Cosmic Encounter Duel is a competitive standalone game for two players where you and your closest frenemy race to be the first to control five planets. Colorful ships, hidden tactics, and your alien’s unique abilities may tip the odds in your favor, but beware! Tricks and traps abound, and you never know what destiny has in store!

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

Before your clashes begin, you must first see which species you will represent in the race to become a Certified Civilization. Cosmic Encounter Duel offers twenty-seven different alien species for players to choose from, ranging from the familiar to the all-out weird. Whether you want to play as the ultimate Underdog, the punishing Iron Matron, or the surprisingly conniving Intelligent Mineral, you are sure to find a colorful character you will be thrilled to lead in the fight for cosmic dominance!

Each alien species comes equipped with their own unique abilities that alter the game in some way, offering you an edge in the fight. For example, the Friend (a highly intelligent and surprisingly perceptive species whose amusing methods of communication are often regretfully misinterpreted as tomfoolery instead of perilous forewarnings) can add or change envoys nearly at will throughout the game, using their natural charm and charisma to attract the most beneficial allies. How a game of Cosmic Encounter Duel plays out will inevitably be affected by which powers each dueling species has and how they play off of one another. In the case of Friend, if an opposing species has an ability that offers them a boon whenever their opponent increases friendship with an envoy, their charm and charisma will not be worth much. With a wide variety of species and infinite ways to play them, every game is sure to be as unique as those playing it!

In addition to your unique alien species, you have a collection of twenty spacefaring craft that your species uses to traverse across the cosmos. You will use these ships during your duels to fight for control of the five planets you need to become a Certified Civilization. As long as you have a ship on a planet, you have control of it, even if your opponent also has ships there and you are forced to share control. Throughout your quest of interstellar colonization, you may be able to strategically send ships as reinforcements to planets or have them retreat. Just be sure you do not lose them to the Warp lest you risk losing them to the black void of space forever!

En Garde!

While each species enters battle with plenty of boons they can use to their advantage, it is your tactical prowess that will determine their fate, and you never know what Destiny has in store. A game of Cosmic Encounter Duel consists of you and your opponent simultaneously taking turns, drawing and resolving Destiny cards. Each Destiny card progresses the game or otherwise shakes things up, but where Cosmic Encounter’s Destiny cards merely told you who would fight or negotiate with, Cosmic Encounter Duel’s Destiny cards have three different categories: Discovery Cards, Event Cards, or Refresh Cards. After placing a Destiny card in the single discard pile of the Past, you simply follow its instructions, whether it be to discover a new planet, test your mettle against some wild challenge, or take a quick respite from the chaos.

The game begins by drawing the top card of the Discovery deck, decreeing that you and your opponent must discover the first planet of your game and have a duel there. Dueling requires players to send ships to the planet, play cards, and resolve tactics. If you are able to destroy all of your enemy’s ships or if you have the highest clout when the confrontation has ended, you win the duel.

At the start of a duel, you and your opponent secretly decide how many ships to send using your respective Ship Dial. Once you have deployed your ships, you can call upon the help of any envoys you have aligned yourself with and formulate your plan. To plan your attack, you secretly choose a card from your hand and a standing Tactic from your collection. Tactics either guard your ships from destruction or blast your opponent's, altering the dynamics of your duel. Then you fight, sending ships with their Tactics to face-off for control of the planet. 

Plan Cards                                                           Tactics Tokens

If there are no ships left, plans are discarded, and the duel begins again. But should any ships survive, your plans are revealed, reinforcements are called in, and the last player with the most ships stationed on the planet claims their prize and gains control while the loser retreats. This is the way of Discovery and duels.

After you and your opponent resolve a card—whether it be a Discovery, Event, or Recovery—you look at the icon on the bottom of the card, which indicates the next deck to draw from. And so your fight amongst the stars continues, drawing and resolve cards, dueling one another, recovering from your losses, and testing your mettle against the many dangers of space until one of you gains control of five planets and wins your place on the Cosmic Citizenship Council!

Prepare for Launch

A battle of cosmic proportions is about to begin! Select your species, deploy your ships, and prepare for a wild game of intergalactic colonization unlike anything you’ve seen before. The future of your species is in your hands!