Guardian
Alert
Combat
Support
Type
Power to Protect
Gains Might to Protect Leader
As a sponsor, during combat, use this power to set the base might of your ships equal to the number of your leader’s committed ships this encounter.
Legacy: If a leader has at least one sponsor, its ships have triple base might.
Imbued with a forgotten magic of old, a race of large golems were equipped to watch over an ancient artifact of great importance to their creators. Unfortunately, tomb raiders took that artifact long ago, so the Guardians now seek a suitable replacement that can trigger their protection protocol.
Sponsor: Combat
Mandatory
Wild Flare
As a sponsor, during combat, you may discharge this flare to increase the aur value of your leader’s driver by four.
Sponsor: Combat
Super Flare
As a leader, during combat, you may discharge this flare to set the base might of your ships equal to triple the number of sponsors in your fleet this encounter.
Leader: Combat
Modifications
- Originally the power to “guard”. Changed to the power to “protect” to remove redundancy.
- Guardian’s legacy triples the might of a leader’s ships if the leader has any sponsors. This legacy creates additional incentive for leaders to commission sponsors for invaders to commit more ships. If an alien only has one ship, the legacy can help close the gap against an alien with four that doesn’t gain a sponsor, but the gap will only widen if the opponent gets sponsors too. Aliens like Zipper and Bouncer who can restrict sponsorships become much more impactful with this legacy in effect, Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Guardian’s power works only as a sponsor, so it needs to get commissioned to see use. Guardian’s power is very attractive in combat, so it is likely to be commissioned quite often.
- If you want to commission Guardian, be sure to commit a high number of ships as an invader. The more ships you commit, the more powerful Guardian’s bonus will be. 16 extra might will be much more impactful than 4.
- The leader and Guardian both need to factor in the number of ships they are committing. To get the maximum value of 16, both the leader and Guardian need to commit four ships.
- Though Guardian’s combat bonus is mighty, invaders won’t want to accept it if Guardian is winning in dominion. Shared victories are Guardian’s bread and butter, so try to keep pace with the other aliens unless you obtain a strong cache to help win on your own.
- Guardian is most vulnerable as a leader, so long as it doesn’t have its super flare. Winning encounters against it is the best way to restrict its power when struggling against it.
Development Notes
- Guardian’s power is mechanically quite similar to my redesigned Symbiote, another support/combat hybrid power. Both aliens gain power from sponsors, though Guardian is specifically sponsor-only while Symbiote is actor-only. Symbiote’s power is dependent on the number of allies it has, making it potentially more powerful in larger matches. Guardian’s power is much easier to max out with its impressive 16 base power. All it requires is committing four ships along with its leader, compared to Symbiote needing three allies in its fleet. Interestingly, both aliens have a max combat bonus of 16 in a standard match, though that value increases to 28 for Symbiote with a max alien count of 8. The balance between the two aliens looks to be that Guardian can get more might for less, but Symbiote can use its power more often.
- I wanted to make sure Super Symbiote is balanced with Super Guardian. Super Guardian gains triple might as a leader from its sponsors, which makes it strictly better than my Symbiote. However, my design allows for Super versions to be better than base versions of aliens since they are dependent on the flare. What I try to avoid are Super powers being strictly better than one another, which is generally not an issue since they are so different from one another. Guardian triples the base might of its ships from each sponsor. In a standard match, that is a max combat bonus of 36 with four ships. With 8 aliens, that increases to 54. Symbiote simply doubles the might of its ships after applying its base bonus, giving it a max bonus ranging from 32 to 56. With both of these powers being sponsor-based, I think the amount of potential overkill from these super flares is reasonable. Between the two, Super Symbiote is stronger, though its power is always dependent on maximizing its sponsors. Super Guardian can do more with less, since it gains more might from each individual sponsor. Super Symbiote gets higher highs since it doubles the total value.
- Guardian can also be compared to Cavalry and Scholar, other aliens that provide additional might as a sponsor. Cavalry’s might is dependent on the pods in its cache, while Scholar starts out weak and scales over time. Guardian’s 16 max might is powerful, but this will eventually decrease as aliens run short on ships, and Guardian’s power drops from its max value rather quickly with each ship removed. Scholar will eventually outpace Guardian in as few as 4 encounters, depending on how many ships it committed.
- Guardian is yet another simple combat power that nevertheless adds a new interesting dynamic to the game of Cosmic. It incentivizes both the user and the alien that commissions them to commit maximum ships, giving the invader an edge when it comes to being more enticing. Guardian’s combat bonus is on the level of defensive Macron, which can be very difficult to overcome without another combat power or a strong pod. However, if aliens are too dependent on Guardian, it will effectively just become Parasite and win solo. Similar to Macron, Guardian’s power has limited timing, making it highly vulnerable as invader and defender. Its ships are quite valuable due to how its power works, so it has to ensure it doesn’t lose too many as a leader.
- A guardian is simply one who protects others. Guardians are commonly used in fiction to watch over ancient temples and other important places to keep out intruders. They often take the form of giant stone statues that come to life to attack the intruders. In Cosmic, the Guardians specifically gain power in pursuit of protecting another, as if activating a special protection protocol.