There are 42 alien sheets in Cosmic Odyssey, and they fall into three categories: The original leftover aliens from the Eon edition of Cosmic (and some Mayfair edition holdovers), brand new aliens, and the Alternate Timeline aliens. Because Future Pastimes was working on a number of possible expansions, and because the older aliens were always contenders for earlier expansions (Dominion and Eons), there was a lot to consider and work on. Also, Peter Olotka was keen to have an FFG set that could list off all the aliens from the original edition, even if some of the effects were changed. We also have heard after the release of pretty much every expansion some version of "There can't be any more good aliens or original ideas left by now", which we don't agree with. I think there's a ton of aliens that still deserve to be published (in fact, I know- because there were even more aliens we wanted to include in CO but they just didn't fit). One thing that was important for me was to include plenty of green alert aliens, and also to try and minimize the number of aliens that have "wall of text" syndrome. It does get challenging to have pithy descriptions, not so much because the effect is complex, but at this point it's to address as many edge cases interacting with other aliens as possible. Certain aliens, like some alt-win aliens, or especially weird ones create brain-busting situations that we want to get in front of as much as possible, so wording becomes tricky. Still, I was pretty happy with the results.
ASSESSOR - This was an original Eon alien. It involved taxing players for using the cone (hyperspace gate) by taking ships, then making deals. It was nobody's favorite alien, and a lot of players had a hard time with it. Mayfair tried to improve it by making it a lucre alien (but then you couldn't use it in a game without lucre). FFG (via Kevin Wilson) decided from the start to not make any aliens that couldn't be used because of a variant. We weren't going to break that rule, so along with other lucre aliens in the past, we made sure none of the remaining original lucre aliens had to require a variant. I wanted to find a design that captured the flavor of the original, so this version taxes for using the gate- but I wanted to make sure players had as much agency as possible (another Kevin Wilson edict I try to uphold), so you can only be taxed for sending more than one ship. Collecting the cards was fine, but instead of Assessor just getting to gain a card, I wanted to play around with the hand management aspect of Cosmic, which is my favorite part of the game. The idea of Assessor giving refunds right when you would otherwise gain a card made this alien much more interesting for me.
AURA - Another original Eon alien whose first version elicited many groans of annoyance. Originally, everyone except Aura played the game with their hands face up most of the time. A novel concept, but ultimately this made the game pretty unfun for many players. Again, I wanted to capture the spirit of the design, but make it more palatable. New Aura reveals a card type from their hand, and anyone with a colony in Aura's system (or in whose system Aura has a colony) has to reveal to everyone all of their cards of that type. It makes attacking Aura a bit undesirable. On the other hand, Aura doesn't have an easier time making deals (though players tend to forget that if I have a foreign colony, I can offer a player a colony on that planet too, not just one in my home system). In any case, I think this is a much better Aura overall, and the information it gets becomes of more tactical exercise.
BOOMERANG - This was an Eon alien whose original effect was pretty similar to what the Invader alien in Cosmic Conflict already does now. We felt it would be best to explore a brand new effect. The new Boomerang is wildly different. Probably the most obvious characteristic of a boomerang is that it returns. So that was the driving design concept. We started with a Boomerang that literally had to return all of its ships from foreign colonies to home planets. This was interesting, but the wording to deal with edge cases and various effects was a massive wall of text, and even then there were some effects like Fungus and Void that further complicated the design. We ended up with one that starts with most ships on its sheet, but one on each home planet. You are incentivized to attack yourself whenever possible (something you rarely do in Cosmic), and a balancing act of abandoning your home planets in order to commit more ships from the sheet. I find Boomerang a lot of fun to play because of how atypical its game play ends up being. At this point with over 200 aliens, I want to see more that utterly change how to you normally play the game. It's now part of my Cosmic Bucketlist Challenge.
BOOSTER - This was a new alien that was originally a promo designed specifically for the Escape Velocity scifi convention near Washington DC, and for the first ever Galactic Championship tournament. The Demon promo alien offered at CosmicCon was pretty successful (especially for a POD product), but the EV promo was not a standard size, so it was not quite as successful. But, it was one alien that wouldn't need brand new art, so it was a good choice for inclusion. It was designed to be an easy to grok and clearly useful green alert alien (again, dealing with hand management). It also provides the player with an interesting choice regarding ship commitment. I see a lot of games where allies are happy to throw 1 or 2 ships into the encounter (especially as offense), so the reward is much greater than the risk. But Booster gets more out of big commitments, and I like aliens that can shake up routines.
BRUTE - This is the first Alt-Timeline alien. It's not a secret that most of these aliens were candidates for improvement over their original design. This comes from Cosmic Storm, which gets beat up a lot for its aliens. We felt there were 2 aliens in that set which cried out for a do-over, this being one. While I don't love a handful of the other aliens in Storm, I don't think they are total duds or broken. Brute was broken in my opinion. It was overpowered, stole too much of Mind's thunder, and was doing too much. This is the only alien in CO that is clearly "Weaker" than its counterpart. That is why the art for this Brute is covered in little flowers. He's clearly a friendlier Brute than the original. New Brute only works as an ally (he's a hired thug), and the number of cards he sees is the number of ships that player sends- so agency falls on the victim.
BUBBLE - This is a new alien. I have a pretty trippy spreadsheet that tracks all of the existing aliens by effect. The list of effects is long, but it's useful to know how many aliens "grant a colony", or "take a card away", or "mess with the destiny deck", etc. Aliens that play with Reinforcements was a column with few aliens, so it was design space I wanted to play with more. Bubble makes having a reinforcement very valuable, and it can change how cavalier players are about playing them. There's also an interesting soft advantage whenever Bubble "pops". It makes the opposing main player nervous, and they are more likely to negotiate or simply dump a low card- so even if no one on your side plays a Reinforcement as an encounter card (which is part of what Bubble lets you do), it can help you win the encounter.
COSMOS - I loved the concept of Essence aliens from Cosmic Eons, and it was something I felt could be explored some more. Additionally, one of the gimmicks for CO is that it references or enhances every other expansion in some way. I knew adding more Alliance Dials was not going to happen, so building on Eons' essence concept was the best way to go. Cosmos can add in new rules (making it something of a distorted cousin to the Anarchist alien). Cosmos is much more controlled, and while the new rules might benefit the other players, they always benefit Cosmos if they are used.
DAREDEVIL - This is the Alt Alien for Cosmic Dominion. I wanted to have at least one Alt Timeline alien for each expansion. I think Bill Martinson, Jefferson Krogh, and I did a pretty good job assembling aliens and streamlining their effects for that expansion, so there weren't a lot that jumped out as needed new version (yes, your mileage will vary). And while we all liked Daredevil, after playing it several times upon publishing, it has turned out to be an alien that doesn't quite live up to its potential. And I still don't think it needed that much nudging to improve it. I really like the art modifications for this version of Daredevil, which make it so much more Daredevily- important because the art was not originally intended for Daredevil at all. We had to assign something to be Daredevil, and that croc-looking beast was the best fit.
DECOY - This is a new alien that essentially gets to play 2 encounter cards and then decide which one to use. It has some similarity to what Oracle does, but quite a bit different in terms of actual game play in my opinion. Firstly, Decoy plays a card face up before anyone selects their encounter card. Decoy can do this as a deterrent, or a bribe, or to telegraph intent. But the actual decision point is once both sides have revealed. I like to either play the negotiate to show that a deal is definitely possible, or a high attack card to say "this can be yours if you just throw it". And when cards are revealed, I can sometimes decide to use one card instead of the other because of how the math works out. I find it creates more interaction between the main players.
DELEGATOR - This was an original Eon alien, and the one that needed no real changes at all. While Usurper in CD has some adjacency, the two aliens are technically quite different. It's a really interesting alien, and risky to use sometimes. Delegator can force main players and allies to switch their roles. You'll still be fighting on the same side, but what you get out of the encounter, and who plays cards can change. And Delegator can do this to just one side, or two both sides. It's bananas.
DEMON - Demon was the promo alien from CosmicCon. It was also a special addition to the 42nd anniversary edition of Cosmic (and 51st base set alien). Demon was also an original Eon edition alien that hadn't been published. Its original design tread too much on the player agency edict, which is why it was passed over. For CosmicCon, we held a fan-design contest (since Dominion was fan-driven, and we were still celebrating that expansion's release). Robin's design won out, but because of the time crunch for the convention, we really didn't tinker with it very much. The design team did feel like a few iterations of test and analysis would have been beneficial. In any case, because I wanted to offer an Alt Alien from every release, targeting Demon was a good opportunity. It also worked out because I wanted to have an even mix of alert levels. There are 4 Alt aliens for each alert color. Since Demon was going to be Alted, I felt it would be interesting to revisit the original design area and try to honor that if possible. The new Demon possesses ships, which is what the original did, but with some edits. Original Demon could too easily stop a win from happening, so the new one only affects allies. There's some risk for Demon, but also an interesting capture effect that benefits Demon down the road.
DRAGON - The original Dragon was a lucre alien, so we knew that changing its effect was necessary. Original Dragon started with more lucre and gained lucre when others bought stuff. We felt that an alien that just gained more cards was not interesting, and we didn't want to tie Dragon to lux. Peter, Greg, and Bill had recently worked on The Iron Throne boardgame for FFG, which was a Game of Thrones themed game with Cosmic-like mechanics. They still had dragons from that show on the brain, so they wanted to scorch planets. It was also an opportunity to have another alien that interacts with the destiny deck (something few aliens do). Dragon collects certain destiny cards, and when they have 3 of the same color, they can nuke that planet, sending everyone there to the warp. This means dealing with Dragon is a big plus, since your colony with Dragon's ships on it is likely safe. Dragon can also choose to spend one of these destiny cards to instead "fly" to that system on offense.
EXTRACTOR - This is a new alien that was absolutely inspired by the Netflix movie with Chris Hemsworth. Peter Olotka has a habit of spontaneously naming new aliens when hearing a word in conversation. "Conversationalist, power to talk", he might say. And maybe there's an alien idea that is born. I did this after watching the movie, and wondered if there was an alien. Extractor pulls ships out of the hot zone and puts them somewhere safe. Or something like that. What it really does is make pointing the hyperspace gate a really important decision. If someone points it at a planet where someone else has a foreign colony, that player is going to be nervous about Extractor being on the offense. It also gives Extractor reason to join the offense when the gate is pointed at a planet where Extractor already has a foreign colony. A lot of interesting new situations tend to arise.
FORCE - This was an original Eon alien name. The original Force was conceptually interesting, but in practice tended to be a mixed bag. It was too ambiguous. Also, the Assistant from Cosmic Eons was starting to encroach on what Force could have become. We needed to go into new territory. Then I remembered Busybody from the Mayfair edition, an alien that most players felt was a good design that deserved to be included in the FFG edition. The original designers had a pretty unpleasant experience with the Mayfair edition, and have never been particularly keen to recognize that version, but they felt it was probably fine to swipe that concept and repackage it for Force. We also beefed it up just a tad. I wrote an easter egg about the Busybody origins into new Force's history, but it got changed. Oh well.
GEEK - This is a new alien that came from Peter one day saying "Geek, power of geekiness". He felt we should have a Geek alien because of how much time we spent on BGG. I figured a Geek alien would be geeking out on Cosmic itself, so the design centered around a player's knowledge of the massive collection of aliens. Geek is a meta alien that can gain a new alien mid game, and potentially optimize which alien it is throughout the game. Mostly it's just fun to test your trivia.
GREMLIN - This is a new alien. While we were committed to not having any aliens that required the use of a variant, we loved the Engineer from CD could use tech cards (even if no one else was using them). We felt that including at least one alien using the model was a good idea. Gremlin can use the Hazard deck (whether it's being used generally or not). It collects them and then can spring them on the players to gain advantage or to impede other players.
GRUMPUS - This is an Alt Timeline alien, and the one we all most felt needed an upgrade. I tried to find a way to build on the original concept, but make it more formidable. Watching someone win the game in playtesting using their power to Grrr-ump was highly satisfying. New Grumpus forces everyone with a colony in their system to lose a ship there whenever Grumpus loses an encounter. Players have to commit big when attacking, if they even think attacking there is worth it. Even the colony you just established in Grumpus' sytem loses a ship. If losing a ship in this way causes you to lose your colony there, Grumpus gets a colony in your system. Humbug!
GUARDIAN - This is a new alien that can be a very powerful ally, especially if you commit big as a main player. Each of Guardian's ships is worth 1 for each ship the main player on their side has in the encounter- totals only. Again, I like to tinker with how players normally behave in the game. How often does the offense go for it with 4 ships? When Guardian sees that, they have a lot of incentive to join the offense. Conversely, Guardian is a great ally for the defense in the early game, and also gives players reasons to consolidate ships on home planets when they have fewer of them to defend.
HURTZ - This was originally a lucre alien from the Eon days. During CD's development, Bill Martinson started noodling a way to make Hurtz a non-lucre alien. We set it aside after an alien called "Mart" was on the menu for inclusion. Mart fizzled and by then we had more than enough aliens. During Cosmic Eons, it was back on the table, but Peddler was developed, so it was set aside again. Afterward, Bill went ahead and perfected the Hurtz design, but it required an extra set of ships. I knew that if we included it in CO, it wasn't going to work if you needed more ships, so I tweaked it to work with just its own ships. I feel like it also tempered Hurtz's strength this way too, which early playtesting seemed to suggest it needed. Hurtz can lease out its uninvolved ships to any of the other others. Leased ships are worth 2 for totals and rewards, so they can be a nice boost. Hurtz collects cosmic tokens as payments, which can be spent to either double their own rewards, or to cancel a lease for another player.
INFERNO - This is a new alien that deals with flares. I was interested in an alien that had more than just one flare. I also thought it would be interesting to have a Vulch-like alien that targeted flares. After hands are dealt, you add 5 more copies of the Inferno flare to the deck. The wild effect can add a big number to your side's totals, but then Inferno gets the flare. If Inferno holds 5 flares and at least 2 are its own flare, it can win the game. This is another alien that was designed to alter normal game play in new and crazy ways.
INSECT - An original Eon alien, whose design was pretty similar to Plant. Both of those aliens have storied histories with rules confusion. We played around with a lot of different takes on what new Insect could do, but the closer we got to the original, the more issues we kept finding. Still, I wanted Insect to fundamentally copy aliens in some way. We ended up with an alien that interacts with flares in an interesting way, and has that meta effect of bringing a new alien into the game. This insect has some options too, because getting your hands on new flares that no ones always has potential. And yes, there appears to be some mix up with alert levels. It was designed as a red alert alien, so at least the flare is correct.
LEMMING - This is a new alien that essentially rewards reckless behavior. Whenever Lemming has 9 or more ships in the warp, they get to send 4 of them out to establish a new foreign colony. Thus, you can commit fully to every encounter more or less, and you'll get something for your trouble regardless. This could possibly have even been green alert, but yellow works.
LLOYD - This was an original lucre alien. Overall it didn't need that much changing- just the form of payment. It doesn't really cost the other players anything to insure their cards, ships, power, other than knowing that Lloyd will be getting "rich" from the transaction. Making sure that temptation was just right was key to making this alien work. It's fine to play, and even though you are guaranteeing you won't lose your ships, or that you can keep your Cosmic Zap after playing it, you still feel kinda dirty.
LOCUST - This is a Alt alien. Before Grumpus, Locust was everyone's favorite alien to hate. Even Kevin admitted it was a great concept that just didn't end up being anything other than "you have the power to not get allies". The new Locust takes a page from Filth, and let's Locust have allies on offense. The allies just get to land on a different planet, and Locust gets to devour more regularly.
MICRON - This is an Alt alien, redoing Macron. Macron is the alien that has probably had the most homebrew revisions of any alien. It started out as a pretty great concept, simple and powerful. Each ship is worth 4. But from its first iteration, it had the hyperspace gate restriction of 1 ship, and that made the myriad of subsequent game effects which could target single ships a problem for Macron. I felt the most elegant solution was just make Macron's effect "each ship is worth 2". But make it 2 for everything- totals, compensation, and rewards. Macron would no longer have the best defense (16 with all 4 ships), but 8 isn't bad, and the threat of negotiating to take a player's whole hand is decent. Plus, the single-ship problem is gone. FFG thought it was be fun to rename it as Micron, which I believe came out of how to alter the artwork in an interesting way. It's the only Alt Alien with a different name, but part of the them of CO is that you are encountering different version of Cosmic through time and space, so it totally works for me. Flare should be green.
MAGNET - This was an original Eon alien, and the one held up as an example of the "agency rule", which is why it was never before published for FFG. We worked hard to capture the original flavor of Magnet, but find a way to address the player agency issue. I think we managed it, because the decision of whether or not you can be affected by Magnet lies with the potential allies. You have to decide to join, knowing you could be pulled to other side, or made to change the number of ships you bring. That secondary effect was also a clear nod to the original Crystal's power.
MASOCHIST - This is an Alt Alien from the FFG base set. I loved, loved the idea of Alt-Win aliens that Kevin introduced to Cosmic. Masochist has always been my favorite of these aliens, but it did have some situations that could arise, making the alien a total bust. Mobius Tubes of course, and then an alien like Healer. The new Masochist is much much scarier because it can now ignore those effects. I suppose there is still the "tech leak" effect. I actually addressed this in the design process, but it got dropped. House rules!
NEGATOR - This was an Eon alien that, like Force, was too ambiguous in its original form. Essence cards were a great way to organize and codify the effects for Negator. I especially like the optional power effects for Main Player and Ally. You always have three negations, so the real fun for me is trying to optimize the ones in hand, playing some early just to cycle to the tactically critical ones.
PERFECTIONIST - This is an Alt alien from Cosmic Eons. I think there were a couple of aliens that might have been contenders for "alting", but I wasn't going to do any that required additional components. Original Perfectionist isn't terrible, but can be obnoxious, so I softened its effects.
PHANTOM - This is an alien that first appeared in the Mayfair edition. It was a design I always liked, though it had its critics. I juiced up the effects, and it makes Phantom a bit scarier than its predecessor. Each of its ships on the alien sheet adds 2 to Phantom's totals as a Main Player, but their actual ships in the encounter add nothing.
SADIST - This is an alt alien from Cosmic Conflict. Everyone was excited to see a "companion" alien to Masochist, but the final result was tricky to pull off in games. I wanted to find a way to make Sadist not only more likely to pull off its alternate win, but I liked the Alt Win aliens like Genius that gave the players things to do that could help them achieve it. I felt Sadist needed that extra boost, so it can force players to lose another ship if they really didn't lose enough.
SCHIZOID - An Alt Alien from Cosmic Alliance. Part of what drove the decision to alt this alien was that it really ought to have been an Essence alien, but that concept hadn't really been developed yet. So we retroactivated it. The other thing was that homebrew improvement ideas suggested other ways Schizoid could have been implemented, which I liked a lot. I know some folks don't love that it's easier for everyone to see the cards that aren't chosen in this version, but it does have one more win condition than before, and it honestly isn't that easy to suss it out. I love that FFG included a list of the conditions for players to reference. I had such a "cheat sheet" made up, and showed it at Escape Velocity, and people kept asking for it.
SILENCER - This is an original Eon alien that was long overlooked because of how mean it can be, but also because of ambiguity. I was never bothered by the original, and did want to eventually see it make its way to publication, but I agreed that trying to clarify the effects was critical. I'm happy with where we ended up on Silencer- it's still mean, and I am working on a Combo Card called "meanies" or something to that effect, which will have Evil Twin to keep it company.
TENTACLE - This is a new alien. It's super simple, and I kinda love it because of that. I was really keen to have simple green aliens in this expansion, and also felt that playing around with the value of lower or mid-range attack cards would be a fun concept. Tentacle also makes an attractive ally, and often gets underestimated.
THE MEEK - This is a new alien, and it's purposely weird. By the 7th expansion, there should be some outlandish concepts in there. The Meek is an alien that really changes your normal game play approach, and the other players have to adjust to that. Instead of advancing their score when winning, it only advances when they lose. And winning actually lowers their score. The Meek will typically have a short turn as offense, but they love to be attacked.
THROWBACK - This is a new alien by Bill Martinson. Bill designed it for Cosmic Eons, and it would have been a great tribute to the Eon edition. However, FFG at that time was not interested in printing a sheet that was wildly different from the others. With the Odyssey concept of encountering the different editions of cosmic, it fit even better in my opinion. It was also technically another alien that didn't really new new art. Peter dug up the original painting, which we scanned and sent over. This is a truly silly alien, but it's kind of endearing to veteran players, especially those prone to still using the old terminology of cone, challenge, and edict. Even the flare nods to the sleek look of the original flares.
VECTOR - This is a new alien that can switch what it gains as a winning ally. What makes this alien work is the social aspect of the game. You can ally on the offense when you have more foreign colonies than the offensive player (when normally they would not invite you). When players are worried about you getting too many rewards (especially with an ultra reward on top of the deck), the defense can offer you a colony instead to ally with them. It's about having options that normally are not available. The strength of Vector's effect will fluctuate in every game, and throughout a game.
VOID - This is an Alt alien from the base set. Void, like Locust, always seems very scary upon reading its effect. But in practice, the original Void has typically had a fairly low impact on the game. The new Void works as an ally too, which makes it twice as likely to eradicate. Like many others, I was also a little deflated by the "you can't eliminate all of a player's ships" text on the previous Void. I get it for sure, but it further lessens its scariness. New Void can always deal with you do return those ships (if it wants to), so the clause is no longer necessarily necessary.
WITCH - This is a classic Eon alien that is now an Essence alien. While Nightmare had a similar effect, this Witch behaves differently, and uses Essence cards in a new way. Each Curse is public, and ongoing. It can only be dispelled when a certain number of ships are sacrificed, which was first proposed here on BGG and I thought it was a great idea.
WRACK - An Eon alien. Original Wrack proposed a deal and zapped your ships each time you refused the deal, but if you refused it enough times they would lose. It was an okay concept, but we felt it could be improved. This was just punishes players on the other side for playing cards, which is simple, and can get really nasty when you want to start playing artifacts, flares, and especially reinforcements.
ZILCH - This was an unusual Eon alien concept. It was introduces as a way to add another player to the game without needed any components. I always found it thrilling to play, but others found it tedious. I did like the idea of picking someone to win (ala the Bene Gesserit advantage from Dune), and trying to covertly help them. We used Essence cards again with this alien to streamline the effects. You also pick a destiny card for your chosen winner at start (no need for paper and pencil, which FFG doesn't like), keeping it secret on your sheet. The longer the game goes on, the easier it is for others to figure out who you picked.
ZOMBIE - The last Alt Timeline alien, from the base set. Poor Zombie, which is another great and simply concept that has been punished by another alien's design. Zombie vs Void. And of course the questions of compensation. Doesn't Zombie deserve to gain compensation? It's sometimes an important tactical move, which Zombie is denied. But no more. This was a homebrew of Zombie I had done decades ago, and I think it holds up. Zombie's ships are like everyone else's while of the warp. They can get compensation, and whenever Zombie loses, those ships go to the warp normally. But, every regroup, all of Zombie's ships reanimate, and return to their home planets (even if they had no ships there). It sends up being mostly the same benefits for Zombie, but without any of the downsides. They can't even really lose their power.
That is my run down on thoughts for each alien, and some of the design consideration. Many under went a series of tweaks through our FP playtesting, and even more during FFG's tests, but I am super happy with the turn out. I can say that the Alt aliens are certainly designed to replace their originals, but players will do as they wish. I like that their flares are clearly different, so there's no confusion about which is which if you do combine them. Odyssey will make a pretty great first expansion for those players who only have the base game (though they will be limited to 5p games- which is why I recommend you get them all). I hope players will enjoy these new aliens as much as we do. If you have any great stories with the aliens, please share them. Thanks!
