I was surprised to learn that the Assassin had been renamed to Shadow, and I was wondering if the development team or the play testers had any insight as to why.

Also, does this bode ill for the Terrorist even being included in future expansions, due to it's unsavory 9/11 association?

Names are supposed to be more family friendly and PC. Personally, I like Shadow more anyway. Terrorist will be renamed, too, if the XBox Live Arcade version is any indication. The XBLA Cosmic is in development hell and doesn't look to be coming out any time soon if ever, but a preliminary list of aliens listed "Booby" with the power to "booby trap." I certainly hope FFG can come up with a better name. Booby...

By the way, I wasn't a play tester unfortunately, but I know this from following the the XBLA version back when Peter Olotka posted a full list of aliens on the old Cosmic Encounter Online forums. A play tester may have a different take, but if I remember right, Shadow was Assassin's new name in XBLA, too, which was announced before the FFG deal.

RobertDG said:

I'd be stunned if FFG ever released an alien by that name ... the reasons are pretty obvious. That's not to say that the power will never be released; it'll just be under a different name.

I'm okay with the Shadow/Assassin change, too (not counting the fact that it's probably my 50th-favorite power in the set to begin with). Whether concepts such as "terrorist" or "assassin" have any place in a game such as CE is debatable from either side; personally, I don't think those words fit the idea of what CE is about, so I'm okay with these sorts of changes. YMMV, of course.

The difference is whether someone makes a free choice, or a choice is forced upon them. If a company or person wants to (of their own volition) steer away from certain terms, that's fine. What one company decided to go with, for one word on one game piece, on one of a gajillion GAMEs out in the marketplace, is hardly a major issue to get up in arms about. So, new names is fine by me. To be honest, I've always though actual alien race names would be nice to use, as opposed to what they do being treated as their name. I have a hard time envisioning "Grettings fellow star traveler, we of the Sniveler (Fido, Gambler) race welcome you."

Unfortunately, the PC crowd LIVE to stomp all over things like that, no matter how trival and unintentioned. In principle, I'm vehemently opposed to PC madness overcoming common sense. If they had left it as Assassin, or issue a "Terrorist" alien, and some political correctness crusaders started spouting off, I'd be the first to let fly with how ridiculous they were being.

Podtrooper said:

I agree. I'm not up in arms about it, just a tiny bit annoyed, at most. Mostly, I was just curious. I love the paranoia and chaos that the Terrorist brought to the game, and am hoping to have it in my official game some day (borrowing it from another set would be trivial.

But I will be up in arms if it's called "Booby." *shudders*

Irony alert!

I received two FFG games yesterday: CE and the revised Talisman. The first renamed its Assassin ... and the second did not. Its one of the 14 characters included in the base game.

If the name change somehow made it a worse game, free choice or not, I'd understand caring. But it doesn't.

How about "Boom".

I am fine with the changes (I too hope a name other than Booby is conceived)- but I also wasn't bothered by the old names, and in my megamassive home set, the original names remain. I like to look at the alien names as the slang that Human forces came up with for them... like Skinnies in Starship Troopers. They could have gone the way of Vulch... a name that is pretty much made up (really the only one in all of CE, making him a bit of a curiosity).

The Warp said:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=vulch

Definition 2, presumably short for vulture.

We did this before over at the old CE forums. But, seeing as how they don't actually exist any longer, I'll have to do this from memory:

Three CE aliens do not appear in Webster's as actual English words (I forget which edition we looked at): Vulch, Warpish, and Tripler. And Reincarnator was shaky ... but some version of "one who reincarnates" was in there, I think.

Macron was a close one ... it's actually the name for some form of printer's marking, or something like that. But, clearly, "Macron" was chosen because it sounds "big" (or maybe they just added a letter to "macro").

It's actually a phonetic marker, a line that goes over vowels to mark long, which seems appropriate to me, in a roundabout way. I like the alien names like that which have a connection to the power, but not directly like Trader or Tripler, but for the purpose of making the game easily to learn and adapt to, it makes perfect sense to have simple names like this, so no complaints.

I would have preferred "Assassin" over Shadow. I don't really see the problem, especially since use of the word Assassin is widespread in other games. Not a big deal either way, though.

Terrorist, on the other hand, is a little edgy and there are good reasons to change it. However, I will join the chorus of voices that think "Booby" is a terrible alternative. Maybe it could be rethemed as something that damages "ships" instead of kills people. Possible concepts: Rust, Vandalism, "Lowjacking", or even a Meteor Shower. It could also be a Fear or Haunted theme (the crew runs away, so the ships crash), or a Peace theme (ships are abandoned by hippies). It doesn't even to be traps at all, booby or otherwise.

Then again, the power is weak and kind of annoying anyway, so there is no great loss in simply leaving it out. The few times I've used it in the past, it doesn't really do much. After a big defensive alliance, tokens are flying everywhere, and it's hard to even tell which planets are affected. Plus, the potential to really screw over one player is, to me at least, unwelcome.

Same with Wrack, Power to Torture. I could see it making players uncomfortable, and it's not a great power anyway, so good riddance. There are still dozens of classic powers and good homebrews so many good choices remain.

Rubric said:

**** hippies!

I think the Haunt theme would be best-suited. The other themes don't really fit with the concept of secretly affecting certain locations. Why would ships rust on one planet and not another? Assuming FFG has no crazy plans to translate Cosmic Online's Ghost to the board game, Ghost would be a good name.

I disagree with Terrorist and Wrack being bad powers, but that's another topic. Had one very memorable game where due to Filth, Terrorist, and Prophet all getting in each other's way, one player lost her power on the very first encounter of the game! That doesn't happen everyday.

Okay, this forum is eating my posts. I'm about one for five at this point, as far as things getting through. I think it has something to do with QUOTES, because the only one that got through didn't use them. Yes, I realize it's probably due to my own ignorance, rather than a problem with the forums.

Let's try this again with no quotes:

>> from Adam
>>I think the Haunt theme would be best-suited. The other themes don't really fit with the concept of secretly affecting certain locations. Why would ships rust on one planet and not another?

Good point. A sudden attack of peaceniks wouldn't make sense either.

>>
>>I disagree with Terrorist and Wrack being bad powers, but that's another topic. Had one very memorable game where due to Filth, Terrorist, and Prophet all getting in each other's way, one player lost her power on the very first encounter of the game! That doesn't happen everyday.

Wrack suffers from theme getting in the way of the mechanics. If your opponent declines the deal, the "torture" is not going to change his mind. The power basically translates to "Offer a deal. If the opponent agrees, skip the challenge. If he disagrees, you both lose 4 tokens, but you choose the tokens." Maybe it's not weak, but it bugs me that it was over-complicated.

Regarding Terrorist, the scenario you describe where somebody loses his power on the 1st turn CAN happen all the time when Terrorist is involved. Plant all your bombs in that player's system, and then invite him to ally with the defense. Win the challenge, and when he goes home... Boom Boom Boom Boom! It's funny once, maybe. Not "fun" though.

Adam said:

Ghost was a Mayfair name, yo. Power to ... something or other ... I never played a lot of Mayfair.

I was surprised when I heard that a CEO alien named Ghost was debuting. I guess Peter must have said, "Hell with it."

Mayfair Ghost