Maybe I've always played it wrong but I found Cosmic Encounter horribly unbalanced and very random. My friendship group used to play it as a warm-up game before other games so I have a lot of experience with it but almost none of it I found enjoyable.

Either I just couldn't wrap my head around a winning strategy or we were getting the rules wrong because it was just miserable, and I say that even winning my fair share of games, but often times it felt like I didn't do anything particularly different to deserve that victory.