| Alien (race) |
|---|
| Power to Traumatize |
| Abducts other aliens |
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| FFG |
 
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| Wild At the start of your turn, you may ask one other player to give you five ships which you will hold as hostages, returning them at the end of your turn. Instead of giving you the ships, the player may offer you anything he or she could give you as part of a deal and/or agree to receive cards from your hand. If you accept the deal, all ships remain in place. |
| Super You may capture a player's ship even if you already have one of more captives from that player. Place a trauma card under each ship you capture. |
| Special Victim Complex Trauma: If both sides reveal attack cards and you have the lower total, add 2 to your total. Otherwise, add 2 to any compensation you are due, subtract 2 from any compensation you owe, or lose no ships if you fail to deal. Nervous Breakdown Trauma: You immediately lose the encounter and collect no compensation. Proceed to the resolution phase and discard the played cards normally. Abandonment Trauma: Any or all of your allies may return their involved ships to their colonies, or switch them to the other side of the encounter. Hearing Voices Trauma: If all other players can unanimously agree, they may update your reality in one of the following ways: sending 1 of your colonies to the warp, discarding half of the cards in your hand at random, or giving you any 1 or 2 cards from the discard pile. Hallucinations Trauma: Your opponent may exchange his or her revealed encounter card with any other encounter card from his or her hand. Aggression Trauma: You may play any attack cards in your hand as reinforcements. Depression Trauma: If you reveal an attack card, its value is 00. |
Alien is an alien that kidnaps ships from other aliens and holds them captive, eventually releasing them along with a mystery trauma effect. There are seven different trauma cards, with effects ranging from the helpful to the catastrophic, and they can seriously upend any encounter in which either main player has lost a crewmate to the Alien's naive experimentation.
Strategy[]
As Alien[]
The Alien can help or hurt other players in their time of greatest need. With a ship from each player in tow, you may dangle traumas over your enemies' heads for as long as you like in order to extend alliances and dissuade attackers. It can be disadvantageous to wait too long, though, as each "loaded" trauma that has not been activated is one less option for you to play... and you may find an empowered friend turning against you (or vice versa). Remember that you cannot swap one trauma for another once it is selected, and the only way to get the card back is to pull the trigger and activate the trauma.
Give Depression or Hallucinations to an enemy who is confident in their hand, blunting their attack or allowing the opponent a second chance to respond. Give Aggression to an ally with lots of cards in hand. Hearing Voices puts one player's fate to popular vote - useful for taking down a dominating opponent. Nervous Breakdown cannot win colonies for you, but it can save your planets from a large concerted attack; or prevent the second encounter of a player who is about to win.
Against Alien[]
Text[]
| Edition | Power Text | History |
|---|---|---|
| CE | You have the power to Traumatize. At the start of another player's turn, you may use this power to capture one of that player's ships from any colony where he or she has at least two ships. Choose one trauma from your essence card cache and place it facedown next to this sheet with the captured ship on top. You may not hold more than one of each player's ships captive at a time. When you are not the offense, before encounter cards are selected, you may use this power to release one or both of the main players' ships you have captured on previous turns. Released ships join the encounter, going to the hyperspace gate or the targeted planet as appropriate (this may exceed any gate limits), and the trauma card under each one is placed facedown, unseen, near the corresponding main player. When a player with a trauma card reveals an encounter card, he or she must also reveal that trauma card and carry out its effect. Revealed trauma cards are returned to you. If this sheet is lost or turned facedown, all ships you have captured go to the warp and their trauma cards are returned to you. |
The Aliens are actually quite child-like in their boundless curiosity, and are unaware that their simple abduction games are not appreciated. |