Fan Designed Cosmic Expansion Set Discussion

Mark Hawkinson: Neato. Here's a somewhat tweaked version. The only functional change is my attempt to simplify how the power works. Instead of choosing the value of your wildcard when you place it facedown, you USE your power to place your non-encounter card as a wildcard, then choose the value when you reveal it. The other tweaks are aimed at compressing the wording. Oh and I think I fixed an error in the way Bill worded Cosmic stasis.

Mark Hawkinson: JOKER Plays non-Encounter Cards as Wild Cards

You have the power to be wild.

You may USE this power to play any non-Encounter card facedown in a challenge as if it were an Encounter Card. As soon as your card is revealed, if you reveal a non-Encounter card, use this power to treat the card as a wild card. When you reveal a wild card, discard it and look through the discard pile for an Encounter card to replace it. If the revealed card is an Artifact, the Vulch may collect the card. After the encounter is concluded, the Encounter card you chose to play is removed from the game, except that the Filch may take the card.

History
The Fun-loving Jokers enjoy humiliating the conceited, mocking the powers that be, and causing general chaos. They seek not to rule, but to satirize the universe.

Notes
The recommended experience level for this power is Advanced. This is a Resource type power.
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New Expansion Set Game Rule - COSMIC STASIS (Jefferson Krogh)
If a COSMIC QUAKE occurs (Cosmic Conflict Expansion) and there is not enough cards for all players to draw a new hand, COSMIC STASIS is declared and the game ends in a universal draw.

Jefferson Krogh: Just a note on COSMIC STASIS: that was my idea to cover a situation where but there's no encounter cards left. It was responding to Zachery Gaskins' hypothetical situation. No reason it couldn't be used for any situation where a Cosmic Quake fails to unstick things, though.
I'll leave any other comments on Joker until tomorrow! Good night, all. (1 thumb up)

Zachery Gaskins: We'll probably need to go through all of the Flare effects and see if any of those can get access at either the Artifact or the replaced Encounter card, and hope the current Joker can stay as simple as possible.

Mark Hawkinson: BTW, what's the flare gonna be? possible idea: Timing reveal. Wild: if Joker is in the game give this flare to the Joker to play it, otherwise discard it. Replace your revealed encounter card with an encounter card of your choice from the discard pile. Super: when you use your power you may choose an encounter card that was removed from the game with the Joker.

Bill Eberle: Thanks, Mark. We'll look at this closely and come up with a “final” 2nd day version for our start tomorrow.

Phil Fleischmann: Wow! I didn't even know about this discussion until today. (I don't check fb as often as I should.)
Interesting point about the base power being weaker than Pacifist - fewer cards to use, they aren't absolute “auto-wins”, and you have to give up an Artifact - a very valuable card, instead of just an N. So if it needs more power, I'd say increase the number of available cards to use the power with: I'd say include one or more of: Reinforcements, Kickers, Rifts - whatever seems most balanced. I don't like the idea of using Flares in this way, because it means you can always keep someone else's flare out of their hands, which is no fun.

I have a few problems with the “replace from the discard pile” idea. First (and actually least important) is that it would no longer be in keeping with the Joker/Wild Card theme. When playing poker with wild jokers, if you have three aces and a joker, you don't search through the rest of the deck for the fourth ace, you just declare it to be the ace. Replacing a card with a card fished out of the discard pile is a fine idea for a power, but it shouldn't be called “Joker”, and its power shouldn't be called “being wild”. I know it doesn't *really* matter - but the aliens with names/powers/mechanics that don't match really bug me. Like the Mite, Shadow, Symbiote, Fodder, Kamikaze, Merchant.