Oracle
Alert
Control
Info
Type
Power to Foresee
Foresees Opponent Encounter Pod
As a leader, after arrival, use this power to force your opponent to broadcast their primed encounter pod before you prime yours.
Legacy: Distress pods must be primed publicly.
Possessing a tepid connection to one of the threads of fate, the Oracles have limited insight into the near future. Though they originally had little interest in conquest, visions of a great evil overtaking the Cosmos inspired them to do whatever it takes to avert great horrors still to come.
Leader: Arrival
Mandatory
Wild Flare
As a bystander, during rally, you may discharge this flare to perceive the choices of other supporters before choosing your own.
Bystander: Rally
Super Flare
When using your power, you may discharge this flare to force the opposing fleet to prime distress pods during standoff. They may not prime distress pods during the encounter.
Leader: Arrival
Modifications
- The base Oracle power has been kept the same as the original, aside from the standard terminology mods.
- Oracle has a troublesome interaction with Magician that prevents both from being used together. To use Oracle and Magician together, I concocted a system that allows both to work together while keeping their interaction thematic. First, Oracle’s power activate to discharge their pod. Then Magician’s power activates to make Oracle play two pods. Magician takes one and may swap out their played pod with one in their cache. Then, if they do swap, Oracle may also swap. Otherwise, both pods must be used as-is.
- The original Oracle wild flare let a player mix their cache with their opponent’s, then randomly giving back the same number of pods each alien originally owned. It’s an effective flare, but it’s much more fitting for the later-released Whirligig, whose base power is an expanded version of the same effect. I elected to give Oracle a more thematic wild flare by letting them “predict” who will support which fleet, allowing the user to gain a moderate amount of insight in a different manner than the base power. My version of Cosmic doesn’t have a queue since supporter flags are hidden and revealed like encounter pods, but the same idea could be used in the base game by allowing the user to ally in the same way as original Sloth, after everyone else has.
- Modified Oracle’s super flare to let it force distress pods to be used early, giving it more certainty in which pod it should choose. The original Oracle let it declare a draw after seeing the pod, which works well enough in its own way. It implies that Oracle saw the entire encounter and decided to pass their turn instead of playing it through. It does prevent potential issues where pods that get used during that encounter otherwise aren’t refunded, so I prefer working with something tamer.
- Oracle’s legacy requires distress pods to be broadcasted rather than primed, allowing everyone to calculate how they will affect the encounter. This causes them to operate similarly to how regular reinforcements work in original Cosmic. Original Cosmic does not have legacies.
Tips
- Oracle’s power allows it to play its encounter pods somewhat optimally. If it knows the enemy will play an 08, it can know to play the 12 instead of the 23. If it knows the enemy will play an N, it can play an N itself for a negotiation or try to make sure the opponent won’t get anything good from compensation.
- Oracle needs to be careful about things outside of its foresight such as flares, artifacts, reinforcements, kickers, and alien powers. Playing encounter pods to win by only 1 or 2 points can be risky if Oracle doesn’t have some reinforcements themselves, so sometimes it can be wise to overplay one’s hand if a win is needed.
- Defeating Oracle in combat requires either brute force or sneaky tricks. If Oracle doesn’t have a pod that can get them a win, their foresight won’t matter, so supporters, strong pods, and combat powers are effective. In addition, support pods and special effects that Oracle cannot foresee can get around Oracle’s defenses.
Development Notes
- Oracle is my go-to for pointing out an alien with an effective theme. By forcing the opponent to immediately discharge the pod, it creates the illusion of “seeing the future” without literally giving the player a supernatural power. The theme of “oracle” implies a limited vision of the future, so gazing into a foggy mist and seeing only a number without seeing things like reinforcements, flares, kickers, powers, etc. still fits the theme while also providing a realistic limitation that doesn’t make all of Oracle’s powers boring. It’s an impressive feat for a mandatory power, which are often more difficult to make interesting since they offer one less choice on a base level: the choice to use the power or not.
- When designing my interaction with Oracle and Magician, I wanted to keep the theme of Oracle seeing the future alive. It’s possible to imagine that Magician can “fool” Oracle’s vision by allowing Magician to swap its pod as normal for free, but it has the tradeoff of effectively giving Oracle no power vs. Magician. The balance change I made takes care of that, but it requires a separate section on the alien sheet or in a special “exceptions” list to explain since it means the powers don’t work together by default.