Mutant
Alert
Resource
Type
Power to Regenerate
Regenerates Cache with Unique Pods
Setup: Manifest the mutant pool.
As a leader, after launch, you may use this power to draft pods from your mutant pool until you have 8 pods in your cache.
Legacy: When drafting pods, aliens may draft from the mutant pool.
When it comes to the Cosmic arms race, the ability to grow your own arms comes in handy. By harnessing their natural abilities, the Mutants are living munition factories. One has to wonder if they even know the Federation offers resupplies.
Leader: Launch
Optional
Wild Flare
As a leader, after launch, you may discharge this flare to draft one pod from the Mutant pool.
Leader: Launch
Super Flare
When using your power, you may discharge this flare to scrap up to three pods before regenerating.
Leader: Launch
Modifications
- Original Mutant takes pods from either the forge or other aliens to regenerate. Due to my difficulty rationalizing this thematically, I opted to have the pods be manifested instead of taken.
- Original Mutant has no pool of special pods. Check My Design page to find list of Mutant Pool pods.
- Modified the wild flare to match my version of the power, manifesting pods from the Mutant pool instead of stealing them from the enemy.
- Mutant’s legacy makes the Mutant pool public to all aliens, allowing Mutant’s unique pods to be utilized by everyone. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- To retrieve more pods from its pool, Mutant will want to use as many of its pods as possible so that it has fewer than eight as a leader. This means acting as a backward can be deleterious for it, unless it prefers pods from the forge/dark forge or wants to use its bounty to gain ships.
- Pods from Mutant’s pool can be both better and worse than pods from the forge, similar to the Dark Forge. Taking these pods from Mutant via compensation or other effects could be a blessing or a curse. Though bear in mind, taking pods away from Mutant lets it use its power more often.
- The timing of Mutant’s power makes it vulnerable to powers that steal pods during encounters such as Trader and Outlaw. Mutant can consider holding off on regenerating if opposing aliens of that type to reduce potential benefit being granted.
- Mutant possesses several unique artifacts in its pool as well as slime attack pods, which add might to its following encounter after being primed. Winning with a slime pod during Mutant’s first encounter can help set it up for a successful second encounter. Restless Leg can help Mutant make use of the combat bonus as an invader even after running out of fuel.
- Mutant’s pods return to its own pool when scrapped, so don’t count on getting new goodies added to the forge. If you want Mutant’s special pods, take them while it’s holding them.
Development Notes
- Thematically, the ‘stealing from other aliens’ aspect is the hardest aspect of the original power for me to rationalize, as it is unclear why Mutant is stealing from others if its power is regeneration. The history provides a bit of explanation, but I still don’t see the connection. The best explanation is that Mutant takes energy from other aliens to fuel its regeneration, but in practice original Mutant would work better as Filch than Filch’s original power.
- Mechanically, original Mutant has more options than my version, since their gains are someone else’s losses. Since my Mutant always takes from the same invisible source, its choice comes from when its uses its power and how it uses the pods it receives. To offset this limitation, I wanted Mutant to manifest pods from a pool of pods that includes Mutant-only pods, giving it additional options that other aliens won’t have unless they are stolen. Maybe the pods Mutant regenerates could have their own unique back, similar to dark pods.
- Mutant’s power is one of the limited areas where having the term “hand” actually adds immersion rather than taking it away, sense Mutant literally regenerates its hands. It only makes sense in an abstract sense though, as I’m not sure what a “hand” is supposed to be in-universe or why they would call it that. Especially since many aliens don’t have hands.
- Mutant is the sort of alien that makes me question whether aliens are acting independently or as a collective. Is there one Mutant that is regenerating over and over, or is only the main one doing the regeneration? This is another reason why I prefer them to regenerate their cache instead of their hand, as it’s easy to comprehend that there’s only one cache of weapons in their army.
- Since my version of Cosmic does not have a discard pile and pods are recycled automatically, Mutant having its own pool of pods allows it to have its own private collection of pods that other aliens can only take if they steal from Mutant directly. I like how thematically it works since Mutant isn’t randomly regenerating its limbs using aur from the forge, and it also makes sense with its interaction with Remora, which can draft pods from Mutant’s pool when Mutant regenerates.