Reserve

Alert

Combat

Destroy

Support

Type

Power to Deploy

Calls Additional Reinforcements

As an actor, during combat, you may use this power to prime attack pods in your cache with might of 06 or less as reinforcement pods with value equal to the pods’ might.

As an actor, after an opponent primes a distress pod, you may use this power to scrap a negotiate pod in your cache to negate that distress pod.

Legacy: Actors may prime attack pods of 06 or less as reinforcement pods with that value.

A militaristic society bent on taking territory the good old-fashioned way, the Reserve know their way around a war. Never one to play their hand too early, they prefer to send in their forces after they’ve already done some recon. Their enemies had better watch their rear flank.

Actor: Combat

Optional

Wild Flare

After payoff, you may discharge this flare to add a reinforcement pod from any exhaust to your cache.

Any: Payoff

Super Flare

When using your power to prime attack pods as reinforcement pods, you may discharge this flare to prime attack pods with might 08 or less.

Actor: Contact

Modifications

Set the power to activate during the signal phase. The original activates during the reveal phase, which doesn’t exist in my Cosmic.
My version of Reserve officially regards the pods played by Reserve’s power as reinforcement pods, making them subject to effects which apply to reinforcement pods. After entering the exhaust, the pods become regular attack pods again, as they revert to aur.
Reserve’s legacy turns all weak encounter pods into potential reinforcement pods, greatly increasing their functionality across the board and allowing for faster cache pruning. Even negative pods get buffed, since reinforcement pods can be sent to either fleet. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

Reserve’s power is designed to have additional access to reinforcement pods, assisting its offensive capabilities while also pruning its cache of weak encounter pods.
Reserve is capable of utilizing more reinforcement pods than most other aliens, allowing it to use them in small quantities over time or many all at once.
If Reserve is an enemy, it can completely negate your fleet’s reinforcement if it has enough negotiate pods. Having more allies can help to lessen the effect, though try not to be too reliant on reinforcement pods against Reserve.
Reserve has to use its power to deploy its troops, so other aliens will know that these pods are reinforcement pods as opposed to rescue, assassin, or patrol. They won’t know the value though,
Reserve can use negative encounter pods to subtract might from the opposing side, allowing even the weakest pods to be easily purged from its cache with purpose.

Development Notes

Reserve’s power is highly reflective of my changes to the reinforcement/distress mechanic. I don’t like how thoughtless reinforcement is in the base game. It often boils down to close encounters being determined by which side has reinforcements. Then if you use them, you’re acting on a wing and a prayer that your opponent can’t nullify them with their own reinforcements. I think the mechanic could be a lot more interesting if it was called similarly to how encounter pods are primed, where you don’t know how much reinforcement the enemy will get until you’ve already set your amount. The big issue is that when someone else plays a reinforcement, you either respond in kind or lose. That’s why I elected to force all distress pods to be primed before they are signaled, allowing for situations where someone could have won if they played optimally but didn’t have the right info to make the call. It increases the potency of information-based powers like Mind and AI to be able to see what distress pods
Wanted to distinguish this power from Fodder and Fury, two other powers that operate with mechanical similarity. These powers activate after drivers are discharged, allowing them to add additional might after they basically know how the encounter will go. All three of them have long-term consideration to take into account, as each of them uses a consumable resource to activate their power. Fodder needs to consider which pod it primes to gauge what it can use, Fury has a limited pool of renewable energy, and Reserve has to watch its weak attack pods and negotiation pods.