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poltr1So, I returned to Epic Loot Games in Centerville for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
filkertom's house concert this evening. It was a great show. I got to forget my troubles for a few hours.
During the break between the two sets, I looked around at the games they had available for sale at the store. Naturally, they had a lot of the current edition (4.0?) of the Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks. I used to play D & D in high school. But there were people in the games club that didn't want me involved in their games. Mark, Richard E, and Bob were all juniors, and Richard R was a sophomore. I was a freshman. But Ed, a senior, didn't let that stop him from having me in his D & D game. (Thanks Ed!)
There was another game I played back then, along with sisters Sharon and Karen, and a few other folks in our group: Cosmic Encounter. It was on one of the out-of-the-way shelves at the store.
For those of you who have never played the game, each person has control of a star system, and try to take over planets in other player's star system, based on the number of tokens plus a numeric attack card. Each person also had a unique "alien power" card, which allowed them to bend the rules in their favor. Example: The Macron's tokens had 4 times the strength of anyone else's tokens; the Chronos can replay challenges; the Vulch can pick up played and discarded Edict cards.
It was a very spirited game. We'd play after school, during lunch, or whenever we could get together during the day. We even came up with our own rule variants. Since we had 4 players (the maximum number that could play with the original version), and there were only 15 aliens in the original game, we added a 16th power, drawn at random at the beginning of the game, and had a table of "double powers" for use if a player had two of the same alien power. I'll have to look through my paper files to find that list. We also added cards to the deck.
In the summer of 1978, I bought my own copy of the game. This was the second printing of the original Eon Products version of the game. (The game designers founded their own publishing company to produce the game -- unique for its time.) Over the next few years, I bought the expansion sets -- #1 added 10 aliens and a 5th player; #2 added 10 more aliens and a 6th player, etc. I ended up getting all 9 expansion sets.
I also have a set of correspondence between myself and Jack Kittredge, one of the game designers, who offered feedback to our suggested enhancements.
The game has since gone through several versions and publishers. The current version, released in 2008, has been published by Fantasy Flight Games, and costs around $60. (Here's a link.)
I haven't played the game in many years. If I could round up some people to play, I think I'd have a lot of fun with it. I'd probably use catch-phrases from other games and science fiction programs, like "Exterminate! Exterminate!" every time the Void won and losing tokens were removed from play, instead of going into "the warp", or "All your base are belong to us" when a player loses their last home base.
filkertom's house concert this evening. It was a great show. I got to forget my troubles for a few hours.During the break between the two sets, I looked around at the games they had available for sale at the store. Naturally, they had a lot of the current edition (4.0?) of the Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks. I used to play D & D in high school. But there were people in the games club that didn't want me involved in their games. Mark, Richard E, and Bob were all juniors, and Richard R was a sophomore. I was a freshman. But Ed, a senior, didn't let that stop him from having me in his D & D game. (Thanks Ed!)
There was another game I played back then, along with sisters Sharon and Karen, and a few other folks in our group: Cosmic Encounter. It was on one of the out-of-the-way shelves at the store.
For those of you who have never played the game, each person has control of a star system, and try to take over planets in other player's star system, based on the number of tokens plus a numeric attack card. Each person also had a unique "alien power" card, which allowed them to bend the rules in their favor. Example: The Macron's tokens had 4 times the strength of anyone else's tokens; the Chronos can replay challenges; the Vulch can pick up played and discarded Edict cards.
It was a very spirited game. We'd play after school, during lunch, or whenever we could get together during the day. We even came up with our own rule variants. Since we had 4 players (the maximum number that could play with the original version), and there were only 15 aliens in the original game, we added a 16th power, drawn at random at the beginning of the game, and had a table of "double powers" for use if a player had two of the same alien power. I'll have to look through my paper files to find that list. We also added cards to the deck.
In the summer of 1978, I bought my own copy of the game. This was the second printing of the original Eon Products version of the game. (The game designers founded their own publishing company to produce the game -- unique for its time.) Over the next few years, I bought the expansion sets -- #1 added 10 aliens and a 5th player; #2 added 10 more aliens and a 6th player, etc. I ended up getting all 9 expansion sets.
I also have a set of correspondence between myself and Jack Kittredge, one of the game designers, who offered feedback to our suggested enhancements.
The game has since gone through several versions and publishers. The current version, released in 2008, has been published by Fantasy Flight Games, and costs around $60. (Here's a link.)
I haven't played the game in many years. If I could round up some people to play, I think I'd have a lot of fun with it. I'd probably use catch-phrases from other games and science fiction programs, like "Exterminate! Exterminate!" every time the Void won and losing tokens were removed from play, instead of going into "the warp", or "All your base are belong to us" when a player loses their last home base.
