Like the title! For someone getting into board games, what would you recommend? Bonus points if it is or can be played cooperatively, with 2 players, and double bonus points if it has a sci-fi theme (like, grand sci-fi), though the previous points are more important.
What do you like to play? Arcs and Earthborne Rangers both look cool to me, but wanted to ask here too! Anyone have experience with those two?
Cosmic Encounter is like the only board game my friends play that I am actively excited to play. It's not glacially slow, the basic game is simple enough but some of the factions have a wacky power that determines how they play. Once you get a game or two in, you can start introducing some more mechanics that that make things spicier. Multiple players winning is possible, and so are betrayals and war crimes, it's really fun.
I fucking LOVE cosmic encounter but haven't as anyone to play with for over a decade
If there is a way to play the full game w/expansions online (I haven't even played em all, last I got to play was Cosmic Conflict. The hazard deck was sick. I used to play like 4-10 games a day when I lived with board game hippies. We eventually sleeved up the cards and added homebrew stuff every once in a while and came up with some neat mods like draw 4 alien cards, either shuffle or pick the order and you have a different alien for whatever number of foreign planets you have. We'd also do double powers or have an alternate to tech to research where you could also choose to research the alien flare card for your guy to get a permanently playable same alien flare. We even figured out different costs for different flares. Either Diplomacy or Cosmic Encounter are to me The Game of Games. For the total opposite reasons, Cosmic Encounter is about risk management and awareness and counting cards with like 5 decks and an absurd amount of variables as well as the whole negotiation card factor. I will defend to the death that lying is totally allowed in the game because it comes with the repercussions of the table seeing it and it'll effect your game later on, in this case it was final turn, 3 people were at 4 planets , my attack cards sucked but I could at least muster ships to match the defender who was also 1 planet away and the person who was up next was also 1 away. So I asked the defender of they happened to have a negotiate card and wanted to split the win, hid turn wasn't up for a bit and the next person up was probably gonna take the w and I didn't have s prayer for solo cause I only had like a -2 and a kicker with my negotiate and literally showed my hand. He agreed to the negotiate and I won off a -2 card and 3 ships.