Know a variant your table plays? Add it to Cosmic Encounter.
Sign in to add a houseruleFantasy Flight's Hidden Powers variant, from the core rulebook. During setup nobody reveals their chosen alien sheet — the sheets stay facedown and the flare cards are shuffled into the cosmic deck without being shown. A facedown power cannot be used; a player may turn their sheet faceup at any moment in order to use it, and once faceup it stays faceup for the rest of the game. The standard game reveals every alien at setup, so the table knows from the first encounter what it is up against; this hands each player one surprise and makes the choice of when to spend it part of the game.
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The offense gets a single encounter on their turn, whether or not they win it and whether or not they make a successful deal. Fantasy Flight offers this in the core rulebook as a variant. The printed rule gives the offense a second encounter after a win or a deal, so a player on a run can take two while the table takes one; limiting it to one evens out how many turns each player actually gets across a game. Nothing else about the encounter changes.
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Fantasy Flight's own shorter variant, offered in the core rulebook. Each player takes four planets instead of five and starts with sixteen ships instead of twenty, four to a planet; the game is won on four foreign colonies instead of five; and a player loses their alien power when they hold fewer than two home colonies instead of fewer than three. Every other rule is unchanged. The standard game asks for five foreign colonies and a twenty-ship fleet, which is what makes a full table long — and the rulebook itself recommends this variant for playing several three-player games in a row to meet more aliens.
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