Multiple Powers Game

Gambler / Masochist with Super Gambler Flare: The ante is 20 ships. I have played the 99 card.

Opponent: There is no 99 card!

Gambler / Masochist: Are you calling my bluff?

Now that would be a problem. Of course, even then, he can be beaten once the Gambler Flare goes away.

A few other combos I think would be fun to play as:

• Cudgel/Void (eradicates 40% of your ships)
• Cudgel/Amoeba (losing 16 ships at once)
• Tick-Tock/Masochist (three win conditions)
• Anti-Matter/Virus (gets -16 with 4 ships and a 4 card)
• Amoeba/Vacuum (lose if he wins, lose BIG if he loses)

And don't forget some of the combo's that are really hard to beat

Amoeba - Virus I ooze in 15, which multiplies my attack 10, look I have 150

Amoeba - Antimatter

Machine Mutant, or Machine Clone, just keeps going until he decides to stop.

Some of the classic ones -- including many already mentioned -- are covered in Mayfair's More Cosmic Encounter rulebook. It's a pretty looooong list.

Vacuum + Masochist

Oh gee, I lost a ship. Guess I'll use Vacuum on... myself!

Oh gee, just lost another ship...

It's an instant win, just like Masochist / Gambler, except that you don't even need to be the main player, AND it doesn't require your super flare.

Or if you do have a specific card, just Plague yourself. Game over before anyone has had a turn.

Technically, it only works if you are losing ships in multiples of three. Otherwise, you would lose the Vacuum power before you suck down your last three ships. But still, Plague gives you that, as do most encounters.

I think my favorite combo is the Amoeba Masochist

All you have to do is send all your ships into the first battle then negotiate and if your opponent negotiates as well then just refuse to make a deal and all your ships will die because you have no colonies to put them on.

Bill Nukem said:

Hopefully FFG will eventually put out a list of illegal alien combinations, with that one included. And by illegal alien combinations, I mean combinations of Cosmic aliens that don't work or are unbeatable, not chimera-like combinations of illegal aliens crossing the border by the cover of night to steal all our jobs.

Adam said:

Well, before that happens they will need to make double alien powers an official varient. Even though it was official in an older edition of the game, it is not actually one of the varients included in the base game in this edition.

Well, yea, I figured we could assume that the two would happen simultaneously. It would be silly to make rules for the variant without such a list.

I'd prefer a list of exceptions based on power combos rather than banning them. For instance, "if you are Zombie and Masochist, X happens," where X is a new ruling that makes that combination of powers useful, instead of terrible together. The same goes for powers with rules that conflict, or powers that are far too good together. I have a custom made Cosmic set where I'm implementing this. It's pretty cool.

Sounds iffy to me. A list of illegal combinations is simpler and allows each alien to retain its identity. If you change what the powers do, that also could end up requiring flares to be reworked. I could see one problem leading to another, and there are a ton of possible combinations, so it's not like it is limiting the game much.

Still, I'd be very interested to see some examples of how otherwise incompatible aliens are made to be friends in your set. I don't want to shrug off the possibility without even reading how it works. Could you share some examples from your set? Like how would Zombie and Masochist cooperate for one player? Examples of rule conflicts and super-powerful combos would be nice, too: Virus and Amoeba? Pacifist and Clone?

I can't really think of any rules conflicts off the top of my head, at least that wouldn't be super obvious as to how to fix (Macron and Anti-Matter, each ship being -4), but examples of those would be nice, too, if you'd like to share.

Could be an interesting project, though if it gets too complicated or messes up how the super flares would work, I'd rather just stick to banning, probably.

Toomai said:

I actually had the Cudgel Void combo the other night. The other players disagreed with me on whether the tokens lost due to cudgel went to the void. I figured they would, since void says any tokens lost in the challenge and cudgel punishment is part of the challenge. They whined and cried about it, that somehow the void coming down and slapping the defenders extra hard and sending all to the void was too harsh instead somehow it made sense to them that there could to be two types of "dead" tokens, those that are going to the void and those that only go to the warp.

I remember the days where it was pretty much common acceptance that the Void Assassin combo really was nasty in that each destiny flip sent some poor sucker to the void.

Next week I really want to try to get the afore mentioned Vacum/Masochist combo.. I can already hear my group crying about it having to be another player and not my own tokens that get sucked down with me.

Here's an example of a fix for the only restriction in the Fantasy Flight set (as it has no multiple powers as of now), which is Sorcerer and Gambler:

Added to Gambler: "If your opponent is Sorcerer and he transposes cards, or you are Sorcerer and transpose cards, your opponent may not look at the card he now has, and you may bluff either card after looking at the card you now have."

As of now I don't have many fixes for combos that are too powerful or too weak together, but I've elimated all restrictions based on conflicting rules. For instance, Insect (my set is based on Eon) was a big issue with some powers, like Changeling, Plant, Boomerang, or any game setup power. My fix:

"If you copy a power with a game setup effect, you have a wild metamorphosis, and instead of using the copied power, you draw a random power from the unused powers, discarding any game setup powers and drawing again. You then use that power for the remainder of the challenge. At the end of the challenge, you discard that power.

If you copy Changeling or Boomerang, or Changeling is used to swap for this power, neither power can be used again this challenge. Instead, each main player has a wild metamorphosis, as if each had copied a power with a game setup effect. In addition, if you copy Changeling or Changeling is used to swap for this power, you swap Insect for Changeling once before the powers become unusable."

Likewise for Plant:

"If you graft a power with a game setup effect, or if you graft Insect or Changeling, the player still loses the use of that power, but you cannot use it. Instead, you have a wild graft. You draw a random power from the unused powers, discarding any game setup powers and drawing again. You then use that power for the remainder of the challenge. At the end of the challenge, you discard that power."

And Changeling:

"When facing Insect, you swap before he copies. When facing Plant, you swap before he grafts. When facing Boomerang, you swap before he boomerangs. If you are then entitled to boomerang, you do. Changeling does not swap during a boomerang challenge."

Another issue I had was Warpish and the Praw, which I fixed with:

"In a game with the Praw, your tokens do not count towards the number required for the Warp to reach critical mass, nor do they fall to the Praw when the Warp does reach critical mass. In addition, when the Warp reaches critical mass, you may select up to one token for each token you have in the Warp that is also in the Warp. The selected tokens do not fall to the Praw. You cannot keep enough tokens from falling to the Praw in this way such that the Warp will immediately reach critical mass again."

I haven't put Masochist in my set yet, since it has severe balance issues with multiple powers, and I haven't gotten around to fixing them.

I did edit Amoeba some to fix some balance issues:

"If you are also Macron, you can ooze only up to 4 tokens total into the cone. If you are also Virus, any of your tokens that you ooze into a challenge, beyond the first four tokens of yours in the challenge (weather there originally or oozed), are added rather than multiplied. Any tokens in excess of four that were originally in the challenge are multiplied normally."

A lot of the fixes deviate a little bit from how the power normally works, but I think they all make for cool effects, and they preserve the general effect and style of the powers. I may go through and edit some more powerful combos to be less amazing, and some poor combos to work well together. As long as it's not totally broken (like Meser Aristocrat in the original Eon, which is completely unstoppable by any effect in the game, due to taking Super Mesmer to start, Keeper and every good Edict, and naming Wild Clone), it's kind of fun to have some powerful combos, and I've always played deal three flares, use two powers, in a two-power game, so you can avoid sucky combos. There may be a few more combos that are just a bit too good though, like Sorcerer/Oracle.

Actually, Gambler/Sorcerer is easy enough without changing things like that. The text on Sorcerer says that you reveal your opponent's card, instead of the cards actually changing ownership. Gambler would look at his opponent's card (the one he reveals) and bluff about his own (which Sorcerer would like to reveal). So if Gambler sees that Sorcerer switched him a 6, he would bluff that he played a 4 (which Sorcerer is about to reveal).

I thik the wording on the old Sorcerer, which I'm using, is worded a bit differant. It says you transpose them and then play eachother's card. So the extra clarification is useful in my set.

Those are some great multi-power combos, though I have one quibble: Virus/Anti-matter is listed on The Warp's forbidden combo page because of conflicting mechanics, which I think is the correct read for that combination (like with, say, Void-Fungus - the powers don't mix).

Though I'm coming to this thread years late, I'll post some double multi-powers I'd love to play:

Amoeba-Genius

Deuce-Magician

Glutton-Remora

Animal-Cavalry

Hate-Relic

Ethic-Hacker

Mercenary-Merchant

Changeling-Plant

Sadist-Schizoid

Dictator-Will

Spiff-Winner

Trader (or Mimic) - Miser (or Cyborg)

Philanthropist-Vulch

Empath-Zombie