The warp (capitalized as Warp until the current edition) is the area in which lost ships are placed. Once in the warp, a ship cannot be used until it is recalled through regroup or released through a game effect such as Mobius Tubes.
In previous editions, the warp was a hexagonal board that players would place their planet systems around. In the current edition, the warp is a free-standing circular board, and features a scoring track that players can use to keep track of their progress toward the five foreign colonies needed to win the game.
The Healer may free other players' ships as soon as they enter the warp.
The Remora may free one of his ships from the warp whenever another player does so.
The Warpish adds the number of all players' ships in the warp to his total in every encounter.
The Zombie's ships never go to the warp. In addition, it may free other players' ships from the warp as part of a deal. The Observer protects its allies in the same way.
The Sniveler may whine if it has the most ships in the warp to force the other players to either allow it to take all of its ships out, or place their own ships in the warp until they all have the same amount as the Sniveler.
The Eon and Mayfair editions included variant Warps printed on the reverse sides of their respective Warp boards.
The Praw
The Praw was introduced in Eon's ninth expansion. The Praw itself was a small area adjacent to the Warp and was a more permanent holding area than the Warp. If the number of all players' tokens in the Warp ever equaled or exceeded "critical mass" (the number of players times three), then all tokens in the Warp would descend into the Praw. Tokens could not be directly released from the Praw; instead, whenever a player was able to release a token from the Warp (as part of regroup, for rewards, etc.), he or she had the option to raise a token from the Praw back to the Warp instead. With this variant, when Mobius Tubes or Warp Break was played, the player could choose to release all applicable tokens in either the Warp (except those in the Praw) or the Praw (skipping the Warp) back to colonies.
The Fan
The Fan was introduced in Mayfair's base set. The Fan itself was a series of colored sections, corresponding to each of the player colors, extending out from the Warp. It was a less permanent holding area than Eon's Praw but was notably more complicated.
Rules for the Fan:
During setup, a marker would be placed on the Fan section corresponding to the color of the player going first. At the end of each encounter, the marker would move to the next Fan section (regardless of whose turn it was), skipping any colors not in the game.
If any tokens would be lost to the Warp as a result of a challenge, they would instead be placed into the Fan section that the marker was on (regardless of the color of the section or the color of the tokens). Tokens in Fan sections were not considered to be in the Warp and were immune to all game effects (including ones like Mobius Tubes); however, this was still considered "going to the Warp," so consolation could still be collected and powers like Zombie could still be used at this time.
Each time the Destiny Pile was flipped, all tokens in the Fan section of the corresponding color would move to the Warp, unless the card was a Reverse Cone card. If a Wild were drawn, the color of the player chosen to be the defense would determine the Fan section that would have its tokens moved to the Warp.
The Fan was not nearly as popular among hardcore Cosmic players as the Praw was.
