TheBrokenTrees

An extremely easy to learn game. Go out there and capture 5 planets! But each subsequent game can add a new mechanic into the wheel that is cosmic encounter. Now artifacts, now technologies, now flare cards.

“So TheBrokenTrees, in what way is this game like a Wheel” I hear you ask!
Because the rules are constantly changing with each game. You can never guarantee which 5 aliens will be picked, nor which players will aid who in the coming conflicts. Even player alliances cannot hinder the Wheel that is Cosmic Encounter, which just rolls right over them. Red and Green have stoically aided one another in the previous two battles? Too bad, this turn the game has set them against one another and they will have to come to blows. I can happily say that I have never played a game of this that become tedious because it mirrored a previous game.
I would have given this game a 6/5 on the ‘Replay Value’ scale if boardgaming.com would have let me.

I can find no fault with the game length either, which, in a manner that is perfect for a gateway game, comes in usually at 60 – 90 minutes. Just writing this review makes me want to invite you over and play this game with you!

As a last note, I’m not one that usually subscribes to the buying of expansions. Why bother when you can buy a whole new game? But I’d give these ones a look if you enjoy the main game.

One of those brilliant but chaotic games where you and your rival are facing off, but win one battle too easily and the other 4 onlookers may just gang up on you. Instead, if you barely win the battle, they won’t even need to team-up to kill you, and you’ll likely see yourself annexed quickly. If you like games in this ‘Keep the Balance of Power’ vein, then you’ll enjoy Rex.

I tend to stay away from dice-rolling games, which is why the battles in Rex are perfect for me. Chaos has no place in them, and instead they are based on straightforward numbers and some bluffing between you and your opponent. But the game is far from entirely predictable as the Dreadnought fleet still seems to make the rounds impossibly fast, just in time to decimate that tile where all of your units are garrisoned. On our first time playing, the Fleet killed about the same number of men in total as we had.

I enjoy it because there is no player elimination, you can always just drop more men down onto the field, and your men will revive slowly over time if you are financially starved. However, we have found that if you have less than 5 players, there is a likely chance that two players can opportunely make an alliance that will monopolize all the wealth on the board, meaning that the game can be won with a kind of economic victory easily enough if one team suffers misfortune.

Therefore I recommend always playing with 5 or 6 players if possible. The game really comes into its own with this number, as 6 players makes it much harder to secure any section of the board for long. This also allows for every race to be played, which only heightens the excitement as they are all assymetrical, and thus play off of each situation in different ways.

An example of a situation that one will face in Rex:
You have just won a Pyrrhic victory, spending 7 of your 10 fighters in a space (the men you commit to a battle will all die, so you want to commit as little as possible to beat your opponent), to kill the enemies 6 attackers. Now you both need to jetpack a bunch of new fighters into the battle as reinforcements. But doing so gives the Hacan (The trading and supplying race) a virtual truck of cash to spend on beating you down. So when you both deploy these newly-landed fighters, to continue your battle, do you once again turn them on each other, or on the Hacan player, who continues to grow more prosperous as a result of your own battles.

Overall I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys strategy games that feature politics and diplomacy, as long as your friends are the type to forgive and forget the disgusting acts of betrayal that you will surely commit against them.