Hunger

Alert

Destroy

Resource

Type

Power to Gnaw

Always Hungry

During any warpfall, use this power to either scrap a pod from your cache or ravage a pod from the invader’s cache. If it is your warpfall, you may instead scrap a pod from your cache and ravage a pod from every other alien’s cache.

At any time, if you have no pods in your cache, use this power to snatch two pods from each other alien.

Legacy: At the start of each orientation, the invader abducts one pod from each other alien.

A species who exist in a state of perpetual starvation, the Hunger have evolved to become the ultimate eating machines. Existing as mere floating heads, they can no longer manifest flesh, muscle, or limbs, as they could not sustain such body features without devouring them in seconds. Though unintentional, their unending appetite will ensure they aren’t the only ones to go hungry.

Any: Warpfall
Any: Any

Mandatory

Wild Flare

As a leader, after arrival, you may discharge this flare to probe the next aur in any forge. Either scrap that pod or add it to your cache. If you add it to your cache, this flare gains burnout.

Leader: Arrival

Super Flare

When using your power to scrap or ravage a pod, you may discharge this flare to scrap or ravage up to two pods instead of one.

Any: Warpfall

Modifications

Originally the power of “Extra Helpings”. Changed to a punchier verb with a closer relation to the concept of Hunger. Hunger is said to “gnaw” at you, and a person who is hungry gnaws on food.
The original power only snatches pods for itself. The original power simply takes the pods and keeps them, with a focus on gaining resources instead of losing them.
Original Super Hunger can choose to either keep the pods, gift them, or scrap them. I opted to restrict it to vaporizing to preserve the theme of the hunger expanding.
Hunger’s legacy gives everyone a facsimile of Hunger’s original power, gaining one pod from everyone during their orientation. It instills that hunger into the invader, actually providing them with resources instead of taking it away. Though it does take resources from others to facilitate it, so every alien is incentivized to use their best pods before they are lost. Aliens like Miser and Cryo who can protect their pods greatly appreciate this legacy, since it just provides free pods with either no downside or a greatly diminished one. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Hunger has a flexibility with its power where it can swap between hurting the opponent and helping itself. It can use this decision in order to influence alliances.
As with Monk, Hunger must have zero pods in its cache to activate the second clause of its power. Support pods with specific timings can make this feat difficult, so Hunger can use its power to scrap them, assuming it doesn’t want to use them.
If Hunger starts with a weak cache, it can dispose of it fairly quickly using the resources of its peers. Aliens with weak caches may want to befriend Hunger so that they can empty their caches faster.
The biggest risk of Hunger is forcing resupplies. Aside from the passive bonus to Benefactor, aliens only get two free resuppiles before they start needing to sacrifice their bases. Aliens can use backer boons and pod-gaining powers to keep their caches stocked, but keeping them too well-stocked puts them at risk of Hunger getting some good resources.
Hunger is effectively immune to compensation, since no one wants to deplete Hunger of resources that will allow it to snatch everyone’s pods. Zapping a Hunger with zero pods is also usually fruitless. Unless Hunger is currently the invader or you are about to deactivate their power with this victory, it will only buy one encounter to prevent the power from activating.
Multiple encounters become more difficult with Hunger in play, since you need at least 4 pods if Hunger is targeting you. It can become even worse if other alien snatchers are involved like Outlaw or Gale are involved. Machine can be especially crippled by Hunger if it gets on its bad side.

Development Notes

From the thematic perspective, the biggest challenge with Hunger was to distinguish it from other gluttonous aliens Glutton and Mouth. Both are themed around eating more by taking pods, and Hunger is the same in just a different form. When thinking about the power of hunger, it brings to mind the concept of famine, an insidious force capable of bringing about apocalypse. It sets a completely different tone than someone with the wealth and appetite to take more or a being with the biological capacity to consume more. Hunger could potentially be called “Famine”, but perhaps that’s too on-the-nose given there are no other aliens directly named after the Four Horsemen. It’s interesting to imagine a themed game involving Hunger, Assassin, Disease, and Hate.
The fundamental issue with the original Hunger design is how it overlaps with Outlaw and Pickpocket, two other aliens that get to snatch pods fairly regularly. Though Hunger only activates once per campaign in comparison to Pickpocket’s every encounter, that distinction only matters if the invader wins. Hunger also always targets the invader instead of getting to choose anyone who inhabits Pickpocket’s system, meaning Hunger starts out as the superior alien but can become worse by the end. Outlaw uses its power less often than both aliens, but its power acts as a deterrent to ward off enemy sponsors, giving it utility beyond simply the resources.
Since Hunger snatches two pods from each other alien, the number of pods it receives from its power scales with the number of aliens in the match, ranging from 6 to 14. While the larger “resupply” can be beneficial to Hunger, it can also make it more challenging to deplete the cache again to use the power more than once. It is fitting for an 8-player match that it takes longer to use the power, since it matches the issues of many invader-only powers that rarely get to use their powers. For a standard match of 5 aliens, Hunger gets a typical 8-pod restock, the same as a resupply. Getting at least 6 pods is useful to prevent the power from being spammed too easily, since Hunger’s mere existence can put something of a time limit on the match if you can’t deal with it.
Making Hunger’s power mandatory is crucial for the flavor of the idea. Similar to Glutton and Mouth, hunger is not something one can turn off. In contrast to those other two, Hunger is a more decisively negative feeling, which better fits Hunger being more of a punishment power than simply a resource gainer. I instead gave Hunger the choice between eating its own pods or the invader’s, allowing a choice that can promote alliances. Players are incentivized to be on Hunger’s good side to protect their pods during their most important encounters, especially aliens with invader-only powers.
Instead of having a power like Pickpocket or Outlaw, I changed Hunger to act more like Mutant. Mutant’s power revolves around always having pods in its cache, with mine also providing a unique pool of pods specific to Mutant. My version of Hunger lacks the unique pool, but it similarly never needs resupplies. Instead, its focus is on making everyone other than itself more likely to need resupplies. It invokes a pod famine that pod-gaining aliens like Glutton and Doctor can effectively deal with. Destroying caches will accelerate the destruction of bases, which can inevitably lead to the destruction of powers. Since my Mutant doesn’t have the ability to snatch pods, it opens the design space for Hunger to take it as part of its own power.
I adore the thematic synergy that Hunger has with Monk. Monk can effectively use hunger in order to fuel its own power, since losing its pods faster will allow it to use its own power.
The power idea reminds me a bit of Philanthropist and Butler. Philanthropist can gift a pod, while Butler can snatch one if the target allows it. Similar to Philanthropist, Hunger can slowly rid itself of weak pods, and it doesn’t even need to participate in the encounter to do so. However, it lack Philanthropist’s ability to put junk in enemy hands. Hunger is strictly designed around limiting resources.
I considered having Hunger act as one of the few aliens that can vaporize pods like Mouth, but I don’t think it fits with the idea of ravaging pods. It works much better with Mouth’s power, where you are choosing from a set of pods to vaporize.
Looking at other aliens in this design space, there aren’t many that simply ravage pods without gaining resources for itself. The first one to be released was Tide, which has a secondary win-based effect that does let it gain resources. It is one of the criticisms leveraged at Assassin that it only hurts others rather than helps itself. That’s why I wanted my design of Hunger to facilitate its resource-gain power, allowing it to scrap its own pods quickly. It’s also why I increased the rate of the power’s use, since it’s no longer as impactful as a power that snatches pods each time it is used.
I think Hunger can still stand as a green alert alien, as it serves as a useful introduction to the idea that pods are not strictly good to have. It can teach a new player the value in pruning one’s cache, in the same vein as Philanthropist, another green alert alien. It also effectively gives the player infinite resupplies, so they don’t have to worry about the limited resupply rule themselves. The biggest downside is the effective time limit that it places on the match, since other aliens have to worry about running out of pods and resupplies. But that factor can be useful to teach the importance of backer boons. The most important factor is that the user of Hunger and the opponents don’t have many complicated decisions to make. Since Hunger only snatches and ravages, it doesn’t have to know how good one pod is from the next to effectively use its power. It just needs to properly decide when to ravage and when to scrap.
I wanted to give Hunger a more distinct identity as a pod snatcher that also better encapsulates its theme. The original power takes advantage of the fact that gaining pods and losing pods is neither strictly good nor bad, since the strength of a pod affects how useful it is. Hunger’s power being manual and forcing the user to accept the cards means that no player involved has any interesting decisions to make. The effect simply happens each orientation. I wanted to tweak the conditions a bit to make it more engaging for everyone involved, while still keeping it green alert. Changing the trigger seemed to be the key to make it work.
While “hunger” can refer to the body’s physiological urge to consume food, it can more broadly refer to one’s desire or drive for anything. In the context of Hunger, the alien has a literal hunger for pods, which creates a more figurative hunger for pods in other aliens. Even though pods are not food, it falls in line with other “eating” aliens also dealing with pods.