Unless I'm missing something here the Merchant Wild Flare is a lot nastier than the power.

The Wild Flare: As a main player or ally you can add 1 point per card in your hand after cards are revealed, at no risk basically. So an average of 8 cards in hand (tonight the person in our group that had it had 15 cards in hand.

vs

The Merchant power which has to set aside cards before the reveal, which then are at risk if I lose of going to the discard pile.

If I read the power correctly the cards act as ships so If I play a negotiate I could get compensation for my "lost ships" which is nice but vs the wild flare, not that big of a deal. And the "Super" still isn't all that great compared to the wild flare in my opinion.

In our house rules we've decided that the flare should be a discard after use.

I'd love to see an "official" comment on this at some point.

Discard after use is not a great idea, but you can always do whatever you want in your own games. Lord knows we do plenty of unofficial stuff in ours.

But, here's the thing with the wild. It relies on having a decent hand of cards. So, if you only have a few, which is quite common in CE, you only get a small boost. It's nice to have that boost, of course, though sometimes you have another flare that is better, and if you only can play one flare per encounter, you have to decide which is better. Having a lot of cards, and having the Merchant flare makes you a great target for a negotiate.

The Merchant power, on the other hand, has the ability to play down several cards as extra ships, even as, for example, a defensive ally. Think of the number of rewards you can get with that power.

The fact that the Merchant can clean up so to speak as a defensive ally has not gone unnoticed and that is pretty cool. I like the power overall but..

...that wild flare was killing us the other night. One of our players has a habit of getting 15 or 20 cards in hand (we've practically banned her from playing Genius) and she was popping that wild flare every time. There are not enough card zaps in the game to stop a run like that. And negotiating against her gave us a max of 4 consolation cards so about a 25% chance of getting that card from her at best.

I can't even remember what alien power she was using since it wasn't nearly as effective as this silly wild flare.

We use house rules here but I do like official rulings when possible so when we play with other groups we don't have to sit down with each other's house rules to debate just to be able to play a game.

Hello Satyr!

The Warp said:

To elaborate, the more cards you have in hand the better chance of having a better flare.

Plus eight (on average) is good, but not fantastic. if you gang up on that player, you can get more than plus eight against them.

That said, I don't agree that eight cards is an average number. There are lots of powers and effects which make you lose cards. If your friend has a habit of getting 15 or 20 cards, I wonder if you've played very many games? If card hording is that person's strategy, they'll be in for a rude awakening I think.

Even if your four card compensation doesn't pull the flare, it will reduce its bonus by four points. It might also draw negotiates from the offending player (to later use against them), or the Card Zap if they are sitting on it. If Merchant is in the game, Merchant can pull a lot more than four cards in compensation, as cards laid down count as ships.

Sometimes overly powerful combos arise, but generally speaking these overly strong positions are stronger in games with fewer players. With more players you'll go through the deck more quickly and you'll have a greater chance of another player drawing Card Zap and drawing it sooner. When Merchant flare is in play often Merchant is in play too, which means the deck is getting eaten up even faster. Also with more players There'll be more encounters without that player. In these encounters their power is irrelevant.

As for being more powerful than Merchant's power, the Merchant can use their power to burn off bad cards, or an entire bunk hand. Getting pluses is only part of their power.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy CE. I'd recommend playing more games before deciding that this flare warrants a house rule - the dynamic will be different every time it's in play.

Cheers!

crimhead said:

Hmm have I played very many games? Never enough I grant you.

But lets see I bought Eon's version in 1980 I think it was, I still have a complete pristine Eon set and a worn out set we played for years.

Then Mayfair of course, actually I have every version ever released, some I never bothered opening but collected for the heck of it. GW's version and some Italian version that I wouldn't be able to read even if I opened the box and so many more. What a long strange Cosmic trip it's been.

I'm also lucky enough to have a group of friends that come over every weekend for Cosmic and dinner. We usually get in 4 to 5 games in an afternoon. Life is good.

One house rule though that I/we have played pretty much from the beginning, with every group I've ever played with is. Play 2 powers. Usually we pick 3 and keep 2. (or if we are feeling evil, pick 3 keep 1 discard 1 and pass 1 in X direction) This of course means we have more rules discussions because of the combos but we've managed and nobody ever suggests we go back to one power. We also realize that no matter who publishes the game they'll never address dual powers officially, what a rules headache that would be for them. Which it's even more of an imperative that the basic game is flawless as can be, badly worded or just not balanced is bad enough but when we play our dual powers it can get downright ugly.

We do occasionally play at a convention with people who don't play anything but "basic" rules, so I try to mention things like how I felt about a possible imbalance or rule issue to the designers if possible, so there are as few flaws as possible in the regular game and we don't spend time discussing rules and can play more.

satyr said:

FFG has rules for dual powers via tech cards. I wouldn't be surprised if issues are cleaned up later on in a FAQ version.

On topic, Merchant is in CI. If you're playing with this set you've got Kickers and Crocked Deals to gain extra compensation, as well as Card Find, an extra Card Zap, and Hand Zap. I see it being very hard to hoard cards successfully.

We play with two powers and only showing one until you regveal the other. merchant is one of the most powerful powers in this setup at least as a combat power. Get asked as a defensive ally, add 4 tokens then your ahnd as ships also. as long as you win you start a vicious machine. I had merchant virus and got a combat total of like 2056 with a kicker one game. So yes the wild flare can be powerful but i dont feel it is better then the power itself.

satyr said:

Methinks you guys should stop inviting defensive allies every time. More often it's 2-4 cards, barely a reinforcement.

I think the best aspect of Merchant is the ability to go through new hands and lots of cards quickly by hiring all the garbage encounter cards as ships.