Sting
Alert
Combat
Control
Type
Power to Wound
Leaves Nasty Battle Scars
As a leader, after a clash, use this power to place a “wound” in your opponent’s nexus. If you lose the clash, place a wound in the nexus of each enemy instead.
During any clash, leaders lose 3 might for each wound in their nexus, even if this power is lost. Each leader’s committed ship negates wounds that encounter equal to its size.
Legacy: After winning an encounter, winning aliens gain one wound each.
There are countless aliens throughout the Cosmos who live for the thrill of battle. Some have engaged in warfare that has spanned for centuries just for the fun of it. But there exists at least one tiny pocket of the Cosmos where you will be hard-pressed to find a single encroaching warship. Not all fear the kiss of death, but all beware the Sting.
Leader: Clash
Mandatory
Wild Flare
As a leader, during a clash, you may discharge this flare. Any reinforcements played by the opposing side have a value of 1 this invasion.
Leader: Clash
Super Flare
When placing wound tokens, you may discharge this flare to give one enemy an additional wound.
Leader: Clash
Modifications
- Sting’s power has been reworked from its original concept due to my issues with original Sting’s theme. Original Sting has the power to Substitute, designating another alien to lose half of the ships or pods it would lose. I didn’t see the connection between the power, the power name, and the alien name, and the effect as a whole seems to cross over too much with vanilla Cosmic’s Evil Twin.
- Animals’ legacy encourages sponsors but also discourages powerful sponsors, as taking on at least 2 sponsors gives you a free pod but also gives it to the ally. With aliens like Cavalry or Philanthropist that can assist with pods as a sponsor, there can be a strategic advantage to inviting them. Aliens that greatly benefit from pods like Virus and Merchant can be risky prospects unless inviting them alone, but you miss out on getting the pod yourself if you don’t meet the minimum number. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Sting losing the encounter means each enemy will gain a wound. This factor alone can deter aliens from ganging up on Sting and allying with it.
- Sting only stings during a clash. This means if Sting or its opponent throw the match with a negotiate, or a negotiation occurs, the opponent will walk away without a wound.
- Sting is not a persistent power, but it has the unique trait of its wounds continuing to function after it loses its power. Sting’s wounds even apply when two wounded aliens are fighting each other. If you have the most wounds, it puts you at a combat disadvantage as a leader.
- Sting’s wounds only affect the leader and are negated by ships. This means that sending four ships will keep the wounds at bay until you have five or more wounds. Inviting allies with many wounds will not be a liability, but aliens with many wounds may be reluctant if the opponent is Sting.
- Sting is an alien that enjoys long drawn-out combat, allowing it to wound other aliens as much as possible. Since its effect is leader-only, including Super Sting, aliens don’t have to fear it when it is only an ally. Aliens with ally-based combat like Cavalry and Sapient can still put their ability to great use, since ally wounds do not subtract might. Winning quickly can also stop Sting from gaining dominance over the match.
- Wounds do not go away, even if Sting is eliminated. Unless you have a strong combat power, try to mitigate the number of wounds you obtain as much as you can, even if it requires throwing an encounter with a negotiate.
Development Notes
- I came up with the new idea for Sting to capture the feeling of fighting a bee or hornet nest. Perhaps you manage to squish it, but you get stung in the process and become more hesitant to go back.
- In order to ride the line between Sting’s power being underwhelming and oppressive, I made it leader-only to reduce the amount of times it can be used and provide more value on loss than victory. I considered having it give the enemy leader two wounds on loss, but I decided to reserve that for the Super Flare and provide more choice. The ship negation aspect puts a soft limiter on Sting being too strong early-game. It requires aliens to commit more ships in order to offset the wound, but after getting five wounds it starts greatly limiting their combat potential, especially on the defense where they can’t choose their ship count. I settled on 3 for the might penalty. Combat aliens like Warrior, Warpish, and Villain can potentially outpace it, and six wounds are required to guarantee the Human Test is passed.
- One of the more insidious aspect of this power is the potential to cause peaceful victories by making both sides have 0 or less power during a clash. Since Sting is the only alien that doesn’t get wounded, it receives the passive combat bonus of not getting penalized and not having to play more ships to compensate for the wound penalty.
- I was considering the best way to phrase the ship negation aspect of the power. I could have phrased it as “lose 3 might equal to the number of your wounds minus the number of your committed ships”, but it seemed unnecessary to phrase it as an equation. I decided to phrase it with the “negated” keyword instead. It’s a little rough since negated isn’t an official keyword in my Cosmic, but I think it gets the point across better.
- It’s possible for 5 or more wounds to be negated by aliens like Amoeba or Daredevil who can commit more than 4 ships. Since Macron is punished more heavily due to its nature of only sending one ship, I based the calculation around ship size. This way, Macron is at the base 4 and is mostly Stingproof on defense since it can easily get up to 8-16 total size, numbers which even Super Sting can’t easily reach.