Newsgroups: rec.games.board.ce
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 17:51:08 -0400 
From: "Joseph E. Beck" <jb8n+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Subject: Re: More Cosmic review (Very Long!!)
	<1992Sep28.141244.3815@cbfsb.cb.att.com>


>JDL> Doppelganger: Incredibly powerful now. gets to pick cards. should
>JDL> probably be punted or weakened.

>Didn't find this so.  Tends to mean that you'll always be out-powered
>card-wise, but there are lots of other factors in winning challenges.

But...Doppleganger tends to be *superior* card-wise.  Sure, everyone
us has 7 cards, Doppleganger probably doesn't have that many.  But how
many cards are *useful* at a given time.  Doppleganger can decide he
doesn't need any challenge cards, and swipe a couple of edicts/flares
from his opponent (i.e. doppleganger gets 2 very good cards).  And as
an added bonus can look through the persons hand.  We saw the power
once and that was enough.  It's like mind (only works when you're the
main player though) but you get 2 cards too.  Gross.

>JDL> Gorgon: any tokens sharing a base with him can't move. I dislike this
>JDL> power because it doesn't really help the player holding it, and tends to
>JDL> make everybody hate him.

>Has the ability to tie lots of resources up.  We liked this one,
>although it won only an average portion of its games.
But who will ally with you or make a deal with you?  No one wants to
have their tokens immobilized (obviously).  It's just 1 extra reason
for them to not side with you.  It's kind of similar to Macron in
that it has *very* negative side effects that you can't turn off.


>JDL> Prophet: no change. Another power to consider putting controls on
>
>Why?  The fact that the power is used before playing cards makes the
>power self-balancing.

Self-balancing?  Yeah, prophet gets 4 bases very quickly and then
everyone else has to keep throwing challenges to stop him from
winning.  Sounds like loads of fun.

and someone else writes:
>        Yes, but long term average isn't useful in predicting performance.
>She could still easily miss three in a row at the start, and then she's
>in a horrible position. 

Yes, you could also draw 7 challenge cards all less than an 8 at start,
and never draw anything better the whole game.  I think it's more
realistic to look at what tends to happen.

By my estimation of 2/3 chance of guessing correctly, there is a 1 in
27 chance of being hosed.  That's about 4% of being hosed, if you
consider this something that can happen easily please let me know.  
The chance of other things going wrong is much higher.
It's much more likely he'll have 2 bases after 3 challenges have been
taken.  3 bases out of 5 challenges is being conservative. 

> Plus, if Loser's in the game, or any of a number
>of powers, it becomes *very* difficult to predict wh will win.

Why is it difficult?  Assume each side is playing to win and predict
accordingly.  This isn't difficult for getting up to 4 bases.  At that
point everyone has to find someone way of making your predictions come
wrong *every challenge*.  I don't think you'll be able to convince me
the chance of guessing correctly (assuming no one will try to throw
the challenge, which starts happening once prophet gets 4 (or
sometimes 3) bases) is less than 50%.  And as Julian Lighton pointed
out, if things look really tricky you can sit out or (if invited) ally
normally.


>        So what?  Empath is the worst power in the game...compare *anything*
>to Empath.
As we say around here, the Chosen card should have a different
description under it:
"You have chosen to be pathetic.  You have chosen to be puny.  You
have chosen to lose to game..."


>>You only need Machine/Wrack to be almost unstoppable.  Put 1 token in
>>the cone, and make the deal "base for a base".  If they accept, great.
>>If they refuse put your token (and one of theirs) in the warp.  Take
>>your next challenge, *remove a token of your from the warp*, and
>>proceed.
>
>        This is one of those power combinations that seems unbeatable in
>theory, but there are probably lots of ways it could die in practice.
>(cf. Seeker-Gambler).

Sorry, I don't think your combo even stands a chance against
Machine/Wrack.  Sure, you're mondo in combat, but we never fight.  I'm
wrack.  And once it's my turn, the game is over.  We were discussing
ways to stop it, and the only think we came up with was Healer-Sting
(barring cosmic zaps, of course).  Healer-Zombie can force a draw
with it.  The problems is that machine keeps going until he runs out
of challenge cards, and wrack never uses any challenge cards.  Also,
the only way to stop wrack from working is to cosmic zap it.  It's a
neat little cycle.

There are just too many things that go with Machine to make it nearly
unstoppable, mutant, doppleganger, clone, and filch to name a few.

	joe
 
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