Knight

Alert

Resource

Control

Type

Power of Chivalry

Compels Opponents to Fight Honorably

As a leader, after arrival, use this power to challenge your opponent’s chivalry. You and your opponent each seal all pods in your caches in your nexus together as an “armory” and shuffle them. Then, swear one of the following “oaths” to declare how you will fight this encounter:

With Honor: If there is an odd number of pods in the armory, ravage one. Your opponent claims half of the pods. You claim the rest.
With Valor: Your opponent claims four pods from the armory. Then you claim four. Draft from the forge if not enough pods. During upkeep, your opponent claims pods from the armory until they have the same amount they originally had. You claim the rest.
With Nobility: Your opponent claims the same number of pods they originally had from the armory. You claim the rest.
With Strength: You and your opponent reclaim your original pods.

Legacy: During arrival, if leaders do not have the same number of pods in their caches, leaders seal their caches together as an armory and swear an oath to fight with honor.

The Knights serve as the stalwart guardians of the Dominion Galaxy, upholding an oath to maintain peace among alien races. They are bound by their oath to fight honorably and can compel even the most underhanded rapscallions to do the same. None would deny their commitment , but some have questioned their definition of honor.

Leader: Arrival

Mandatory

Wild Flare

As a leader, after arrival, you may discharge this flare to snatch up to two pods from the opponent. The opponent drafts one pod for each snatched.

Leader: Arrival

Super Flare

When using your power, before swearing an oath, you may discharge this flare to probe the pods in the armory.

Leader: Arrival

Modifications

Original alien is Whirligig. Completely reworked its theme to distinguish it from Vortex/Dervish, as the two were so similar that Whirligig’s power had to be renamed since Dervish already had the power to “whirl”.
Original Whirligig has the power to swirl.
Original power is optional.
Original Whirligig’s power is similar mechanically, but its options are slightly different. Thematically, Whirligig has no reference to an “oath” or “armory”. Its three options are:
- Even Steven: Same as ‘With Honor’
- As-Is: Same as ‘With Nobility’
- Switcheroo: You and opponent swap the number of cards you originally had.
Switcheroo was removed as an option due to it not being as honorable as the other two. Replaced with my ‘with valor’ idea. Strength was added to replace the option of not using the power, since it’s functionally identical. Original Whirligig also gets the extra pod if fighting with honor and the total number is odd. Knight makes the honorable choice and scraps it instead.
Knight’s legacy invokes honor among all aliens in the match. Every alien will always have the same cache size, similar to Mimic. Only aliens who can get their cache size to the same value as their opponent can ensure they keep their current pods. Aliens like Philanthropist that can freely reduce their cache size at-will can better handle this legacy, while aliens built around gaining a lot of pods like Healer or Genius will struggle more. Aliens that intentionally reduce their cache size like Porcupine can also benefit from this legacy since they will equalize when facing someone with many more pods. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

With Knight in play, avoid concocting a strategy that relies on specific strong pods. Knight can end up turning that strength against you.
Different circumstances create different incentives for Knight’s oath. If Knight has many more pods than the opponent, it will prefer to fight with valor or nobility over honor, since the latter will only give pods to the opponent. If Knight has few pods, fighting with honor could act as a de facto resupply. If Knight has strong pods, it can swear to fight with virtue, allowing the opponent to keep their pods as well.
If you have no encounter pods, consider holding off requesting a resupply until after Knight swears the oath, if possible. You can have your new cache bypass being placed in the armory. This strategy also works against Trader, Outlaw, and Vortex.
Fighting with valor is less risky as a defender than invader, since you can request a resupply if you end up with no encounter pods.

Development Notes

Knight is another type of power that is very wordy but simple enough to still be green alert. The original Whirligig was also green alert
I am glad I could modify Whirligig’s theme to be something more coherent and striking. The original power had too much crossover with Dervish/Vortex, simply being a “swirling” power instead of a “whirling” power. The three options it has don’t offer much flavor, since most are just silly words to match Whirligig’s silly name. Assigning them to the noble virtues of a Knight has much more roleplay potential, especially with all of them having the ability to subvert the opponent under an honest veneer.
Knight can be considered a variant of Trader and Vortex, acting as another alien that disrupts caches and punishes aliens with pod-generation powers. In contrast to the other two, Knight doesn’t directly invert the power of a cache. Instead, it attempts to “equalize” the power between the two sides, either shuffling the specific pods around or setting things up so both aliens have the same number of pods. Knight’s power can theoretically have no effect if fighting with honor, and the opponent might get all the good pods regardless of the choice. Trader and Vortex are “all or nothing” when it comes to exchanging caches. They don’t get to keep any of the pods they give away. Knight has a higher chance to keep its original pods the more it has compared to its opponent.
Knight’s theme is fairly straightforward. Fighting against someone while wielding twenty more pods than them is not honorable, so Knight’s power evens the odds and giving everyone a fighting chance. It is tied to the Knight’s concept of chivalry. They will not attack an unarmed or unaware combatant and are commonly depicted to even offer their opponent a weapon to make a fight fair.
I based the four knightly virtues off what is being accomplished by the effect. Honor puts both aliens on the same ground in terms of weaponry, valor requires the bravery to fight with fewer resources, nobility grants both aliens the same number of pods they originally had as a show of good faith, and strength is a promise that Knight will fight with the full power of its own pods and let the opponent do the same.
I also wanted to make sure each of the four options had a use-case so that none of the options are redundant or pointless. Strength’s purpose is obvious since it’s the same as not using its power. It’s important for when Knight wants to keep its own strong pods. Honor is the most reliable when Knight has fewer pods than its opponent, so it can equalize the two caches. Valor is more valuable as a defender when its opponent has a lot of pods, or when both aliens have very few pods. Nobility is useful when Knight has a lot of pods but suspects its opponent might have a higher quality cache.
Honor and valor are somewhat similar in design, since they both are different means of equalizing the caches. The primary difference is the limitation imposed by valor, which can be useful for cutting off support pods. It has more value when the opponent has few sponsors, especially if Knight has its own sponsors. When both aliens have very few pods, valor can be used to draft new pods, since the opponent will only claim the existing ones. Honor is definitely more useful as an invader, since it doesn’t run the risk of putting itself in a situation where it doesn’t receive any encounter pods. However, a truly valorous Knight can take the risk and choose to fight with valor as the invader regardless.
Given Knight’s honor-themed power, it made me hesitant to maintain the original optional design. Knight could potentially approach an alien with 20 pods vs. an opponent’s 1 and deem the fight fair, despite it being horrendously dishonorable. The primary issue is that making the power mandatory means that Knight can never keep its current cache as-is. If it has the 40 pod, the 30 pod, an M pod, and two Cosmic Zaps, it has to risk giving up these pods to the opponent, which is on-theme but self-defeating. Instead, I changed the framing so that Knight can swear an oath of strength to keep its original pods. It comes across as an honest means for Knight to maintain its current pods, since it is valuing its own strength in combat to avoid being “lawful stupid”. It can also be considered strength for Knight to fight with its own pods instead of relying on its opponent’s.
I knew that Whirligig’s original ‘switcheroo’ choice would not work with Knight’s sense of honor. The only time to use such a power would be when the opponent has more pods, and it would be unfair for Knight to do such a thing. All of the choices Knight has are designed to at least have the appearance of fairness in some regard. Knight only ends up with more pods when fighting with honor, which is a case when its opponent will have the same amount.
When designing the choice to fight with valor, I made sure to account for cases when there are fewer than 8 total pods to claim. The one case it doesn’t account for is an alien not drafting an encounter pod. This is meant to tap into the “valor” aspect of the power, since you need the bravery to use it due to your options potentially being limited. I imagine this option to be more useful as a defender, since Knight can request a resupply if getting no encounter pods while its opponent cannot. I went with four pods to keep options limited but not so limited that it feels claustrophobic. This option uniquely avoids the mutual information sharing that Trader suffers from, since there will likely be several pods that neither player sees until upkeep.
Mechanically I imagine the oath of strength will automatically return original pods to their owner’s caches so they don’t require anyone to view the pods to return them. Something like an undo button could work for this purpose, provided there are no aspects in the game that modify the pods while they are sealed. If so, it could be programmed to remember the original owners of the pods while the power is being used so that an automatic reclaim button can be added. It’s a more complicated way to handle the power being optional, but I think the thematic bonus is worth the extra effort.
Super Knight can use its power as a makeshift Mind, seeing the opponent’s pods and then fighting with strength. Or it can see the opponent’s pods are stronger than its own and swear a different oath to try and take some of them.
I like the theme of the Knight as one who fights with honor and can compel others to fight with honor as well. It works as part of the theme with Knight’s power of honor being so forceful that it makes other aliens honorable as well, but it also works in the sense of using a “Jedi mind trick” on their adversaries, as the Jedi are also knights.