Fantasy Flight Games

FFG Live in July

Published 1 July 2020 | KeyForge

FFG Live in July

The Latest Livestreams Coming from Fantasy Flight Games

For the last few months, FFG Live has been hosted from our homes, as we take the essential steps to ensure the health and safety of all our employees. As we move into the month of July, we’re able to return to our studio, and although we’ll still be following all social distancing conventions, we’re very excited to be back on our home ground and bringing you the latest previews and announcements of upcoming products from Fantasy Flight Games!

You can catch all of our streams live on Twitch on the designated date at 1:00 PM Central Time, and even if you miss the live show, they’ll all be archived on our YouTube channel for you to watch whenever you want!

Our return starts with a celebration of the upcoming Mass Mutation set for KeyForge on July 2. The English release of Mass Mutation is only a few weeks away, so tune in to watch some gameplay with decks from the new set and ask the development team your own questions about what to expect from the next set.

July 7 marks a momentous occasion as we announce a brand-new expansion for Civilization: A New Dawn. Make sure you watch this stream with developer Tony Fanchi to find out what you can expect from this expansion that’s absolutely packed full of new content for the game.

Continuing the train of announcements, in our July 9 stream we’ll be talking with designer Caleb Grace about the next upcoming scenario pack for Marvel Champions! We have plenty of cards to show off and we’ll be discussing the most devious schemes of this villainous new addition to the game.

On July 14, we turn from announcements to highlight a brand-new release from FFG: Cosmic Encounter Duel, a fast-paced, head-to-head battle of wits, set in the Cosmic Encounter universe. We’ll be playing with designer Frank Brooks, and if you’re a fan of Cosmic Encounter, it’s a stream that you won’t want to miss.

Finally, our July 16 stream highlights another brand-new release—we’re showing off the huge Shadowed Paths expansion for The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth, which introduces new heroes, classes, monsters, items, and much more. We’ll be playing the first scenario of the new Shadowed Paths campaign on stream and chatting with designers Nathan Hajek and Grace Holdinghaus, so come and see what the latest expansion for Journeys in Middle-earth has to offer.

After our Shadowed Paths stream, we’ll pause our streams for two weeks, but that’s not all for the month! As we recently announced, we are working with Gen Con Online to bring you the hottest new announcements and showcase what FFG has been working on. It all starts with the In-Flight Report on July 29, streaming at 7:00 PM Central Time, where we present a full suite of new announcements and upcoming expansions for some of our hottest game lines, including Star Wars™: Legion, KeyForge, Star Wars™: Armada, and Marvel Champions: The Card Game!

Then, over the following days, from July 30 through August 2, we’ll be conducting a series of deep dive livestreams into many of the new product lines featured in the In-Flight Report, giving you a chance to learn more about the products you’re most interested in and ask your questions directly to the designers. We’ll have a full schedule of these livestreams to share in coming weeks!

Join us on our Twitch channel for FFG Live these dates at 1:00 PM Central Time, or check out our YouTube page for all our latest videos. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a new video or livestream—we hope to see you there!

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Available Now – June 19

Published 19 June 2020 | Cosmic Encounter Duel

Available Now – June 19

Cosmic Encounter Duel Is Available Now

Take a look at the latest products from Fantasy Flight Games, now available exclusively at select hobby retailers! (Full retail release July 10)

Cosmic Encounter Duel

Challenge your closest frenemy to the fast-paced hilarity of Cosmic Encounter Duel! The Cosmic Citizenship Council has announced it will allow two new alien species into their ranks, but they forgot to make two copies of the filing form, meaning only one species can join! Now, the two candidates must battle for control of a minimum of five planets to prove that they truly deserve the right to become a Certified Civilization.

In Cosmic Encounter Duel, you will go head-to-head with your opponent, racing to win control of five planets. Colorful ships, hidden tactics, and your alien’s unique abilities might tip the odds in your favor, but beware! Tricks and traps abound, and you never know what destiny has in store!

Pick up your copy of Cosmic Encounter Duel (CED01) at your local retailer today!

Cosmic Encounter Duel Gamemat

Stage your instellar battles in cinematic fashion with the Cosmic Encounter Duel Gamemat! This 26” by 36” features vibrant original art from Cosmic Encounter Duel atop a high-quality, slip-resistant rubber base. As you become immersed in your cosmic clashes, you can display your cards and components in a clean, organized fashion while protecting them from stains and spills, whether you're playing in a tournament or just around the kitchen table. Whichever species you choose to lead in their fight to join the Cosmic Citizenship Council, this playmats will help keep your cards and components protected, ensuring that the focus stays where it belongs—on your games!

Pick up your copy of the Cosmic Encounter Duel Gamemat (CED02) at your local retailer today!

Secrets of the Crucible Digital Download

In the center of the universe hangs the Crucible, a gigantic artificial world created by the enigmatic Architects and home to countless beings and cultures. Here, impossibly advanced technologies mix with arcane powers to make for a setting unlike any other! Uncovering the secrets of this mysterious world will take all your skills—but the potential rewards are boundless…

Explore this world of boundless opportunity in Secrets of the Crucible, a new sourcebook for the Genesys Roleplaying System set in the KeyForge universe!

This 272-page sourcebook allows you to undertake fantastical adventures and uncover the Crucible’s many wonders and dangers. Lost civilizations, cryptic conspiracies, bizarre environments, mutated monsters, and more await!

Secrets of the Crucible contains new character creation options, unique weapons and armor, new skills revolving around the mysterious æmber, bizarre adversaries, and a new adventure builder that puts all these aspects together!

Download your digital copy of Secrets of the Crucible at DriveThruRPG today!

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The copyrightable portions of Cosmic Encounter Duel are © 2019 Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc. Cosmic Encounter is a registered trademark of Eon Products, Inc. Used under license from Eon Products, Inc. Fantasy Flight Supply is a trademark of Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

Extraterrestrial Life

Published 12 June 2020 | Cosmic Encounter Duel

Extraterrestrial Life

Preview the Zany Aliens of Cosmic Encounter Duel

Order your own copy of Cosmic Encounter Duel at your local retailer or online through our website today!

The galaxy can be an overwhelming place. New planets pop up with uncanny frequency, there’s a strange new alien around every corner, and the entire affair is overseen by an alarmingly bureaucratic organization known as the Cosmic Citizenship Council. But there’s no better time to start meeting the new neighbors than right now!

Cosmic Encounter Duel is a fast-paced, tactical board game, spinning off from the original Cosmic Encounter game and distilling its essential experience into a game designed specifically for two players. In last week’s preview, we took a closer look at the heart of the game by shining the spotlight on the strategic choices you’ll make in every duel—but before you can hope to win a duel, you need to know your opponent.

Cosmic Encounter Duel comes with 27 brand-new aliens, each with a truly unusual approach to the game! Today, we turn our attention to the curious and unexpected aliens that you can play, as well as seeing the return of a few familiar faces.

A Galaxy of Possibilities

The galaxy is a wild place, and the 27 new aliens in Cosmic Encounter Duel each warp the pre-established rules of your interstellar duels in some way. Although some alien abilities are easier for beginners and others are more complex (clearly denoted by a green, yellow, or red bar on the alien card), they all have a chance to make your duels utterly unique and completely memorable!

Let’s start by keeping things simple with the Underdog. The Underdogs pride themselves on their come-from-behind attitude and their proclivity for winning when the odds are stacked against them, and they avoid a fair fight whenever possible. The Underdog has a simple ablity: “Fair” Adjustment. During every contest or duel, if your opponent reveals a plan card that is higher than your revealed plan card by eleven or more, you automatically win the contest or duel!

Though “Fair” Adjustment is easy to understand from the outset, its ramifications for the game affect every part of your duels. Your opponent wants to win their duels—but if they commit too much with their plan card, you’ll win the duel instead! So, they want to win by a smaller amount, which gives you a window to play a high plan card and steal the duel. Of course, they know that you know that…

Few aliens can match the strangeness on offer from the Über-Reserve. When you play this alien, you’re playing your own minigame just beneath the surface of Cosmic Encounter Duel. As the Über-Reserve, you can Ascend during any contest or duel by placing a consecutive run of at least two plan cards beneath your alien card. You can build up these runs throughout the game, and if you ever have twelve or more cards underneath your alien card, you’ve Achieved Enlightenment, and you immediately win the game!

Committing runs of cards may seem like a no-brainer, but remember that you are removing these cards from the game—so you won’t be able to commit them to this duel or any future duel. You’ll have to weigh carefully your chances of reaching enlightenment against how much you much you might need the cards you’re removing from your hand.

Once you’re ready to leap into some of the most complex aliens in the game, you may be interested to try the bombastic power of the Musician. The Musician’s first ability, Crescendo, holds a promise of things to come—your hand limit is four, plus the number of ships on their alien card. Most aliens have a hand limit of six cards, so you’ll be starting off at a disadvantage compared to your opponent.

That disadvantage will quickly disappear with the Musician’s Encore ability—after you win a contest or duel, you can place one of your ships on your alien card, increasing your hand size. Then, you may choose to discard your hand or draw up to your hand limit! Encore gives the Musician an unparalleled level of control over the cards in your hand, but you have to remember that when you put ships on your alien card, you’re permanently removing those ships from your supply—and if you ever run out of ships entirely, you lose the game! As with most choices in Cosmic Encounter Duel, it may not be as simple as it first appears.

An Envoy from the CCC

Every alien included in Cosmic Encounter Duel is a brand-new addition to the universe, but that doesn’t mean there’s no place for familiar favorites. As you engage in your duel for recognition as a certified civilization, envoys from the Cosmic Citizenship Council will appear—and winning their friendship could prove to be the difference maker in any duel.

At the beginning of each game, three envoys are revealed—members of the Cosmic Citizenship Council who will oversee your duel. But their role as overseers doesn’t mean that they aren’t above putting a finger on the scales! Throughout the game, you’ll have opportunities to increase your friendship with an envoy, which can lead to you becoming allied and gaining access to that envoy’s special ability.

Friendship with the Healer, for instance, may allow both you and your opponent to recover half of their ships destroyed during a duel, helping you to hedge your bets against an aggressive opponent. The Anti-Matter flips the core mathematics of the game on their head, by giving victory to the player with lower clout at the end of every duel. You may even play with the chaotic Mirror, who tranposes the digits of each revealed plan, turning a mediocre 08 into an unbelievably high 80! Ultimately, the envoys offer just another layer of unexpected abilities that can twist and turn every game of Cosmic Encounter Duel into an unforgettable experience!

Who Are You?

A host of new aliens burst onto the scene with Cosmic Encounter Duel, and if one thing’s for certain, it’s that our galaxy will never look the same again.

You can pre-order your own copy of Cosmic Encounter Duel at your local retailer or online through our webstore today, and look for it to release at local retailers on June 19!

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Your Destiny Awaits

Published 4 June 2020 | Cosmic Encounter Duel

Your Destiny Awaits

Preview Duels in Cosmic Encounter Duel

Pre-order your own copy of Cosmic Encounter Duel at your local retailer or online through our website today!

You’re just another budding alien civilization in the incomprehensibly ever-expanding multiverse, and the news comes without warning: the Cosmic Citizenship Council has announced that it will allow two new alien species to join its ranks. But, lacking two copies of the filing form, only a single species can join! You must prove your right to become a Certified Civilization.

Cosmic Encounter Duel takes the frantic back-and-forth action, zany powers, and colorful sci-fi conflict of Cosmic Encounter and distills the essential experience into a game for just two players. Over the course of the game, you and your opponent will duel for control of planets, and first player to lay claim to five planets is the victor!

As you might expect from the title, the duels between you and your opponent take prime position in Cosmic Encounter Duel, and with today’s preview, we’ll take a closer look at the twists and turns you’ll face in every duel!

Let the Duels Begin!

As the centerpiece of the game, you can rightly expect every duel in Cosmic Encounter Duel to be a tense battle of wits, with one of the galaxy’s newly discovered planets on the line. In most cases, the duel begins with the reveal of a discovery card, such as Another Battlefield. These discovery cards commonly instruct you to discover a new planet by revealing a new planet tile from the top of the stack, before starting a duel for control of this nascent world.

The discovery card Another Battlefield is revealed, causing a new planet to be revealed and starting a new duel!

Your duel for the new planet is filled with strategic choices, and it starts by deciding how many of your ships you want to send to the new planet to fight for your interests. You’ll use your ship dial to select between one and four ships, and once both players have set their dials, you’ll simultaneously reveal dials and send your ships to the planet!

The orange player uses her ship dial to send three ships to the planet, while the blue player sends two of his ships. The orange player, with more ships, currently has the ship advantage.

Sending ships is important for multiple reasons—if you’re going to actually claim the planet, your ships need to survive until the end of the duel, and if all of your ships are destroyed, your claim becomes void. What’s more, whoever has more ships at the planet gains the ship advantage on the discovery card, increasing their chances of controlling the planet at the end of the duel. Still, sending your ships is not without risk. The loser of the duel will have all of their ships destroyed and sent into the Warp! And even more dangerously, if you ever have no ships in your supply, you immediately lose the game. You’ll have to weigh all of these considerations carefully as you decide how many ships you’re going to send for your duel.

The ships that you send to contest the planet are only the first choice you’ll make during a duel, and they’re far from the last. Next, you and your opponent must each select a plan card and a tactics token, locking in your strategy for the rest of the duel.

Tactics tokens give you a chance to destroy enemy ships or shield your own ships from destruction. Each player begins the game with an identical set of these double-sided tokens, and most of them let you use the blast symbol to destroy enemy ships or the shield symbol to protect your own ships. If you can destroy all of your opponent’s ships, you’ll immediately win the duel for control of the planet… but you know that your opponent may have similar plans in store for you. Even if you don’t destroy all of your opponent’s ships, you may be able to destroy enough to swing the discovery card’s ship advantage in your favor—if you have more ships than your opponent at any point during the duel, the ship advantage switches sides.

Although one ship is protected by the orange tactics token, two ships are destroyed. The duel will continue, but the ship advantage has passed to the blue player!

You’ll have to choose whether to prioritize destroying your opponent’s ships or protecting your own ships, and most importantly, each tactics token can only be used once before it must be recovered, which creates another decision point for choosing when to use your most powerful tactics.

As crucial as it is, the tactics token is only half of your strategy for the duel. So long as you and your opponent each have a ship on the planet after tactics tokens are resolved, you’ll move on to the plan cards! Every plan card has a numeric value, ranging from 42 to –2. This number (combined with ship advantage if you have more ships than your opponent) is your total clout for this conflict, and whichever player has the higher clout will win the duel!

Both players reveal their chosen plan cards. With the discovery card's ship advantage added to their plan card, the blue player currently has more clout.

You still have one last chance to affect the outcome before all is said and done, however. After plan cards are reveal, you and your opponent can alternate playing reinforcement cards, which either add to your own clout or reduce your rival’s clout. These reinforcement cards can be a rare resource that must be spent wisely, but they have an unprecedented capability to swing the duel in your favor.

A sly reinforcement card from the orange player allows her to seize the duel and win this planet!

Once both players pass on playing reinforcement cards, the duel is complete! The loser’s ships are destroyed and sent to the Warp, though they do also claim the consolation prize listed on the discovery card. For the victor, they’ve claimed another planet and are one step closer to victory—though even planets that you have claimed may not be safe forever…

Duel for the Galaxy

Hopefully we’ve shown you a glimpse of the nail-biting choices that go into the duels that you’ll fight throughout Cosmic Encounter Duel. Though these choices are exciting, the true wildness and zaniness that Cosmic Encounter is known for come through the dozens of unique alien powers and envoy cards, making every single game you play feel different. In our next preview, we’ll explore just a taste of what these bizarre new aliens and familiar envoys have to offer!

You can pre-order your own copy of Cosmic Encounter Duel (CED01) at your local retailer or online through our webstore today, and look for the game to release on June 19!

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FFG Live in March

Published 28 February 2020 | Arkham Horror Third Edition

FFG Live in March

Find Out What’s Next from FFG Live

It’s time for another month of FFG Live, and that means another month of behind-the-scenes previews, announcement, and gameplay of the hottest games coming out of Fantasy Flight Games. You can catch our streams on our Twitch channel every Tuesday and Thursday at 1:00 PM Central Time—and the streams are always archived on YouTube if you can’t join us live. Look below for our schedule and read on for more information about what’s coming up next.

Our streams start off strong on March 3 with a look at the newest Hero Pack coming for Marvel Champions: The Card Game. Designer Michael Boggs will join us for this hero’s announcement and to reveal some of the cards you’ll find waiting in this expansion.

If you’ve been missing our painting streams with John Shaffer, you’re in luck! March 5 marks the return of Star Wars™: Legion painting streams with John. We’ll be showing off the colors in the new Republic Paint Set and Separatist Paint Set and looking at some tips for painting vehicles, like the brand-new TX-130 Saber-class tank or the Separatist AAT.

March 10 marks another announcement—we’ve got a brand-new large box expansion coming up for Arkham Horror Third Edition, and we’re excited to be share exactly what we have in store.

We return to presenting Star Wars: Legion on March 12 and March 17. First, we’ll be showcasing the new options available for the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire with a skirmish game featuring the Cassian Andor and K-2SO Commander Expansion and the Iden Versio and ID10 Commander Expansion. Then, we’ll explore the new options available to every faction by diving into the Vital Assets Battlefield Expansion and the wealth of new battle cards and scenario options contained within!

On March 19, we have another product announcement to share with you as we look at the brand-new type of product that we’re introducing for Arkham Horror: The Card Game. We’re very excited about this addition to the game, so join us live to let us know what you think.

If you’re yearning for some KeyForge, we come back to the Crucible on March 24 to show off some brand-new decks from Mass Mutation. It also marks a milestone for FFG Live—it’s Episode #100! To commemorate the occasion, we’ll have giveaways of an exclusive playmat throughout the stream, mixed in with showing off and giving away the latest and greatest decks to come from the fourth set of KeyForge.

Marvel Champions: The Card Game returns to the spotlight on March 26, as the developers test their mettle against The Wrecking Crew Scenario Pack. We’ll be playing Black Widow, Doctor Strange, and the hero announced on March 3, so this will be your first chance to see some of these new heroes in action.

Finally, we end the month with our first look at the gameplay in one of our newest games—Cosmic Encounter: Duel. We’ll be playing the game with designer Frank Brooks and you’ll have a front-row seat for all the zaniness that the Cosmic Encounter universe has to offer.

Join us on our Twitch channel for FFG Live every Tuesday and Thursday at 1:00 PM Central Time, or check out our YouTube page for all our latest videos. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a new video or livestream—we hope to see you there!

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Cosmic Encounter Duel

Published 13 January 2020 | Cosmic Encounter Duel

Cosmic Encounter Duel

Announcing a New Standalone Game in the Cosmic Encounter Universe

Pre-order your own copy of Cosmic Encounter Duel and the Cosmic Encounter Duel Gamemat at your local retailer or online through our website with free shipping in the continental U.S. today!

Today is truly a momentous occasion! The Cosmic Citizenship Council has announced that it will allow two new alien species to join its ranks!

Wait… ‘two’? That can’t be right. Hold on a second.

Yes—well, kind of! The Cosmic Citizenship Council WAS prepared to let two new alien species join its ranks. However, due to an unfortunate filing error, the Council only made one copy of the filing form, so really only one species can join…

A duel will determine which species is truly deserving to join the ranks of the esteemed Council. To prove their worth, each side must race to gain control of a minimum of five planets. The winner will become a Certified Civilization, while the loser will fade into intergalactic obscurity. This is the one and only way.

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Cosmic Encounter Duel, a new standalone game in the Cosmic Encounter universe, and the Cosmic Encounter Duel Gamemat—now available for pre-order at your local retailer or online through our website with free shipping within the continental United States!

Cosmic Encounter Duel is a competitive standalone game for two players where you and your closest frenemy race to be the first to control five planets. Colorful ships, hidden tactics, and your alien’s unique abilities may tip the odds in your favor, but beware! Tricks and traps abound, and you never know what destiny has in store!

Two Species Enter

Becoming a Certified Civilization is a great honor, and the first step in any game of Cosmic Encounter Duel is determining which species you will lead. In the Core Set, you will find twenty-seven new alien species ready to fight for their place on the Cosmic Citizenship Council, along with envoys from across the Cosmic Encounter universe ready to help them on their journey!

Each alien species comes equipped with their own unique abilities that play with the game mechanics in some way, offering you an edge in the fight. For example, the Cheater, whose very design is to give them a lopsided advantage in any arms race, can reserve an additional Tactic that they can put toward any fight in the game—as long as their opponent doesn't call out how they’re trying to ‘cheat’. How your game of Cosmic Encounter Duel plays out will inevitably be affected by which powers each dueling species has and how they play off of one another.

In addition to your unique species and their ability, you have a collection of twenty spaceships that you can use to traverse across the cosmos and maintain control over the five planets you need to become a Certified Civilization. As long as you have a ship on a planet, you have control of it, even if your opponent also has ships there and you must share control. You will be able to deploy these ships to fight in duels, act as reinforcements, or draw them back for a tactful retreat. Just be careful not to lose them to the Warp or let them be claimed by the black void between the stars and end up lost in space forever!

One Species Wins

Once you decide which species you will lead into this fight, you are ready to launch your ships and let the duels begin! In Cosmic Encounter Duel, you and your opponent simultaneously take turns where you simply draw and resolve Destiny cards. In the original Cosmic Encounter, Destiny cards merely told you where you would send your ships, but in Cosmic Encounter Duel, Destiny cards have three different categories: Discovery Cards, Event Cards, or Refresh Cards. Discovery Cards have you and your opponent discover a planet and duel for control, while Event Cards ask you both to test your mettle against a variety of challenges and cosmic calamities, and Refresh Cards offer a respite in which you can recover ships, gather allies, and ultimately prepare for another clash!

The game begins by drawing the top card of the Discovery deck, sending you and your opponent off to discover the first planet and have a duel there. Dueling, which we’ll take a closer look at in future previews, has you and your opponent send ships to the planet, execute plans, and resolve tactics. If you can destroy all of your enemy’s ships or if you have the highest clout at the end of the duel, you and species will be victorious and move one step closer to becoming a Certified Citizen.

At the start of a duel, you and your opponent secretly decide how many ships to send to the planet and once they have been deployed, you can call upon any befriended envoys and formulate your plan. To plan your attack, you secretly choose a card from your hand and a standing Tactic from your collection (shown at left) to either guard your ships or blast your opponent's. Then, you fight, sending ships to face-off for control of the planet until the winner claims their prize while the loser retreats.

After you and your opponent resolve a Destiny card, whether it be a Discovery, Event, or Recovery card, you merely check the icon on the bottom to determine which deck to draw from next, and the race continues. Once one of you gains control of five planets, that player wins their place on the Cosmic Citizenship Council and begins their reworking of the Council’s filing system while the loser goes home, defeated, and descends into obscurity. You must ensure your species wins the day!

A Fitting Battlefield

But wait, there's more! To stage your adventures in a truly cinematic fashion, Fantasy Flight Games has also created the Cosmic Encounter Duel Gamemat! This 26” by 36” mat features vibrant original art from Cosmic Encounter Duel atop a high-quality, slip-resistant rubber base. As you become immersed in your cosmic clashes, you can beautifully display your cards while protecting them from stains and spills, whether you're playing in a tournament or just around the kitchen table. Whichever species you choose to lead in their fight to join the Cosmic Citizenship Council, this playmat will help keep your cards and components protected, ensuring that the focus stays where it belongs—on your games!

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The Council has spoken. Until the filing error is sorted out, only one species may join their ranks—that spot must be yours! Gather your allies, deploy your ships, and claim the planets you must to save yourself from the most terrible fate imaginable: intergalactic obscurity!

Pre-order your copy of Cosmic Encounter Duel (CED01) and the Cosmic Encounter Duel Gamemat (CED02) at your local retailer today or online through our website with free shipping in the continental United States here! These products are scheduled to land at retailers in April of 2020!

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