the folks at BGG are reporting production issues.

1. The destiny deck is mismatched colors on the back. Mine was not bad enough for me to notice unless i looked at 2 cards side by side, but if you play with a bunch of assholes then sleeve these cards. (23 sleeves needed)

2. The race sheets are slightly larger than the old ones. This is more noticeable and again if the people you play with are assholes and can not be trusted to randomly pick then you will have to use the flare cards to pick.

other than that it looks like a lot of fun. I am happy to see the kickers added and I like the idea of the separate deck for rewards. Oh and a 6th player to add to the mess.

-M

I feel like a doofus for not getting this yet as it's one of the rare board game things I'm willing to drop some bucks on without a second thought...but hearing that it's misprinted I might just wait for a new batch to roll out.

Sounds awesome though, can't wait to get that sixth player in there.

Jack, the rewards cards have intentionally different backs:

The destiny mismatch shouldn't be a problem because you can only see the top card of the deck - nothing to compare it to side-by-side. If your eyes are that good you could always draw from the bottom.

I couldn't care less if the new alien cards are half a micrometer bigger.

I'm just hoping the backs of the new flares aren't easily distinguishable from the old cards. Would suck if you couldn't help but know which of my cards are flares.

I've heard the board has a Warp!

(hah! See what I did there?)

The alien card size thing is slightly troubling. FFG had this problem with their Warhammer Invasion cards too and it's fairly annoying in W:I. But you don't have to shuffle the Alien cards so who gives a shit about it in CE.

Reincarnator

Not only that, but who gives a shit about anything else having slightly different colored backs? Fuck, publishers used to do that_all_the_time. Anyone remember the disparity in color between the 2nd ed. Talisman expansions' adventure cards? You always knew when you were about to run into something not from the base game, but you still didn't know what exactly, just that it wasn't in the original game.

Difference is that if the Flares have noticably different backs, then not only do you know that it's not from the base game, you know it's a usually highly-desirable FLARE when you're picking compensation.

It's called a table. Hold your cards under it while someone's drawing from your hand.

Sax is talking about trying to riffle-shuffle CCG cards of mismatched sizes. I'd pay money to watch someone do that with the big Alien cards.

As for poor ol Reincarnator, he can do what he's always done. Mix em up and turn the deck over. A tiny bit of size discrepancy there means nothing.

The Flare and Destiny is a bigger deal, so I hope these aren't too far off. Drawing from the bottom of the Destiny Deck will work, but the Flares would be a pain in the ass.

Yep, that's what I was talking about Not Sure. You have to riffle shuffle LCG cards all the time so it is a nuisance.

Option A:

Option B: Get the fucking quality control on the card sizes right, just like every company that ever did CCGs and even Rio Grande Games doesn't have problems with their Dominion cards

Sorry, now every time you draw compensation from someone's hand you've gotta get a screen and put your hand underneath the screen? That's a pain in the ass.

My biggest gripe with this expansion is the sixth player. There's no good reason why, at $60, it wasn't in the game to begin with. It's not like there was a whole lot of stuff in there relative to what's in FFGs other $60 titles, so I'm sure the sixth player was a deliberate hold back to pad out the first expansion. That's pretty lame, and by no means unique to FFG.

Really, it amazes me how board gamers balk at getting nickle & dimed by collectible and miniatures games, but don't really have a problem with this kind of bullshit, which is just as sleazy if you ask me.

Option B: Get the fucking quality control on the card sizes right, just like every company that ever did CCGs and even Rio Grande Games doesn't have problems with their Dominion cards

Hey, it would be nice, wouldn't it? Too bad it didn't happen, but it's not going to stop me from getting the expansion, or even slightly lessen my enjoyment of it I'm sure.

Sorry, now every time you draw compensation from someone's hand you've gotta get a screen and put your hand underneath the screen? That's a pain in the ass.

Give me a break, man. It's not that big a pain in the ass. You can't just not keep your cards fanned out so everyone can see the backs, or maybe put your free hand over the top of them? Is that really such a chore?

And "every time you draw compensation" makes it sound like this happens every turn. It doesn't. I guess it's less convenient to draw under the table, but come on.

Sorry, I'm not drawing under a table, what a pain in the ass.
Compensation is pretty common in the games I play.
Alien sizes don't worry me as you should be picking your races via flare cards anyway. Reanimator just turns his head when he picks or something, it's not often enough to worry about.
The cards however could be a deal breaker for me.

Sorry, I'm not drawing under a table, what a pain in the ass.

Fine, then just cover them up with your hand so only the white border is showing when somebody draws compensation, or mix them up and have the other guy turn his head, or shuffle your hand and deal them from the bottom.

Weepin' Jesus, none of these things are even remotely difficult to do.

Got my set today. The new flare backs look identical to me, the destiny backs look very slightly different if you hold them side by side in good lighting and look very closely...I can't imagine anyone telling the difference during play.

Thanks Peon! Now to find enough extra to qualify for free shipping....

Got my Cosmic Incursion today, all this shit is SUCH a non-issue. No difference between the flare backs, destiny backs don't look different, the only mildly annoying thing is the alien sheets being a slightly (but definitely noticably) different size. But hell, Last Night on Earth has done that with the CARDS, which is much more egregious offense, and I just dealt with it.

So everyone should just buy it now, fuck waiting until kinks are ironed out, they probably won't ever be and you probably won't ever care.

I got my CI yesterday, and I think this shit IS an issue. I posted side-by-side pics over at TOS, if you're curious. Please post yours for comparison, as maybe it's quite variable set to set, and I'd really like to know. Anyway, flare backs are more yellow than the base cards, and playing normally (that is, fanning your cards out when someone is drawing one) it's obvious which are from CI (to me, and to my wife who had no interest in this--shocking--and didn't even have to try to spot the "different" card). Want a flare? Want to avoid one?

Destiny is more "lavender" than base set. Probably just deal off the bottom, so not a huge deal, but if the top card is from CI, that's again info you should not have.

Big deal? I guess not, I'm still going to play it. But it is lame, and unprofessional, and noticeable. And I haven't seen this color issue with other FFG game expansions, at least that I can recall.

Just sleeve the cards -- they get so much play, sleeving actually makes sense and it fixes the color problem.

Mine came in the mail today.

I have zero problems with the printing in this expansion. I have pretty good color vision and this is what I see holding the cards up to my halogen desk lamp:

Destiny: totally indistinguishable.

Flares: Tiniest of imperfections. The black isn't quite as black, and the resolution of the printing doesn't seem as high, so the tiny yellow starfields are a bit smudgier on the new cards. Under normal light I'd be hard pressed to tell these apart.

Alien Powers: Worst of the batch, still totally acceptable. The yellow on the new cards is not as dark as the originals. They're cut about half a millimeter longer and wider than the originals. You'd have to know what you're looking for to spot this, and even then your reward is to know that a particular card came from a set of 20 or a set of 50. Congratulations, sharp-eyes. Since we only randomize these for dealing powers in newbie games, I'm not too concerned.

If I were seriously paranoid, I'd fan my hand to cover the yellow corners as much as possible, but I really don't foresee any troubles. I'm extremely happy, especially with the Destiny cards. One of my regulars is looking forward to playing Orange.

I realize my anecdotes don't meant there aren't any printing problems out there, but my set is near-perfect aside from the miscuts.

@Not Sure: do you know if the base set has had more than one printing? I'm wondering if there are color differences between printings of the base set rather than in the one print run of CI. Or maybe it's a combination of both, but...would be nice to know. I'd buy the base set all over again (if there was some way to tell which print run it was from) and gift my "bad" one, if the colors match.

I got my copy the other day, and while there are some slight variations, overall it's nothing that I'm too worried about. There are some slight differences on cards, but it's more noticeable on the faces of the cards rather than the backs. The new alien sheets are a teeny bit bigger, but it really isn't a very big deal.

Also, that box is handy for storing all the alien power sheets, if you've pitched the insert in the big box.

The only thing that really stuck out to me is some bleeding from the card backs to the fronts on the rewards deck (giving the card faces a dirty look) and my alien race sheets are massively curving/warping. I'm pretty pleased overall, though.

I took this for a spin last night, and the component differences had precisely zero impact on gameplay, aside from the fact that the new cards are in much better condition than the old ones.