Witch

Alert

WitchBorderless2

Essence

Destroy

Control

Type

Power to Curse

Curses Other Aliens

As an actor, during payoff after losing an encounter, use this power to “curse” one or more enemies as a penalty. Gift each targeted enemy a curse from your nexus and display it in their nexus. You cannot curse a cursed alien.

While an alien is cursed, they suffer the effect of their curse in accordance with the curse’s timing. During any warpfall, each cursed alien may move one of their free ships onto a curse. When a curse has a number of ships on it equal to its “curse level”, the curse is “broken”. Rebound the ships on the curse and vaporize the curse.

Legacy: Whenever an alien gains dominion, that alien gains a random curse if they do not already have one.

The magical arts are understood by a scant few alien races, all of which keep their secrets close to the chest. However, there are certain magicks considered forbidden among its practitioners. By sacrificing their access to all other magic, the Witches have bound these dark arts to their very souls, transforming from ineffective iconoclasts to powerful spellcasters worthy of note.

Actor: Payoff

Mandatory

Wild Flare

At any time, while your power is deactivated and the timing is correct, you may discharge this flare to use your power.

Any: Any

Super Flare

When using your power, you may discharge this flare to curse a cursed alien. When you do, break any existing curse and destroy any ships on it.

Any: Any

Curses

  • Hunger – Level 1 – During each upkeep, you must ravage a pod in your cache.
  • Ignorance – Level 2 – If you claim an artifact, you must scrap it. Scrap all artifacts in your cache.
  • Sensitivity – Level 2 – If you claim a flare, you must scrap it. Scrap all flares in your cache.
  • Ugliness –  Level 3 – You cannot become a sponsor or commission other aliens.
  • Mania – Level 3 – You cannot discharge feint pods.
  • Doubt – Level 3 – You cannot declare victory.
  • Arrogance – Level 4 – As a leader, after arrival, reveal one attack pod in your cache with the highest value.
  • Weakness – Level 4 – Ships in your fleet have 2 less might.
  • Death – Level 5 –  You have one less authority for every five ships you have in the warp.

Modifications

  • This version of Witch is based on the FFG essence-based Witch. The original Witch was from the Eon Era. The power was similarly a loss-based power that cursed the winners, only it was leader-only and allowed the user to make up a spell and cast it on all the winning enemies. Each spell would always last for two invasions and could only affect one game aspect. The power returned during the Mayfair Era with the same power.
  • Original Witch’s curses have more generic names based around what they do. Ignorance is called “Artifact”. Sensitivity is called “Flare”. Ugliness is called “Alliance”. Arrogance is called “Attack Card”. Weakness is called “Totals”. Mania is called “Non-Encounter”. Doubt is called “Win”.  Hunger and Death don’t exist in FFG Cosmic.
  • The original Witch’s curses don’t have “levels”. They just have the number of ships you need to break the curses. As such, all of the curses require either 3 or 4 ships to break. Ignorance and Sensitivity require 3, and Hunger and Death don’t exist. Changed the numbers to add more flavor to the curses and make sure there are at least 8 curses for my legacy. All of the others are the same.
  • Witch’s legacy gives every alien a random curse when they gain dominion. Since the curses are pulled from the pool,  no two aliens will receive the same curse. Since my version of Witch has 9 curses, every alien can be given one with this legacy active. Aliens can gain multiple foreign bases with a curse to prevent them from gaining a new one. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

  • If the curse Witch gives you isn’t that debilitating, you can intentionally keep the curse in order to avoid getting cursed with something worse. As the Witch, choose your curses carefully to make sure you don’t give an alien something innocuous that you won’t be able to touch unless you become the Super Witch.
  • Witch can marginally reduce another alien’s free ship count while they work to break the curse. This can be advantageous for combat, especially if the target has the curse of Death.
  • Witch makes ships much more important than usual, since you need them to break the curses and defend against the Curse of Death. Avoid being careless with your ships, since you might need more than you think.
  • If you are concerned about a particular curse, you can avoid winning encounters against Witch as best as you can, at least until the curse that concerns you has been given to another alien.
  • Since flares are reused, the Curse of Sensitivity can be useful for getting rid of a troublesome flare. The equivalent Curse of Ignorance is more for probing an alien’s cache for artifacts, unless an alien like Vulture is participating.
  • The Curse of Hunger is arguably the least useful curse, but it can be useful to save a stronger curse for later since Witch’s power is mandatory. If your cache is weak, you can hold onto the Curse of Hunger to slowly prune your cache.
  • The Curse of Ugliness is most effective against popular aliens like Animal or Scholar. It can also be useful against Parasite or Zipper to remove their guaranteed sponsorships.
  • The Curse of Weakness punishes aliens who rely on their ship might, such as Horde, Macron, and Lizard. It is extremely effective against Virus, since it gives all ships a default might of -1, which will be multiplied by Virus’s driver.
  • The Curse of Mania temporarily disables both artifacts and flares, as well as other feint pods, but it doesn’t permanently get rid of any pods. It can be useful against enemies with a lot of pods.
  • The Curse of Death is incredibly punishing to aliens with a lot of ships in the warp, capable of deactivating or even eliminating an alien that has lost too many ships. It is the most impactful curse and ideally should be saved for the endgame when it will be most impactful.

Development Notes

  • The original power having only level 3 and 4 curses is intelligent from a design perspective. If a curse requires 1 or 2 ships, it can be broken pretty quickly. Breaking curses is also optional from the cursed alien’s perspective, so a curse that is too weak can simply be left alone to render the user immune to stronger curses. I opted to add a weaker curse and a stronger curse to counterbalance the curse pool. The main idea behind adding more variation to the curses is for the flavor of curse “levels”. Having the levels denote the strength of the curse adds more flavor to the power of the Witch. Curses of higher level are more difficult to break, and curses of different levels is a common mechanic in RPGs.
  • I originally thought to make the level 1 curse potentially useful by letting the user scrap any pod, but then the target will gain both curse immunity and a potentially beneficial effect. While ravaging your cache can still be beneficial if your cache is weak, the random factor will make it much more worth removing. The low cost makes it easy to remove, but it will at least destroy one random pod in the cache.
  • Reducing Ignorance and Sensitivity from level 3 to level 2 makes it much easier to remove, but the primary effect of dumping all of an alien’s artifacts and flares is maintained. I think those make the most sense for level 2 curses, since I didn’t want to dilute the Witch’s curse pool by adding 10+ curses.
  • Witch’s curses act as a form of “anti-technology”. Each invasion, the user invests one ship at a time. But instead of gaining something positive, they lose something negative. While an alien is working to remove a curse, the ships they move to it will be unavailable. They can remove the ships from the curse if needed, but most curses don’t take long enough for that to be necessary. Since ships are rebounded after breaking the curse and there are no special requirements to put another ship on a curse, the ships on the curse aren’t generally gone for very long.
  • The theme of a witch is similar to that of a sorcerer or wizard, but it deals more explicitly with dark magic. While witches do cast spells, they are more known for casting curses and hexes. Witches are thematically closer to shamans than wizards, though they have their own unique aesthetic.
  • Witch using its power after a loss is perfect for the theming. Witches are commonly depicted casting curses on a target who wronged them in some way, such as the witch who cursed the prince in Beauty and the Beast.
  • Witch becomes a much bigger problem with other ship destroying aliens like Assassin and Sadist around. It is a fitting synergy, as the theme of the witch carries a similarly sinister vibe behind it.
  • Curses being displayed when gifted is a subtle yet useful balance decision. Other aliens will know what curses other aliens have, allowing them to know which ones have been removed from Witch’s pool immediately. I think it becomes more important with my Witch having varying degrees of curse levels.
  • Since I decided to give levels to curses as part of the flavor, it seemed odd that there would be level 2 curses without at least one level 1 curse. Since level 1 curses can effectively be removed immediately, I wanted them to at least have some effect, similar to level 2 curses at least scrapping all artifacts and flares. Unless the target has no pods in their cache, the level 1 curse is the only one guaranteed to at least do something.
  • As a loss-based essence alien that penalizes other aliens would most be compared to Nightmare. The core difference is that Witch adds a persistent negative effect that needs to be manually removed by the user over time, while Nightmare adds a one-time negative effect that triggers when a certain condition is met and cannot be removed otherwise.
  • I came up with names for the curses based on debilitating ailments. I tried to scale the names of the curses with the level, with hunger being the least impactful and death being the most.
  • I think it is fitting that all of Witch’s curses are disabled if Witch is deactivated or eliminated. It is a common trope in fiction where killing the witch that casts the curse also breaks the curse.
  • The Curse of Death is designed to be the most dangerous of the Witch’s curses, but it is dependent on the performance of the cursed alien. Originally I had it reduce the alien’s authority by one with no stipulations, but I didn’t think it fit the theme of death well enough. Having it based on the ships in the warp feels much more appropriate and engaging. The number of ships it takes to reduce authority is important for the balancing. If it requires four ships in the warp, an alien could lose two authority from a single defensive loss. Five ships per authority means that the maximum authority penalty is 3, since 20 ships in the warp means you are guaranteed to be eliminated anyway. What ties the theme of this curse together is that an alien with more than 15 ships in the warp will have the maximum authority penalty and also become unable to break the curse, since they won’t have sufficient free ships to get 5 on the curse.
  • The relationship between the Curse of Weakness and Virus’s power is one reason I am glad I designed the game to be more modular in regard to aspects like gate capacity and ship might. The original Virus power multiplies the number of committed ships instead of the might, so it is unclear how the Curse of Weakness affects FFG Virus, since it says ships subtract instead of add. Virus’s ships don’t add at all, so it might be that the Curse of Weakness does nothing to FFG Virus. If any aspects increase the strength of Virus’s ships by 2, the Curse of Weakness will only mitigate the power, rather than making the ship might -1. With any attack pod Virus discharges being multiplied by a negative value, Virus will have difficulty even getting a positive value with this curse. Since it generally only lasts 4 invasions per curse cycle, I think this is a fair counterplay to one of the strongest powers in Cosmic, especially since I increased the pool to make the curse cycle take longer. Virus has to be very careful about defeating Witch while this curse is still in play.
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