Acme

Alert

Essence

Combat

Control

Type

Power to Exaggerate

Wields Secret Weapons

As a leader, after arrival, you may use this power to prime one “secret weapon” beside your flagship as your kicker. After contact, trigger your secret weapon. If your opponent deployed a type of fleet listed on the secret weapon, activate the secret weapon’s effect. Otherwise, the secret weapon is vaporized with no effect.

Legacy: Each alien manifests a kicker and intimidate pod and adds them to their cache. Aliens subtract 5 might from their fleet if priming a kicker or intimidate pod.

While the strength of most aliens is well-known, the Acme are a difficult species to gauge. They have invented a series of gadgets that makes them unnaturally unpredictable. Those who fall for their tricks will find themselves overwhelmed and humiliated in oftentimes hilarious ways.

Leader: Arrival

Optional

Wild Flare

As a leader, after arrival, you may prime this flare as a kicker. If opposed by a brigade, discharge this flare to double the might of your encounter card, and make opposing ships impervious this encounter. Burnout.

Leader: Arrival

Super Flare

If your opponent deploys an envoy after you prime a secret weapon, you may discharge this flare to rebound your secret weapon to your nexus instead of triggering it.

Any: Any

Secret Weapons

Giant Mallet – Brigade: Add 20 might to your fleet. Enemy ships are impervious this encounter.
Falling Anvil – Brigade: This secret weapon has 5 might. Either reduce the might of the enemy fleet by the might of this secret weapon or rebound it and double the secret weapon’s might.
Banana Peel – Brigade: If either fleet’s driver has 13 or higher might, the higher driver becomes a 00.
Big Boom – Brigade: Add the might of your opponent’s driver to your fleet. Envoy: If you deployed a brigade, all of your committed ships are destroyed, and you lose the encounter.
Small Umbrella – Brigade: If your fleet loses the encounter, your ships become impervious.
Extend-O-Claw – Envoy: Snatch one pod from your opponent’s cache for each of your committed ships. Enemy ships are impervious this encounter.
Gag Blaster – Envoy: Gain two boons for each of the opponent’s committed ships.

Modifications

Acme is my own original alien I designed for my custom Cosmic expansion.
Originally I designed this power to allow the opponent to surrender in exchange for making their ships impervious and still counting as a win. I wasn’t fond of the effect wasting encounters, so I changed it to trigger situationally based on whether the user plays a brigade or envoy.
Acme’s legacy gives every alien a kicker and intimidate pod. Since intimidate pods can be primed like kickers by sponsors and mistaken for kickers, aliens have to gamble on which one opponents are using. Aliens lose some might if using one of these kickers, making them easier to challenge directly by an alien not using one of theirs.

Tips

Pay close attention to the secret weapons that Acme primes, as it will be unable to use them again until it cycles through its essence. With a pool of seven weapons, it needs to trigger five weapons to start a new cycle, which can take quite a bit of time as a leader-only power.
Giant Mallet and Falling Anvil are the two primary tools for adding guaranteed might to your fleet. Giant Mallet is stronger but makes enemy ships impervious. Falling Anvil is more flexible, allowing the user to save the effect for a bigger threat later. However, the threat will be lost if the opponent deploys an envoy, so the user will need to utilize it carefully. Since Giant Mallet’s combat threat is the most potent, Acme becomes much less of a threat after using it.
Banana Peel and Big Boom make it risky for opponents to play their strongest pods against Acme to compete against Giant Mallet and Falling Anvil. Even an alien like Virus would need to be careful around Banana Peel since it reduces a stronger encounter pod to 00. At the same time, Acme has to be careful about playing too low, since they could still lose to an opponent playing a 10 or 12.
Extend-O-Claw and Gag Blaster provide Acme defense against compensation by preventing enemy ships from being destroyed.

Development Notes

As should be obvious by the name and design, Acme is designed around the power of cartoony hijinks such as those popularized by Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry. The power to “exaggerate” refers to both the animation principle of exaggeration as well as Acme’s ability to bluff by playing its secret weapons. Each of the secret weapons is designed around a common weapon used in classic cartoons.
The name “Acme” is a reference to the fictional Looney Tunes company that makes all of the tools and weapons used by Wile E. Coyote to catch the Roadrunner. The word “acme” also refers to the point at which something is the best or the most successful. It is an outlandish term for a species calling itself the most powerful, a reference to exaggerated fictional characters like Popeye and Mighty Mouse being unstoppably powerful compared to anything in real life. All of Acme’s secret weapons are designed to be a little odd in terms of Cosmic standards to match its unusual and cartoony nature.
Giant Mallet is a classic weapon wielded in cartoons to squish things flat in a cartoony non-lethal manner. In Cosmic, it increases the might of a fleet dramatically while making enemy ships impervious.
Falling Anvil is based around the gag of a falling anvil that squishes someone flat despite their efforts to dodge its shadow. The falling anvil in cartoons can take an impossibly long time to fall as if it is defying gravity. In Cosmic, the user can choose to activate it now for a small payoff, or rebound it to their nexus to activate later for a much funnier payoff.
Banana Peel is based on another classic gag where someone slips and falls due to stepping on a banana peel. In cartoons, bananas are known as the slipperiest object next to ice. In Cosmic, I captured the idea of slipping and falling by reducing a high attack pod to 00. It’s interesting to imagine a spaceship somehow slipping on a banana peel.
The Big Boom is based on the classic big bomb gag often used by antagonists in old cartoons. The user lights a fuse that causes a big explosion and everyone involved ends up covered in soot. Sometimes they humorously turn to dust after the initial impact. Due to its power, Big Boom is the only secret weapon with a strictly negative activation trigger, which also functions as a reference to the big bomb gag often ending up hurting the user instead of the intending target. It is designed to be the most impactful of the secret weapons, difficult to defeat in combat without a combat power. However, it also auto-loses to envoys, adding risk on the side of Acme as well. Therapist distress pods are especially dangerous given their timing.
The Small Umbrella is a gag where a character uses a tiny umbrella to slow their descent when falling. Somehow the small object is able to act as a parachute and allow them to gently land on the ground. In Cosmic, this umbrella makes the user’s ships impervious, acting as a more defensive weapon.
The Extend-O-Claw is a cartoony grabbing device that is used to snatch things from a distance. In Cosmic, this device is used to snatch pods from an opponent aiming for compensation, while also preventing the target from gaining compensation at a cost of keeping their ships alive.
The Gag Blaster is based on the cartoon gag where someone shoots a gun at another character and a flag shoots out of it with a word like “Bang!” or “Boom!” on it. It is a fake gun used to intimidate someone and then laugh at how afraid they were after the user “shoots” at them. Instead of gaining resources, the Gag Blaster destroys the enemy’s authority if they attempted to play cowardly. If negotiating, it gives Acme more of an edge in negotiation, and it also makes it more difficult for the enemy to maintain their power. Even if not aiming for those options, it acts as security against compensation since it prevents ship destruction.
I designed the seven secret weapons to have synergy with one another, pressuring opponents to deploy either brigades or envoys depending on which secret weapons have already been used. The Gag Blaster and Extend-O-Claw are the only weapons that activate in response to an envoy, and they make compensation a riskier play against Acme if they haven’t been used yet. Giant Mallet and Falling Anvil threaten raw power, with each one having its own associated downside. Meanwhile Banana Peel and Big Boom punish aliens that attempt to overcome that raw power with more raw power, with Big Boom adding some incentive for aliens to attempt negotiation. The Small Umbrella is the least threatening of the seven weapons, instead acting as a defensive bonus if an encounter looks unwinnable.
I considered if Acme should be red alert considering the amount of mind games it can entail, but I don’t think it’s any more complex or punishing than Nightmare. The high amount of effects that make opposing ships immune makes it a little friendlier of a power, so long as other players are familiar with its essence.
I considered if Acme should be forced to use its secret weapons in every encounter as a leader. The original version of the power allows the opponent to retreat, which Acme may not want to allow. But the updated version doesn’t have such a mechanic, making it almost strictly better to use a secret weapon than not. The only reason that comes to mind is that the user may want to avoid wasting a secret weapon on an encounter they are sure to lose, and there’s nothing compulsive about Acme’s design that would cause it to make sense thematically. For the sake of flexibility, I think it is fine being optional without being pointlessly so.
I also considered if secret weapons should rebound if the opposing fleet is incorrect, but I found this made the power too slow for a leader-only effect. It also means that weapons cannot be wasted if the opposing fleet is wrong. Acme’s power is about winning mind games, which is very much in-line with the Bugs Bunny nature of its theme.
Acme is comparable to other essence aliens in a broad sense. None of the other ones use essence as kickers, but Alien and Nightmare do activate essence in combat. Acme doesn’t have the delay that these aliens do and doesn’t have to assign them to specific aliens ahead of time. As a trade-off, many of Acme’s abilities make enemy ships impervious in exchange for firepower, which can lead to Acme falling behind in ship count and making it more difficult to deactivate or eliminate other aliens.
I designed the power such that trojans always bypass secret weapons. Trojans are a more serious form of weaponry that breaks through the unserious nature of Acme’s power.
Acme is just shy of being the first alien alphabetically, with only Ace being in front of it.