Sheriff

Alert

SheriffBorderless

Essence

Destroy

Resource

Type

Power to Ticket

Just Doing Their Job

At any time, you may use this power to gift a ticket to an alien committing the “infraction” listed on the ticket. If gifting a ticket to another alien, that alien must immediately pay the “fine” on the ticket and display the ticket in their nexus.

After a fine is paid, you may use this power to seize it as gratuity. If the fine is paid in pods, claim any or all of those pods. If the fine is paid in ships, revive an equal number of your ships. Then, shroud the ticket in the alien’s nexus. An alien with a shrouded ticket cannot be gifted tickets. When your essence pool is reset, vaporize all tickets you have gifted to other aliens. When all other aliens have shrouded tickets, reset your essence pool.

Legacy: Whenever there are no tickets in the forge, manifest and display three tickets in the forge. If any alien(s) commit any infractions on those tickets, they must pay the corresponding fine on those ticket(s). When a fine is paid for a ticket, vaporize that ticket.

An authoritative race that have taken it upon themselves to bring law and order to the Cosmos, the Sheriffs believe that the laws of their homeworld should be universally enforced. While they are committed to protect and serve, their critics question who they are protecting and who they are serving.

Any: Any
Any: Any

Optional

Wild Flare

At the start of any orientation, you may discharge this flare and display it in any other alien’s nexus. During this campaign, that alien cannot commit more than one ship to the gate without your permission. When the campaign ends, the target claims this flare.

Any: Orientation

Super Flare

At any time, you may discharge this flare to vaporize a ticket from any nexus.

Any: Any

Tickets

  • Excessive Force – Infraction: Winning an encounter by more than 10 or priming a pod with 20 or higher aur value. Fine: Ravage three pods from your cache.
  • False Advertising – Infraction: Committing one ship as a sponsor. Fine: Ravage two pods from your cache.
  • Gridlock – Infraction: Having 10 or more ships in the warp. Fine: Ravage two pods from your cache. 
  • Jaywalking – Infraction: Moving ships from multiple bases at once. Fine: Ravage two of your ships.
  • Littering – Infraction: Scrapping 3 or more pods from your cache. Fine: Ravage two of your ships.
  • Loitering – Infraction: Having only one ship on a foreign base. Fine: Ravage two pods from your cache.
  • Obstruction – Infraction: Zapping any aspect. Fine: Ravage two pods from your cache.
  • Trespassing – Infraction: Aiming the gate at a planet containing one or fewer ships. Fine: Ravage one of your ships.
  • Vandalism – Infraction: Establishing a base in a foreign system where you already have a base. Fine: Ravage three of your ships.

Modifications

  • Original Sheriff is capable of vaporizing a ticket from its nexus and choosing any of its tickets at any time, though it is limited to using its power once per campaign. I modified the power to no longer be able to freely cycle through its tickets. Instead, it can use its power whenever the timing is appropriate, but it is limited by the standard 3-essence limit. Original Sheriff has access to all of its tickets at once, meaning everyone else needs to avoid all of the tickets currently in play at all times. 
  • Original Sheriff has a “once per turn” clause to its power, which specifically requires remembering past information for a whole campaign. The clause violates one of my design principles, so I gave it the buff and nerf from the previous bullet to compensate.
  • I changed Panhandling to Jaywalking. Panhandling originally involves committing only one ship as a sponsor and paying one pod as a fine, which seems like a stretch flavor-wise. I like the idea of Jaywalking involving more than one ship trying to move through the same intersection, which would naturally violate the traffic code since the light would need to be red for one of them.
  • The Loitering infraction is originally to refuse an invitation when invited. That information is hidden in my Cosmic, so Sheriff wouldn’t have the information to give out the ticket. I instead gave Loitering the original effect of Vagrancy, which was removed in mine.
  • I replaced Illegal Parking with False Advertising. Illegal Parking involved having more than four ships on a planet at once, with a fine of two pods. False Advertising is the same as original Panhandling, but I changed the penalty to two pods instead of two ships, to keep the ratio 5 pod fines to 4 ship fines.
  • Vandalism is a ticket I created to replace Vagrancy, since I gave that effect to Loitering. I came up with the idea of having multiple bases in another alien’s system, which is generally difficult to avoid unless trying to do so. I specified that the timing must be when the base is first established to avoid the ticket being an easy perma-target effect on an alien. I opted to make it another ship fine to make the ratio 5 pod fines to 4 ship fines. I also made it 3 ships to act as the Excessive Force of the ship fine tickets.
  • Original Obstruction refers to cancelling any action or card. The phrasing is a little vague, since it doesn’t specify if it includes cancelling your own actions or not. I decided to simplify it to the use of any zap cards, since they are such a common element in the game as a cancelling tool.
  • Sheriff’s legacy introduces a ticket system that will automatically punish anyone who breaks one of the rules on the tickets. In comparison to Sherrif’s power, the rules are on full display with this legacy, and only the first alien(s) to break the rules get punished for them. This can mean that several aliens get automatically punished as the tickets are manifested. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

  • Each ticket imposes a soft rule that every other alien needs to follow to avoid getting hit with a surprise fine. Knowing the tickets is the biggest countermeasure to Sheriff, since you know what to avoid.
  • Excessive Force is one of the hardest tickets to avoid, since it is dependent on your opponent. While it is simple enough to avoid using your 20 pod until someone else breaks the law, another alien could play a negative pod to force you to win by 10+. Since Excessive Force is the most punishing of the tickets, Sheriff can even leverage it in combat to win its encounters or negotiate.
  • Gridlock can be avoided as long as you play conservatively with your ships. Even losing two 4-ship encounters doesn’t meet the criteria, and committing 4 ships is generally never required. If your cache is weak, you can bait out this ticket by intentionally getting 10 ships in the warp to help earn a resupply.
  • False Advertising can be avoided if you always commit at least two ships as a sponsor. This law can be rather difficult to follow if Jaywalking is also still active, so it could be worth considering if you would rather lose two pods from False Advertising or two ships from Jaywalking.
  • Jaywalking is more likely to be done on accident by forgetting about it than anything. Standard Cosmic protocol is to take ships from multiple base and avoid evacuating any bases. If aliens only commit 1-2 ships, they can usually avoid Jaywalking by taking only from one base at a time and redistributing later.
  • Littering can occur for reasons outside of your control like a Cache Zap or Plague, but it usually happens when requesting a resupply. It is advisable to ensure you have fewer than 3 pods when requesting a resupply, unless you have a means of retaining the pods like Miser’s cache.
  • Loitering can be avoided by keeping at least two ships on each of your foreign bases, which gets harder the more dominion you have. If you play conservatively with your ships for Gridlock, it can help avoid falling victim to this ticket as well.
  • Obstruction will occur if you play any flavor of zap. The Cosmic Zap would be the most common, but it also includes the Cache Zap, Pod Zap, Ship Zap, Flare Zap, and Omni Zap. Since most of the zap pods are in the dark forge, this ticket can generally be avoided by not playing any Cosmic Zaps you draft, unless you have a second one to also use on Sheriff.
  • Trespassing can be avoided if you only target planets with 2 or more ships on them as the invader. This ticket makes it riskier to target planets that have already been invaded by another alien, which can be punishing against aliens like Virus and Macron that get much more value from their home bases.
  • Sheriff can avoid shrouding the ticket for a particular alien to allow sending as many tickets their way as possible.
  • Sheriff is never forced to use a ticket even if the timing is correct. It can use this trick to fool other aliens into thinking a particular law isn’t currently in its nexus.
  • Even when Sheriff hasn’t revealed any of its tickets yet, there is only a 1/3 chance it will have a particular ticket in its nexus. Players can gamble early on with lawbreaking in hopes they won’t be ticketed.
  • Vandalism can often be a matter of where destiny sends you, but you can use your time as a sponsor in order to get one foreign base in each alien system. Once you have all four bases, it won’t matter where your fifth one is, unless you have so few ships remaining that losing three ships will destroy one of your foreign bases.

Development Notes

  • Sheriff is the kind of power that leans heavily into its theme in exchange for a fairly lengthy alien bio. The power does an especially good job from a roleplay perspective with the two key aspects of its power, since it lets one play as either a “good cop” or a “dirty cop.” The secondary clause can be completely ignored if playing as the former in order to be a pure punishment alien like Assassin. Or the alien can gain resources for itself at the cost of having a harder time using its tickets.
  • Sheriff effectively creates 9 new rules for every alien to follow, but each rule can only be broken once per pool cycle. Once the rule has been broken and Sheriff enforces it, no one else can be punished for it until the pool gets reset. This aspect justifies Sheriff being at least yellow alert, since aliens who know what the tickets are will have an advantage over those who don’t. Since the penalties are fairly minor and somewhat limited in their timing, even aliens who don’t know what they are won’t be punished too much, so I think yellow alert is a good choice. I personally think it’s more fun to play without knowing what the tickets are, and it gives the Sheriff the bonus opportunity to say “ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it”.
  •  A sheriff is similar to a police officer, only they are elected to maintain law and order throughout a county. They can be considered a “head cop” or cop supervisor, and the term ‘sheriff” carries more weight to it as an alien power than “cop” or “officer”. A sheriff could have any number of powers like the power to “arrest” or the power to “imprison”, but I think the power to ticket does a good job at touching on the law and order aspect, with the essence providing an opportunity for plenty of flavor.
  • The flavor for the second clause is that the alien is bribing the sheriff to look the other way from future crimes for a time. It’s important that it is a power utilized by the Sheriff instead of the target, since it specifically refers to the corruption of the officer. An honest cop will not accept a bribe and is merely focused on enforcing the law.
  • The tickets are named after common low-stakes crimes that common everyday citizens might commit on accident. Some are crimes that people commonly complain about being laws in the first place like loitering, while more serious ones like Obstruction or Gridlock would normally occur through negligence or ignorance. Sheriff is punishing small-time criminals, which adds a comedic undertone to the power that works with the roleplay. The Sheriff can choose to play it seriously or ham it up for comedic value.
  • Though many of Sheriff’s tickets have wildly different effects, there is a somewhat unified theme of encouraging other aliens to be more conservative with their ships. With many tickets outright destroying your ships, several dictating your ship management, and one punishing your cache if you lose too many ships, Sheriff can keep everyone on their toes. The number of laws for everyone to follow makes it difficult for everyone to avoid breaking each of them, but it gets easier to follow them the more get revealed. Since my version of Sheriff cannot actively vaporize its own tickets, it has to rely either on other aliens breaking the laws or using its second clause to give everyone a shrouded ticket to reset the pool early.
  • Ultimately, Illegal Parking is the only ticket I decided to outright replace in both name and effect. A rule against having more than four ships on one planet can be useful to deter a warp key from being used, but I think I prefer the inclusion of Jaywalking and restricting the movement of ships from multiple bases at once. I like that aliens have more control over when they do it, and destroying two ships after a warp key is used isn’t particularly impactful. I also really wanted Jaywalking as one of the tickets, and I think 9 tickets is a good number that makes it difficult to avoid all the tickets even when you know them all without creating too many restrictions that makes the match overwhelming.
  • The primary concern of my version of Sheriff would be a situation where Sheriff cannot use its power since everyone is avoiding breaking its laws. I think this situation would be more of a risk when Sheriff is down to its last few tickets, particularly its last three. In that situation, everyone would know which three laws to avoid. However, it might be disadvantageous to avoid them if one of the tickets is something like Excessive Force or Obstruction. Sheriff might gain more value from not using the ticket than using it, granting it a passive power.
  • I like how the act of breaking the law effectively “breaks” the law, preventing it from working again until the pool is reset. Though almost certainly unintentional, it is a fun play on words. 
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