Ultra Rewards from Cosmic Odyssey

The Warp sifts through the reward deck to look at the Ultra reward cards

[MisterAbysmul]

These are a blast, love them! So far they seem balanced to their frequency in game.

[Schrodinger_]

With the variants in Odyssey adding lots of things you have to keep track of (evolution, space stations, etc) our group has been very careful calibrating the right set of variants to not make the particular game overwhelming. It depends on how many players (4, 7, etc), do some people have a hard cutoff (we are adults with lives and can't give up the whole day to Cosmic), etc. Aperture completely shits on that. In our case, we had a somewhat newer player use it "for the lulz" when it was already getting late and people were getting close to their cutoff. We had to end the game prematurely.

I think that, with all these variants, it's important to maintain a certain level of complexity that people planned for at the beginning. Cards or effects that basically say "lol you have to double what you're keeping track of now" shouldn't exist IMO. (There are a few more new Odyssey cards like this.) We agreed to only respect the first effect of Aperture (gain 2 rewards) and ignore the double alien thing.

[TheJamon]

I love the Ultra Rewards! The only one I removed was Aperture, because my group usually finds double alien games too overwhelming. So introducing new aliens mid-game is too dramatic a change.

[waltercardcollector]

I haven't had a chance to play this expansion yet but this is the part I'm looking forward to the most!

[JTtopcat]

Overkill can be crazy cause you can force your opponent to take weak cards as compensation when your hand gets small.

[sigma]

Hi Jack, Do you think Negotiate (Epic Oratory) should have been an the Ultra reward card instead of a normal reward card ?

[simonagnerholm]

I don´t like these. Specifically I fell like both "Overkill" and "Sneak Attack" take away agency from the players to control the end of the game (especially overkill). Have had a few anticlimatic dud endings to games due to both "kicker 4x" and the "gain a colony" rift from the previous rewards... feel like Overkill and Sneak Attack could lead to the same empty feeling of a hollow victory

The rest of the ultra rewards are great though