Pyramid Review
Cosmic Coasters
Published by Looney Labs
Designed by Andrew Looney
4 coasters; $5.00
Remember the night when you dumped an entire Guinness on your copy of the original Cosmic Encounter at the Stop 'N' Gulp Tavern? Or how about that time you were enjoying the Age of Renaissance and you mistakenly invaded a glop of nacho cheese left there from the last time you played at Taco Heaven? If you long to indulge in some gaming while eating out or tossing a few back, yet are fearful of loosing your supplies to an accidental spill, Looney Labs has the perfect game for you: Cosmic Coasters. Not only does it feature simple mechanics ideal for a noisy atmosphere, Cosmic Coasters is resistant to all manner of dining trauma because the board is made out of beer coasters.
Each of the four coasters has a moon of Jupiter printed in color under a grid of nine spaces. Every player needs one moon and seven coins; or seven cheese snacks, or tiny pretzels, or anything that can represent space ships on the coasters. To win, a player must teleport to her opponent's moon, then teleport back home. The rules are simple, fitting entirely on the back of a single coaster. Like all good abstract strategy games, though, the rules are deceptively short. The game's strategy is satisfyingly deep and luck plays an acceptably minor roll in determining the winner.
A moon has nine spaces made up of four Factories, four Control Points, and one Teleport Pad. On a turn, a player can teleport from his moon . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: March 23, 2001
Copyright © 2001 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.