Fan Designed Cosmic Expansion Set Discussion

for Monday November 21, 2011 (88 Comments + 9 from the project's group page) Discussion PDF

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Peter Olotka: Phil Fleischmann did this alien Flares: Wild: When you are a main player, before cards are played, you may declare one Encounter Card value to be "wild" for any player who plays such a card during that encounter.

Super: Attack 04 cards that you play are also "wild."

Peter Olotka: So for openers, lets see how Joker interacts with other aliens. Any obvious conflicts or issues?

Josh Consalvo: I like it.

Zachery Gaskins: How would it interact with Oracle, or more importantly, Gambler?

Zachery Gaskins: If Joker doesn't announce the value of his card until both are revealed, then it pretty much “zaps” Oracle since he has no information to play against.

Zachery Gaskins: Against Gambler, it could be played in one of three ways:
1) Gambler normally waits until the opponent's card value is shown to make his claim. If we favor Gambler, Joker must declare what his wild card's value is, to which Gambler can then claim in response.
2) Or, Gambler makes his claim, to which Joker can either call his bluff or not (which resolves), and then declare the value of his wild card.
3) Timing Rule. Ecch.

Zachery Gaskins: What this power sounds like is an attempt to make Gambler less appetizing since that power expects all players to know the deck, where in Joker's case, only he needs to know what is _possible_ to be played rather than what has actually shown up. I dunno, it seems like a Mac vs PC battle.

Zachery Gaskins: Although we aren't trying to accommodate multi-power setups, you couldn't have Magician/Joker because if the opponent selects an Artifact there's nothing to do with it.

Zachery Gaskins: Joker: The power to have 11 “I win” cards in the deck barring any mega-huge advantage from aliens like Virus or Industrialist (who can bring spreads greater than 40).

Bill Eberle: If someone can find the link to the BBG thread(s) for this alien, please post it. I've tried with no success. Thanks.

Zachery Gaskins: As a finesse power, Joker can cause certain strategic Artifacts to hit the discard pile and prevent them from being played/stolen (Tubes, EC, and Quash come to mind), but the "I win" aspect of his power puts him on a power level similar to Pacifist with his 15 Negotiates. So in that sense, the difference in the number of those unbeatables (4 cards in the standard deck) is being equated to the ability to bury Artifacts that Joker doesn't want in play, whose value depends on the other aliens in play and the generally unpredictable flow of the game.

Bill Eberle: ps I agree with Zach's comparison of this power vs Gambler. What twist can we add here to make the Joker really unique?

Jack Reda: I have an alien like this with one difference. The wild card can only be declared as a card that is in the discard pile. The alien can look through the discard pile at any time the wild is played. I love the "wild card" idea, but my instinct is that ANY encounter card in the game is too much leverage. Once there are encounter cards that have been discarded, there's always one that has already won an encounter. I know other aliens have flexibility to make “mid ranged” encounter cards more effective. If limiting to the discard pile seems too constraining, it might be worth looking at letting Joker turn any non-encounter card into an encounter that has been discarded. (2 thumbs up)

Zachery Gaskins: The idea of limiting the wild to “whatever is in the discard pile” seems interesting. The first image I had was of the T-1000 in Terminator 2 that was able to mimic any object it touched. Not that I wish to change the theme of the power - and we have multiple powers that are thematically about copying/mimicry - but perhaps play into the idea that the race has the technology to replicate things it has recently seen using the power of artifacts?