Bully

Alert

Info

Resource

Support

Type

Power to Threaten

Threatens Opponents

As an actor, after arrival, use this power to threaten an enemy. That enemy must either let you probe pods in their cache up to the number of your committed ships or allow you to rebound their committed ships up to the number of your committed ships.

Legacy: If a fleet has more total ships, that fleet’s leader may probe up to 3 pods in the opponent’s cache.

In the Cosmos, one learns to project a sense of strength, even when it’s lacking. The Bullies aren’t particularly powerful, but woe be upon those who suffer defeat at their hands. If you find yourself at their mercy, consider yourself lucky if they let you off with a swirly.

Actor: Arrival

Mandatory

Wild Flare

As an actor, after the encounter, you may discharge this flare to limit any compensation or boons received by any player this encounter to one.

Actor: Encounter

Super Flare

As an actor, after arrival, you may discharge this flare to rebound one committed ship from each enemy.

Actor: Arrival

Modifications

Bully’s power is originally Brute. Swapped their names to more align with theming.
Original Brute allows the user to look at an enemy’s entire cache and take one card or rebound all of that enemy’s committed ships, with the opponent choosing which happens. My version limits Bully’s power based on its own committed ships while preserving the same effects.
Original power is optional. Power is virtually always useful. Not using it only has value in saving time, which isn’t as much of an issue in a digital format. Also mirrors power of Mite, which is mandatory.
Original Super Brute only works as an invader and ravages ships instead of rebounding them. Added actor timing and switched to rebounding to make effect less oppressive and no longer work on Macron.
Original Brute has a retrained version that released with Cosmic Odyssey. Its power only activates as a sponsor, and it offers the enemy a choice in rebounding all of their ships or probing pods up to the number of their committed ships and taking one. My version is based on Brute’s committed ships instead.
Bully’s legacy gives additional power to leaders with bigger overall fleets, rewarding alien with powers that can preserve their ship count. The effect no longer offers players a choice, but it also doesn’t let a pod be abducted. It locks the number of probed pods to 3 and specifically targets the opponent. Aliens with larger caches can avoid the issue of becoming too predictable from the info gain. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

When playing as Bully, your ship count is the source of your power. You need to commit many ships into an encounter to get the most use out of your power, but this also puts you at risk of losing a chunk of power. If you find a Warp Key with your power, consider taking it.
Target Bully’s planets with fewer ships on them, especially planets without bases. As long as you invade a planet with fewer than 4 ships, you can always commit 4 ships to greatly mitigate Bully’s power.
Bully is required to take a pod of the ones it probes. Consider letting your cache get probed when given the option if your cache is weak.
Inviting Bully to your fleet will effectively weaken the opponent most of the time, either removing ships or removing a threatening pod. Perhaps even more importantly, inviting Bully will prevent Bully from joining the enemy fleet.

Development Notes

Original Brute is considered one of the most oppressive powers in all of Cosmic, even compared to the likes of Virus and Crystal. With its power activating as an actor, it gets to use the power incredibly often, and presents aliens with a regular Morton’s Fork of a choice. Most of the time, Brute will steal the opponent’s strongest encounter pod, making it difficult to beat it when directly opposed to it. But the alternative is to rebound all of your ships in the encounter, essentially making the encounter a wash for you.
Original Brute also has an issue of being an arguably superior version of Mind. Being able to look at an enemy’s entire cache as an actor lets it quickly determine what everyone has, and it can even take one card. It’s also not limited in the same way as Mind of being able to view the cache of any enemy in the encounter, and the only recourse opponents have (other than zaps) is to remove themselves from the encounter, which is not generally desirable. Even using the power on the defense, where having ships in the encounter is only useful for might, is still threatening since it will cost the opponent a base if the ships are rebounded. Placing a limit on Brute in the form of the ships it has makes the effect much less oppressive.
My redesign of Bully is based on the proposed fix to Brute by Bill Martinson, creator of the Cosmodex. Brute’s intimidation scales with the number of committed ships it has in the encounter. Its probing is limited by the number of its committed ships, making it less useful against aliens with a larger cache. The more ships it loses, the less threatening it becomes. As long as an alien commits more ships than Bully, it can let Bully rebound its excess ships without losing out on the encounter, and it doesn’t have to give Brute a free pod. It also fits with the change of Bully’s power to be mandatory. It is like an untamed beast or a caveman, acting out of self-interest with little regard for war etiquette.
The retrain version of Brute also limits the power’s threatening ability, but it uses the target’s committed ships instead of Brute’s. This restriction gives more agency to the other players, giving Brute less access if they commit fewer ships. Thematically, I prefer Bully’s ships determining the threat level, since it seems weird for Bully to be less threatening because the opponent is physically weaker.
Bully is potentially most dangerous against Macron, an alien that can only send one ship unless acting as defender. It is a good test case for whether my version of Brute is oppressive, and I opted to give Macron an extra clause that makes it immune to rebounding. This change makes Macron effectively immune to Bully’s effect, since it can always choose the rebounding effect for no result. While this does punish Bully, it is more punishing to the other aliens, since Bully will end up targeting them more often.
I considered both a potential leader-only version of Bully and the sponsor-only version of Brute introduced in Cosmic Odyssey. Similarly-themed “brute force” aliens like Cudgel, Barbarian, and Warrior are specifically leader-only. Bully could potentially be sponsor only to represent a bully’s insecurity in conflict, but a bully as a leader with many allies would be just as confident as one in a sidekick role. At most, it could be that Bully requires at least one ally to use its power, but this seems like a needless complication for theming reasons only. Bully’s intimidation factor is represented by its ship count. If it has no ships, its power does nothing.
The freedom that Bully’s power grants allows one to “bully” a specific player very well. Similar to aliens like Vacuum, you can focus down one specific enemy and take their cards or kick them out of encounters. This does pose a risk of making the power too oppressive, but the limitation of needing many ships should keep this factor in check.
There is an argument to be made about Brute being a red alert alien in the same vein as Virus, especially original Brute. I think my version is toned down enough to be yellow alert, but I would definitely consider it on the borderline.