Cosmic Crowns

• Designer: Alessio Convito, Michael Hale
• Publisher: Sumain Games
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Play an easy-to-learn cosmic card battle. Command a mix of four clans -Dog, Raptor, Eagle, or Frog- in a trick-taking game with exciting twists from cards like Divines, Assassins, and Thieves. Each round, players play one card, aiming to win by playing the highest-ranking card, matching the trump card on the table, or using other strategies. Winning a trick (turn) earns a crown. After 10 rounds, the game ends, and the player with the most crowns is crowned the winner. The game includes two modes, Easy and Hard, and can also be extended with another 10 rounds for a longer, more challenging experience.

To start, shuffle the 64 card deck and deal each player a hand of ten cards for the first hand.  There are 4 suits in the game, fifteen cards in each suit.  They each have their own color, but the rules tend to refer to them as animal clans (eagle, frog, dog, raptor) rather than color.  The suits have a Emperor as the highest card (denoted by a crown), followed by three generals (3 star to 1 star), then soliders (10 to 2), an Assasin (valued 1, but with a dagger as it’s icon) and then finally the Thief (value 0, but with a T as its icon).  There are also 2 copies each of the Falling Star and The Devil.

The top card of the deck is flipped up to be the Battleground Clan (trump suit). The first player leads a card (the dealer), and then a must-follow trick taking game occurs.  If you are void in the Leading Clan, you can then play a Battleground Clan card, and non-Leading/non-Battledground Clan card or a Divine Card.

The Divine cards (Falling Star or The Devil) will immediately end the trick, and the player who played that Divine card automatically wins the trick.  All players who have not yet played into the trick simply discard a card from their hands to keep hand size even.  Each of these cards changes the Battleground Clan (trump) in different ways.

If all players play to a trick, it is won by the player who played the highest Battleground Clan card (i.e. trump), and if not, by the player who won the highest Leading Clan card.  Remember that the ranks within each suit are: crown, 3 stars, 2 stars, 1 star, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, dagger, T.   

There are two other special cards that can be played.  Whenever anyone plays an Assassin (rank 1, but noted by a dagger), that player chooses any player who has not yet played into the trick and chooses a card at random from their hand to be played.  Whenever anyone plays a Thief, they immediately steal a VP token from any other player.

The player who won the trick takes a VP token from the supply, and then that player leads the next trick.  Continue until all players have played all their cards.  Shuffle all the cards and then deal the next hand, remembering to use one fewer card than the previous round.  The deal rotates clockwise with each new deal.  This process continues until you finish the hand with only one card dealt out.  

The player with the most VP tokens wins.  If there is a tie, shuffle the cards and deal a final one-card hand. The winner of this trick wins the whole game (Even if they weren’t involved in the original tie that caused the Tie Brawl).

My thoughts on the game

So I knew nothing about this game until I got a cold contact email: ” My name is Alessio, and together with my co-creator, Michael, we’ve developed a new card game called Cosmic Crowns. We’re Deaf game designers based in Toronto, and this is our first published game…

I don’t think there are currently any Deaf tabletop game creators, aside from educational ASL flash cards. Michael and I met in the Deaf community about 10 years ago when I moved from Italy to Canada. We became close friends and bonded over our shared love of gaming. About two years ago, Michael suffered a concussion. During his recovery, he had a vivid dream about a game and called me the next day to share it. We brainstormed together, built the system, and named it Cosmic Crowns. I illustrated all the cards and designed the box. It’s been a long journey, and now the game is ready to be shared.”

I was intrigued to give this new design team a try – so I accepted a copy and it was soon here in the Gaming Basement…  There are some decent ideas in the game, but I do think that it unfortunately gets caught up in its lore and theme, and this distracts from the game itself.

First, there are 15 ranks in each suit, but only cards 2-10 are numbered, and the players just have to memorize the rest of the cards.  Sure it’s not overly difficult to do so, but it would also have been so much easier numbering them from 1 to 15 or 0 to 14.  If there were some reason for cards to have crowns (i.e. bonus points for collecting the most crowns on cards), then sure – but otherwise, it just adds a layer of processing that is un-necessary. 

The rules also use lore terms for more common trick taking concepts such as trump suit, lead suit, and even the colors of each suit.  While credit to the game designers for remaining consistent, incorporating new vocabulary just serves to confuse things.

The game itself is a simplistic must follow trick taking game with a few rules twists.  The special divine cards end a trick automatically and somehow change trump.  The Assassin card allows you to play a random card from a later player’s hand?!  And finally, the Thief card lets you steal a VP token from someone else.

The Divine cards are simply guaranteed points.  So just try to be dealt all four of them each hand, and you’ll do great. There can be a bit of strategy in trying to choose when to play them; they can be a nice gotcha card if you’re able to use them to defeat a high trump that someone else had played (and expected to win with).  Though in reality, it’s kind of a zero-sum thing, because you’re going to win with that card anytime that you play it – it just depends on which other winning card you take the trick from…

 Likewise, the Thief cards are guaranteed points as you steal someone else’s VP token.  Again, be the best at being dealt these cards.  (Even if someone plays these cards randomly from your hand as a result of an Assassin, you’ll still get the benefit – seriously, just have the most of these for an instant advantage).

The hand size in each successive round decreased by one, but I’m not sure why.  You’ll play a total of 55 tricks in the game, but there is no bonus for succeeding in any particular inning.  As you near the end of the game, you’ll spend more time shuffling than actually playing.  Not exactly what I’d call a climactic finish.

The rules include a hard mode where the hand size does matter.  You make a bet (with your own earned crowns) on how many tricks you’ll think you’ll win in that round.  If you win, you get your bid back as well as a measly bonus crown.  If you miss, you lose your bid.  If you make a null bid, you again get a measly single bonus crown.  It feels like Oh Hell, but without the 10x multiplier to make the payoff for a correct bid worthwhile.

It’s unclear to me how you make your bid in the first round, as you don’t start with any crowns.  Also, if you make a large bid in the first round and then lose it, you’ll again not have any crowns to make a reasonable bid.  It feels like the best way to succeed is to always bid zero (as you’ll generally miss your bid and lose your stake of zero crowns, and best case scenario is getting one crown when your hand is so bad that you can’t take any tricks) – and otherwise simply trying to win as many tricks as possible as in the easy mode.   As the rules for this mode didn’t make a lot of sense, we never actually tried this version.

If you’re in the market for a new trick taking game, and you want to support a new design team, you can give this one a look.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor