Another challenge from a friend who thought this would break me but I am strong like Servants of Cthulhu! Thanks to Tom L for this one! I think I made a (at least initially) playable combo that ought to make for a good afternoon of fun.
Today’s two (not) randomly generated games:
Cosmic Encounter (1977): Classic game of space alien war and colonization built on powers and flares.
Illuminati (1982): Chaotic and satirical game of world domination, secret societies and special interest groups.
classic Steve Jackson (I) game of world domination. Each player takes on the role of a secret society attempting to spread its tendrils into special interest groups throughout the worl
Initial thoughts: At first blush this seems like an impossible combination. Two games with impossibly large setups, both very modular and non-board-based, both based on flare play and power-borrowing. And yet, there are ways to make the similarities a benefit to combining them as opposed to a detriment. So should we play Cosmic using Illuminati groups, or Illuminati using Cosmic tiles? All the color of Illuminati play would be lost without the individualized group chits. On the other hand, Illuminati’s setup is already Cosmic-like, so I think I’ll overlay one on the other…
Game Combo: Use the aliens from Cosmic as the core of each player’s play area (instead of the secret societies from Illuminati). Their powers should still allow you to do all the things in a normal Cosmic game. The difference is that you are now connecting organization (cards) from Illuminati to the four sides of your alien, imagining an outward arrow on each side of it. The alien card acts like the secret society in all other ways, such as making it harder to control/neutralize/destroy a nearby org card. You will be connecting orgs using their arrows as per normal just like in Illuminati. Whenever you want to, however, as one of your actions you may place a Cosmic base moon tile underneath an org card. This would have the same effect as if the card were directly attached to the base alien. Instead of money, orgs generate ships (the discs in Cosmic). Alignments still make attacks harder/easier. The natural Resistance of an org equates to an imaginary number of ships on the card as far as attacking it. The alien card has no “Income”, but still give each player the normal starting amount of 20 ships. To make it an even more complete combo, add more of Illuminati back in: Place a random Illuminati secret society card under each player’s alien so that nobody can see each other’s society. These cards do not have any effect other than to add that society’s secret Victory Condition (in addition to the player’s normal Cosmic victory condition of 5 colonies). In this case I would also add money chits back in as well!
Final thoughts: Playability? Probably only once. Or a half a play. Actually, I think it would be a very enjoyable complete game-crash experience to wholeheartedly attempt this once and try to complete a game. I imagine you would have to make many rule decisions on the fly and the Zombie or Void would probably win (especially if the Gnomes of Zurich were underneath it).
Gamurgy 
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