Winner
Alert
Invasion
Type
Power to Triumph
Wins More from Victories
As a leader, after winning an encounter by 10 or more might, use this power to triumph over your opponent. Immediately establish a base in that alien’s system.
Legacy: When an invader wins an encounter by 10 or more might, they may establish a base in the invaded system as an additional reward for winning the encounter.
Though sharing a common ancestor with the Losers, the Winners were the clear winners of the genetic lottery. With bodies of immaculate size and strength as well as a natural charisma, they possess a similar reality-warping ability that allows them to keep winning after they win, so long as their opponent is sufficiently impressed by them.
Leader: Win
Mandatory
Wild Flare
As the invader, after arrival, if you have more allies than the opponent, you may discharge this flare to immediately win the encounter peacefully. Burnout.
Invader: Arrival
Super Flare
When using your power, you may establish a base in the opponent’s system for each multiple of 10 might you win the encounter by (rounded down).
Leader: Win
Modifications
- Winner’s original wild flare is a burnout effect with the ability to immediately gain a foreign base at the start of an alien’s campaign. I modified it to make it more conditional and less rewarding to avoid cheap solo victories through an effect a novice player might not even know about.
- Winner’s legacy grants its “spirit of victory” to every alien in the game, but only to invaders. The effect is incredibly valuable for combat powers capable of producing high numbers, such as Virus and Crystal, allowing a single campaign to net an invader four bases. Machine with a strong cache can have an even easier time going from 0 to max with this legacy in place. Original Cosmic has no legacies.
Tips
- High-value pods like the 30 and 40 are Winner’s greatest assets, since they generally allow Winner to get a free base with no allies, possibly two if the Winner is the invader. It can make it dangerous to invite Winner as a backward, since a strong cache can make it especially dangerous.
- Winner is capable of getting up to four foreign bases in a single campaign, though only if it performs very well. Allying with Winner can be just as productive as any other alien, though it can backfire tremendously if too many aliens ally against it.
- Even if Winner’s effect doesn’t activate, the threat of it can cause an opponent to discharge a pod that is higher than they would otherwise play just to prevent it from activating. More aliens may choose to side against Winner during the alliance phase, unless they fall behind in the base race.
Development Notes
- When designing the look of the Winner, I imagined something like a buff and attractive version of Cthulhu, rather than the weak and pathetic-looking version that Loser is modeled after. I gave the two species similar biology, with the Winner’s ears going up instead of down and the hair curl pointing in the other direction. The Winners are also bipedal instead of the quadrupedal Losers, giving them a visage of superiority.
- The Winner’s original wild flare of immediately gaining a base is an extremely dangerous effect due to its ability to “auto-win” a match nondeterministically in the absence of a zap. I wanted to keep the theme of the Winner’s wild flare granting a “free win” without it resulting in an auto-win of the entire match. I tied it to the comparative number of allies in order to provide some natural defense against it and guarantee that the user of it would not be the only one to gain a base.
- As the prototypical “win-more” alien, Winner can be compared to Void, Barbarian, and Bully, an essential non-power if it cannot win any encounters as a leader. Instead of punishing its opponents, Winner directly helps itself after winning, gaining a base directly and possibly two if acting as the invader. It is more like the first half of Genius in that regard, with the ability to draft 4 pods for “winning”.
- Winner is comparable to Siren, another alien capable of winning bases as a defender. Winner has an additional conditional statement as a tradeoff for not giving its allies the base alongside it, which makes it a calculated gamble to side with Winner as either invader or defender. If Winner only barely wins the encounter, it simply wins as normal. When it wins by a lot, it gets a free base independently of its allies (though they still get their normal rewards).