Animal
Alert
Support
Resource
Destroy
Type
Power to Party
Throws Parties After Victory
As an actor, after winning an encounter, use this power to throw a party. You and each of your allies each draft one pod.
As a sponsor, after commission, use this power to ravage one ship belonging to each leader that did not commission you.
Legacy: After commission, if a fleet contains 3 or more aliens, each alien in that fleet may draft one pod.
The Animals love a good party, and they’ll find any excuse to throw one. A birthday, a wedding, a funeral, these frivolous folk are ready to get down and cut loose no matter the occasion. If you’ve got a big event coming up, consider inviting them to liven things up. Otherwise, they may crash your party in more ways than one.
Actor: Encounter
Sponsor: Commission
Mandatory
Wild Flare
During any warpfall, you may discharge this flare to cause a Cosmic Quake. Burnout.
Any: Warpfall
Super Flare
When using your power to ravage ships, you may discharge this flare to ravage two ships instead of one.
Invader: Contact
Modifications
- Animal’s legacy encourages sponsors but also discourages powerful sponsors, as taking on at least 2 sponsors gives you a free pod but also gives it to the ally. With aliens like Cavalry or Philanthropist that can assist with pods as a sponsor, there can be a strategic advantage to inviting them. Aliens that greatly benefit from pods like Virus and Merchant can be risky prospects unless inviting them alone, but you miss out on getting the pod yourself if you don’t meet the minimum number. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Animal’s power is designed to encourage others to join forces with it, whether a leader or sponsor. If Animal wins, everyone involved gets a pod, and not inviting it causes the loss of ships, making Animal a fairly popular sponsor all-around.
- Each of your wins will be making your allies stronger too, which can be dangerous if they later become your enemies. Winning solo can be valuable if possible, as only you will get the reward from it. Changing up your allies will also allow Animal to reap the most rewards from the effect.
- Having Animal on your side incentivizes you to win, as whatever pod you use to succeed could be replaced with something better. Aliens tend to be more motivated to win as the invader, but joining on the defense gives a defender at least something to gain from winning other than rebuffing the enemy.
- Animal’s ravaging effect isn’t too punishing, as aliens don’t get too many turns as a leader in a match. It’s generally only notable if there are other ship destruction effects like Cudgel or Assassin that can compound into something much more dangerous. Aliens like Healer and Observer can trivialize it even further.
Development Notes
- The theming of “Animal” being a “party animal” is on-point. Highly intuitive in relation to the function of the power. Animal throws a party when winning, and everyone goes home with a goodie bag. It makes sense that the special occasion might result in lax restrictions from the Federation. In addition, when Animal isn’t invited, it “crashes” the party by destroying one of the random ships, evoking some savageness from the animal concept in more of a frat house kind of way.
- Mechanically, Animal is similar to General, only providing equal rewards to all allies when winning instead of gaining more rewards just by having more allies. As a resource gainer, Animal is much weaker than General, but General offers less incentive for allies to join it.
- A recurring issue with “ally-focused” powers is that they often get reduced to simply being a worse version of Parasite. Since Parasite can freely join any side, an alien that can only pressure an opponent to allow them to join could be seen as either redundant or strictly worse. That was one of the motivations behind my change to Parasite subtracting value from the side it joins, as aliens like Animal are inherently buffed due to their effects letting them potentially join just as easily without that downside.