Ninja
Alert
Resource
Type
Power of Kawarimi
Swaps Out Ships for Pods
Whenever your ships would be destroyed, you may use this power to instead scrap up to an equal number of pods from your cache.
Whenever you your ships would be revived, you may use this power to instead draft up to an equal number of pods.
Legacy: During warpfall, the invader may draft a pod instead of reviving a ship.
The Ninja operate in absolute secrecy. Not much is known about them, not even their true appearance. There are accounts of those claiming to spot one, only to find it is just a lamp or a pot.
Any: Any
Any: Any
Optional
Wild Flare
As a sponsor, after losing an encounter and suffering casualties, you may discharge this flare to ravage a pod in each enemy alien’s cache.
Sponsor: Encounter
Super Flare
When using your power, you may discharge this flare to instead scrap two pods for each ship not destroyed or draft two pods for each ship not revived.
Any: Any
Modifications
- Original power is named Converter. Changed to Ninja to apply a stronger theme with a clearer visual.
- Original power is the power to Exchange. Changed to better fit the theme of Ninja.
- Ninja’s legacy gives every invader the choice between drafting a pod or reviving a ship during warpfall. It provides flexibility to everyone and doesn’t take anything away from anyone, in contrast to many other legacies. It also means that warpfall will not be a waste for an alien with no ships in the warp. Since it only drip-feeds pods to aliens, it is unlikely to make much of a difference unless the match goes on for a long time after the legacy goes into effect. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Ninja’s power provides a great deal of flexibility, allowing for the preservation of ships and the rapid self-destruction of a cache for a resupply. Ninja can manage a bad cache well, though it can struggle more when working with a strong cache.
- The more pods Ninja has, the more options it has. An Ninja with 20 pods in its cache is virtually invincible in terms of its resources, since it would take a long time for it to deplete its cache to even reach the point where it would start losing ships.
- Losing a few ships in the early-game is valuable for Ninjaso it can use its secondary clause to gain pods during warpfall. It needs a ship to revive in order to convert it into a pod.
Development Notes
- One of the primary issues I have always had with Converter is its thematic similarity to Alchemist from Cosmic Dominion. Alchemist’s tagline is even “Converts cards by type”. I wanted to work out an idea that gives Converter’s power more of its own identity to help me better visualize it, and Alchemist paints a much clearer picture than the abstract “Converter”.
- My original idea with this power was “Inventor”, an alien that understands pods well enough to convert their energy into a forcefield that protects its ships or builds a homebrew pod out of the key granted to revive ships. Inventor as a concept is the sort of alien like Engineer that easily could revolve around technology. Having an inventor limited to only a few areas doesn’t capture the theme as well. I wanted to make sure that the theme of Inventor was intuitive and fitting, and that there wasn’t another concept that made more intuitive sense, which is how I ended up with Ninja.
- Kawarimi is the ancient ninja technique of replacing misdirection, common in popular media depicting them. The ninja replaces itself with a dummy, allowing it to protect its physical body and fool the enemy. This concept works very well for the first clause of this power, though the second is a little less clear. Ninja are also known for their stealth, allowing them to perform the stealthy operation of drafting pods when granted permission to revive ships. I haven’t fully clarified the logic of what it means to revive a ship from the warp, aside from the warp key releasing every ship. It could be that the warp key acts as a master key and smaller keys are utilized to free ships on an individual level. If access to the warp is all that is needed, the Ninja should be able to take extra pods when accessing the forge. It needs to be specifically that they need ships in order to perform the substitution, so it could be another instance of kawarimi going on.
- The original Sting has the power of Substitution, which I also considered for this power. I think using the formal ninjutsu term of kawarimi is more on-point.