Fan Designed Cosmic Expansion Set Discussion

Jefferson Krogh: Potent! Removing the entire “wild card” aspect makes the entire design much cleaner. I'd be afraid to go up against this guy. I don't see any rules problems when putting this up against Magician, Oracle, Pacifist, etc.
Seems ready for prime time, if you ask me.

Jefferson Krogh: History: Everything you've ever heard about the Grifters is a lie, especially everything they've told you. Better check your pockets and your planets; Grifter's probably already gone there and taken what they want! (1 thumb up)

Peter Olotka: Yes we are going to give JOKER a set of real wild cards in the deck!

Bill Eberle: Good, Jefferson Krogh.

Jefferson Krogh: Thanks, Bill! This is almost as much fun as playing Cosmic. Certainly is spurring me to jot down more ideas for future homebrews. (1 thumb up)

Peter Olotka: As Bill was just saying...The ultimate game is to design a game

Allen Varney: Is my “Super” stash part of my hand? Or is it separate? If I'm zapped, is the stash discarded or does it just go inert for the turn?

Peter Olotka: write it up

Peter Olotka: probably follow MISER as a lead

Allen Varney: “Your stash is not part of your hand. If your Grifter power is zapped, discard your stash.” (2 thumbs up)

Peter Olotka: Works for me

Stephen Sloboda: ...I hate it. Joker was better. This power doesn't even make sense.

Jefferson Krogh: I'm not too worried about GRIFTER trumping LOSER. That seems thematic, somehow. Also, there's something appealing about GRIFTER having the opportunity to waste an encounter to take a certain Flare or Artifact out of the game entirely. I doubt it would happen often, though.

Bill Martinson: Some suggested tweaks:

1. To avoid confusion vs. Oracle, I would move the “facedown” qualifer off of the original card and attach it to the “hot” card. So it doesn't matter whether your card was faceup because of Oracle — when you replace it with a “hot” card, the replacement goes face down. This does help you when facing Oracle, but that's okay because you can't afford to do it every time you face him (and Oracle is a powerhouse anyway).

2. Declarations are generally used for effects that are declared now but have their effect later (Loser, Mirror, etc.). Since Grifter's exchange is resolved immediately, I wouldn't phrase it as a declaration. This will also help bring “may use” together into a single unit for the bold/italics.
3. Other players are allowed to inspect the discard pile at any time, so the prohibition against this should specify a clear duration.
4. Capitalization and wording convention tweaks for FFG standards.

5. Allowing the exchange of a non-encounter card can be problematic, for several reasons.
(a) It completely trumps Loser. (b) The game engine is not designed for non-encounter cards to be revealed as encounter cards. There are “binary” effects that say “if you reveal an attack, x happens; if you reveal a negotiate, y happens” and these would be undefined in this case. Thus far it is not possible to reveal a card as anything other than an A or N (since Morph always resolves to one of those two), and this is a line that should only be crossed carefully and for a very good reason.
(c) Generates targetability questions such as “can Fido or Filch grab the card I am revealing *as an encounter card*?”
(d) Not crazy about an effect that lets you easily remove other players' Super flares from the game. Best not to open this whole can of worms, I think. You could possibly change it to “if there are no non-encounter cards to choose, you immediately lose the encounter” but this still has the cheesy Loser-tump effect.
6. It seems like the second part of the WILD should be a “must” rather than a “may”, to support the theme and also avoid running the offense out of encounter cards. Note that the player using Wild Grifter can use it “against” himself to get the best card out of the discard pile.
7. The SUPER can use a bit more explanation about how the stash is managed (per FFG conventions).

Ed. note - Bill's comments continued on next page