Villain
Alert
Combat
Invasion
Type
Power to Scheme
Builds Superweapons
As a leader, if you would lose after a clash, use this power to make an “ultimatum.” Your opponent must either surrender or let you snatch their driver and add it to your “superweapon” in your nexus. If your opponent surrenders, you win normally. Pods in your superweapon are public.
As a leader, after contact, use this power to add the might of all pods from your superweapon to your fleet. If your driver is a negotiate pod, scrap all pods in your nexus.
Legacy: After a clash, add the weaker driver to the superweapon. During a clash, a leader with less might than their opponent may add the might of all pods from the superweapon to their fleet’s might. If they do, scrap all pods in the nexus. Only one leader may use this aspect per encounter.
The Villains are always plotting something, always tinkering away behind the scenes to achieve their ultimate end of Cosmic domination. Though after making their bold declaration of war, they were surprised to discover just how many other aliens do the same.
Leader: Clash
Leader: Contact
Mandatory
Wild Flare
As a leader, after contact, if your driver is an attack pod, you may discharge this flare to snatch a random pod from your opponent. If the pod you snatch is an attack pod, add its might to your total and scrap it. Otherwise, return it to your opponent.
Leader: Contact
Super Flare
When using your power to snatch the opponent’s driver, you may discharge this flare to add both drivers to your nexus.
Leader: Clash
Modifications
- Original power is Industrialist, with the power to “build.” Changed to Villain to fit the idea of threatening the opponent into surrendering and building an unstoppable force that gets dismantled when showing mercy.
- Original Industrialist doesn’t lose the pods in its nexus when playing a negotiate (though an older version of it did).
- Villain’s legacy grants a universal Villain effect to any potential alien, allowing non-combat aliens to gain some combat power. The effect is similar to Loser or Daredevil, with aliens wanting to lose by just a little bit so they can take advantage of the superweapon. If the bonus from the superweapon is significant enough, aliens will be trying to lose in order to use it. Aliens that lack combat powers can appreciate this one, while aliens with combat powers generally do not. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- Villain’s greatest weakness is when it has no choice but to surrender. It often works best for Villain to burn its negotiates early, before its doomsday device has been built. This can also make it the best time for other aliens to play strong attack pods against it.
- Though surrendering to Villain can turn a win into a loss, the potential danger of adding a 20 or 40 pod to Villain’s doomsday device may be worth the sacrifice.
- As the Villain, avoid getting stuck with a negotiate pod in your cache. Gain rewards as a backward if necessary to keep your superweapon active.
- As you get closer to the end of the match, Villain’s superweapon becomes less relevant. There’s no point surrendering to them if your victory earns you max dominion.
Development Notes
- It took awhile to figure out some good framing for the negotiate clause. I was trying to think of a reason why playing a negotiate pod would dismantle a big superweapon. It brought to mind a villain with a doomsday device that is forced to surrender. Originally, I was going for an alien name like Fear or Dread, something that embodied the concept of evil. The act of them being kind through negotiation robs them of all their power. I went with Villain for the doomsday device framing, and it also kind of fits with the idea of the Villain being “reformed” and dismantling their own device.
- The negotiate clause that disarms Villain’s superweapon is something that needs to be carefully set up. Since my Cosmic has very few aspects that turn the opponent’s attack into negotiate, it reduces the situations where Villain loses agency. I want to make it so Empath doesn’t disarm the superweapon but Heart does, which is why I set it based on the driver, not the fleet.
- I considered whether Villain should win peacefully if the opponent surrenders, similar to Mite. It’s not a bad idea, but I figured a Villain would be more likely to be merciless, and a deadly surrender helps Villain and Mite feel more distinct.
- One of the main reasons that I am insistent on bringing back the negotiation clause to Villain’s power is because of Warrior. Original Villain is pretty much a replacement of Warrior in every way. In Fantasy Flight Cosmic, Industrialist cannot lose its stack without being deactivated. If Villain loses an encounter and its opponent has an average pod like an 08, Villain will either win outright or get +8 to its stack for all future encounters. Even with my buffed version of Warrior, that’s the equivalent to 4 wins or 2 losses. In FF Cosmic, that’s 8 wins or 4 losses. And that’s leader-only for both. In an average match, Warrior might be lucky to even get 4-8 encounters as a leader. Never mind if Villain gets 4-8 encounters. While it is true that good alien design doesn’t mean all powers are equally balanced in strength, one of my rules is that an alien doesn’t make another alien redundant. Villain should not be Warrior+. The ability to lose the superweapon makes Warrior weaker but more stable, which I find much more interesting as a rivalry if the two are in the same match.
- Since Villain’s power is mandatory, the choice to surrender if Villain would lose is entirely up to the opponent. Villain cannot deny their surrender to take the pod. This is significant to avoid giving opponents no recourse to stop Villain, and Villain doesn’t need to complain about a free win. It fits with the theme of their arrogance being their downfall.
- Villain is another power with great naming for its super flare. When its power goes nuclear, it become a Super Villain.
- Villain’s legacy took a bit of finagling to figure out, and I see a lot of potential variants for it. The idea was to make a Villain-style power that can be applied universally instead of to a specific opponent. I considered a version that alternates between adding a pod to the nexus and using it, but it doesn’t add a great deal of strategy when it comes to adding the pod to the nexus. I prefer the Loser-style setup I ended up with, where you are trying to either undercut your opponent so you can get the Villain bonus or greatly overshoot your opponent so the bonus doesn’t matter. It’s worth noting that the superweapon can be burned even if it doesn’t make a difference, to prevent it from getting too powerful. Also negative attacks can be played in order to weaken the superweapon, since the weaker driver is always used.
- Villain has an interesting dynamic with Clone, in that it potentially nerfs Clone’s ability to keep its own pod after combat. If Clone has the 40, it has to either surrender, lose the 40, or avoid using the 40. Doing the latter put it at risk of losing the 40 through compensation, though Villain will be more hesitant to go with this method since it means losing its current superweapon.