PUPPET [Main Player Only]

You have the power to manipulate. (Boring text, but would "puppeteer" be any better?)

At the start of the game, distribute your planets as evenly as possible among your opponents' systems. If playing with fewer than five players, either use the four planet variant or place two planets in the system(s) of your choice. Your planets are placed to the side of the other players' and not considered one of their planets. You do not have a system of your own.

When your destiny color is drawn, a player may attack any of your home planets, regardless of the system it is in. For the duration of the challenge, you have use of that home system's alien, not that player, even if he has lost the use of his power, unless you have no ships there. At the start of an encounter on your turn, you must declare yourself to be one of the aliens in whose system you still occupy one of your home planets. You lose your power as normal when you have lost over half of your home planets. A player with a Puppet planet in his system may establish a foreign colony there, and that planet does not count toward determining if he has lost his power. For all purposes other than determining the Puppet's power, his home planets are consider to be in his "system."

In a game with Tech, if you aquire the Genesis planet, you may place it in any system, regardless of if you have a planet there already or not. When using the Lunar Canon, your planets are not considered to be adjacent to opponents' planets. If you have no adjacent planets, discard the card without use.

Wild Flare: When you are the defense, before allies are invited, you may declare one planet in your system to be off limits. It cannot be attacked this turn.

Super Flare: At the start of your turn, before you declare which alien power you will use, you may move one of your planets to any other system.

Notes: So this is pretty similar to Plant, but I think potentially more fun due to the physicality of actually being in those systems with a planet of your own, and of course the opportunity to mime puppeting the player sitting behind that system in good roleplaying! It's a bit stronger at the start of the game since it already has all these powers, but unlike Plant it only has the choice of power when on offense. Also, while Plant becomes stronger and stronger as the game goes on, Puppet risks becoming weaker and weaker. Also, I also thought about not giving Puppet his own destiny color, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. It would make drawing your own color more interesting, but I'm afraid it would lead to confusion as to if Puppet is a part of that system or not, which could cause complications in expansions or other movable planet aliens.

Between this forum, Cosmic online's forum, Duke's blog (which just made a post about other movable planet powers), and of course the Warp, I wasn't sure where to share this.

I like the mechanics of it, giving you a choice of powers and a bit fo strategy on where to protect. A simpler version of this would be the Mimic:

MIMIC [Any Player (uses value of borrowed power), Optional] COPIES POWER OF SHARED PLAYER (Jack Reda)

You have the power to imitate . Once per encounter, you may use the power of any player with whom you share a base. That player still has use of his power.

Timing : Any Phase (uses timing of borrowed power)

Wild Flare: You may play any Edict as if it were a Cosmic Zap.

Super Flare: When you imitate a power, that player may not use his power.

The Puppet would be a Mimic that didn't need to share bases. Also, since a 5-player, 5-planet game does not allow even distribution of planets, you would need to specify when the Puppet chooses which player (i.e. which power ) he doubles up on, thereby giving that power more resilience against being neutralized.

Adam said:

The blog. Clearly .

Nice alien; good job. But I'm a bit surprised ... is that the first homebrew to be posted here? I haven't read every thread, but it seems like that's the case.

Oh, duh, Zach brings up a good point, and of course I can't edit my post to fix this. Grr.

I was thinking, "5 players, 5 systems," forgetting not to count the Puppet. So my note about playing with the 4-planet variant should really only apply to the 5-player game. I was thinking originally that it should be evenly spread out, which is why I made that note, but you'll have to "double up" on one system in the 5-player, 5-planet standard game, which is fine. As Zach mentions, it adds a fun choice for the Puppet during set-up as to which power he wants to have.

Also, unlike Mimic, I thought only Puppet should have use of the power, not both players, to prevent problems like Oracle Vs. Oracle, though I suppose that could be settled via the Timing Conflict Resolution rules, letting the offensive player have precedence... I rather avoid those rules except when necessary though.

Adam said:

Exactly. I would suggest, of course, that players all reveal their power choices simultaneously if the power selection method includes choices (Puppet shouldn't get to wait and see what powers are available before he decides to go with the Puppet). However, once Puppet sees what the other players' powers are, he can decide (as an example), "I want to double up on Loser because I would want to hold onto that option longer than the others".

Zap timing:

When I'm the defensive player, can you zap me after Launch (offense chooses which planet to attack, at which point the power I'm borrowing is determined based on what system it's in), can you zap me when the borrowed power would trigger (if it applies defensively), or both?

When I'm the offensive player, do I choose at Start Turn, or Regroup/Destiny? (If it's Start Turn, then I can't change which power to use for a second encounter. Regroup/Destiny, I can.) Can you zap me when I choose which power to borrow, when the power I borrow is used/triggered, or both? For example, If I decide to borrow Loser, and you don't zap me when I declare that intention, do you forfeit the ability to zap me when I call an upset?

Range of use:

It's pretty clear that Puppet is only good for borrowing Main Player powers, so there would be some real chance (especially in a random power selection) to have nothing good to borrow in a game, leaving you high and dry. Is there a way that Puppet could borrow when he is not a main player, without overly complicating the power itself?

Other thoughts:

And as for temporarily turning off the borrowed power of its owner, Plant does that and I figure, Puppet should too (and it should be the "power to pull strings", perhaps?) I'm still trying to find possible name/theme alternatives and/or flavor text for the Puppet mechanic. Since he has no "home" but is a culture that occupies others homes and borrows the best of their culture when it suits...I'm just brainstorming now, bear with me...

You can zap Puppet's power (which is pre-destiny) and you can zap the puppeted power at the appropriate time. I wrote up a history for them, which is on The Warp, though I am extremely embarrassed to admit there is a misplaced modifier in the history text. Oh heavens no!

As for the non-main player power problem... I really don't know. In the online game there is an alien called Martian. His power is to cancel his opponent's power when a main player. In a game with Martian and three alliance powers, our pal Martian has no power at all, so to speak. This is fortunately not a common occurrence online, and hopefully not offline for Puppet.

Not to mention, it is at least very funny to watch the Martian try to throw his weight around with no power all game.

"I'm still trying to find possible name/theme alternatives and/or flavor text for the Puppet mechanic. Since he has no "home" but is a culture that occupies others homes and borrows the best of their culture when it suits...I'm just brainstorming now, bear with me..."

Have you considered Cowbird or Cuckoo as the name? (I didn't realize until just now that the cuckoo bred like the cowbird... Wikipedia is full of interesting tidbits.)

Heh, I know about that though I didn't think about it. That does fit the power quite well. However, I don't like the idea of naming an alien after an animal. Mite in the new game is the only official alien I know to do this, but there is such a long sci-fi tradition of overgrown bugs as aliens that I'm comfortablewith it. I had an alien called Tortoise that I was very unhappy with for a long, long time and finally changed it to Dark-Matter before submitting to the Warp.

I stuck with Puppet / manipulate anyway. I like the idea of a race of puppet-like creatures insinuating themselves into alien societies who just ignore them because of their appearance of insignificance, only to find that the puppets are the ones pulling the strings later on.