Cosmos: Empires
Cosmos: Empires is a 2-8 player, 15-45 minute engine building card game. Jump into the galaxy, choose your strategy and build your galactic empire. Race against your friends, exploiting their economy to your advantage!
The game is played with a single deck, from which 10 cards are drawn into the “pool” players can select and build cards from. Each card has a cost, roll value and production value.
Each turn, the current player gets 2 actions and then rolls 2 D4 (4 sided dice). The current player can use one of their actions to increase or decrease the total of the two dice by one. Then, each player with a card with a Roll value equal to the new total gets Credits equal to the same cards production value.
Finally, the current player can use their remaining actions to build a card from the card pool (or “cycle” it and take credits).
Number of players: 2 - 8
Game duration: 17 mn
Complexity: 2 / 5
Play Cosmos: Empires and 959 other games online.
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With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Play Cosmos: Empires and 959 other games online.
No download necessary - play directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
The game is played with a single deck, from which 10 cards are drawn into the "build pool" where players can select and build cards from. Each card has a cost (on the left of the card, below the card's name), roll value (at the bottom of the card, inside the triangle) and production value (at the bottom of the card, inside the circle).
Objective
The first player to reach a total production value (sum of production values from all of their card) of 30 (20 when playing with 7 or 8 players) starts the last turn. The last turn then proceeds up to the last player of the turn. The winner is then the player with the highest production value. If there is a tie, the player with the most credits wins. If there is still a tie, the player who played last is declared winner.
Player turn
Production phase
Except for each player's first turn, the active player starts their turn by rolling the two four sided dice and spending actions to adjust the total roll value (sum of the two dice, each action spent allows to adjust that total value by ± 1). Some cards will grant you this action for free each turn, once per card. Once the player confirms the roll value, each player around the table receives an amount of credits equal to the sum of the production value of the cards with that specific roll value that they own.
Main phase
During this phase, the active player can spend their remaining actions to perform the following:
- Buying a card from the build pool. A new card is then picked from the deck to replace it. The active player adds this card to their playing area. If the card grants an extra action (see below), the player can spend it immediately.
- Cycling a card from the build pool and get 2 credits. The selected card is put under the deck and a new one is picked to replace it.
Some cards will grant you extra actions that can be performed each turn, once per card granting that extra action:
- Buying a Mech card from the build pool without spending a regular action, but the player still has to pay for the credits,
- Cycling a card from the build pool without spending a regular action, but without getting 2 credits as well.
You are not required to spend all of your actions before ending your turn.
End of turn
Once a player has exhausted all of their actions or decided they don't want to spend them anymore, they reset their actions counter (for 6 players or less, each player gets 2 regular action per turn, for 7 or 8 players, each players has 3 regular actions per turn, plus any extra action granted by their card) and pass the dice to the next player.
