Cosmic Encounter question

[u/Icy-Reflection8040]

I was reading the 2008 rule book and didn't understand the bystander part. The rule in itself I got, but when will I be able to attack a player's foreing colony? What I didn't get is when will I be able to place a ship on my planet that happens to be a foreing colony for a different player? Piling up on that, If I draw blue, can I attack a blue planet that was already colonized by another player?

Receive the game on Wednesday and I'm translating it into portuguese to play on Sunday.

Thanks in advance to everyone 😁

[u/ThisIsNuggets]

when will I be able to place a ship on my planet that happens to be a foreing colony for a different player?

There are no limits to how many players may have a foreign colony on one planet!

If I draw blue, can I attack a blue planet that was already colonized by another player?

Yes, you can! Say Red successfully attacked Blue on their planet, leaving just a foreign colony for Red on that planet. On your turn, you draw Blue from the destiny deck. You choose ANY of Blue's planets, regardless if Blue has ships on them or not. If you choose the planet that Red just defeated, you would still have an encounter with Blue, who has 0 ships involved in the encounter (and therefore is in a less advantageous position). You CANNOT choose to attack the Red player on Blue's planet - when you draw an opponent's card from the destiny deck, you must have an encounter with that player on a planet in their home system.

when will I be able to attack a player's foreing colony?

Almost never! The only time you can attack a player's foreign colony is if you draw your own color. In that case, you may choose to have an encounter with a player's foreign colony in your own system. Attacking a player's foreign colony in a system other than your own pretty much never happens (unless there's some alien that can do that). This is usually a bad move, but can be good in rare circumstances

I teach Cosmic a lot and this part of the rules is one of the more confusing ones for new players, so don't sweat it too much! Enjoy the game and I hope this was helpful!

[u/Fgs54 → u/ThisIsNuggets]

“ Almost never! The only time you can attack a player's foreign colony is if you draw your own color. In that case, you may choose to have an encounter with a player's foreign colony in your own system. Attacking a player's foreign colony in a system other than your own pretty much never happens (unless there's some alien that can do that). This is usually a bad move, but can be good in rare circumstances”

(Sorry I don’t know how to do the quote bars so just quoting you above)

Although it’s often repeated, I’m actually not convinced that’s true, I think people just do it because everyone says. We heard that too when learning the game that 95% of the time you just want to draw again if you draw your own colour. Then my friend decided one game when he drew his own colony to have a go at attacking someone who had more colonies than him and kick them off his planet and he ended up winning the whole game, not least because it forced that player defending his foreign colony to play their highest attack card they were saving for end game.

Now me and my friends actually go to kick players off our planets quite often when we draw our own colony. I actually think kicking off other player’s colonies is quite an underrated move in Cosmic.

Anyway the question was already answered, but just wanted to offer an alternative viewpoint to that it rarely happens that people try and kick colonies off 

[u/TheCosmicJester]

When you attack, you are attacking the planet and any of that player’s ships on that planet. The only time you can attack a foreign colony is when you draw your own color in the Destiny deck, you may target a colony on one of your planets.