Tuesday, January 13, 2009

CE alien survey #8: FIDO

First appearance: Fantasy Flight Games.

Plain-English power: Offer a discard to another player; you keep it if they don't want it. Get a card from the deck or a ship from the Warp if they take it.

Loved by: People who don't like to crush their opponents with huge combat powers; people who love giving and getting gifts at the same time; Citadel and Reserve, who love the low Attack cards that Fido should be offering.

Loathed by: Filch, Anti-Matter, Spiff, Pacifist. Filch now has competition for the discard; Anti-Matter will get offered huge Attack cards; Spiff and Pacifist will get offered mid-range Attack cards. Pacifist in particular despises Fido, because a smart Fido will offer Negotiates to other players.

Three ways to win as Fido:
  1. Know the deck, and absolutely know what's been discarded. A 12 becomes that much more potent if you've already seen the 40, 30, and 20s hit the discard pile. You may get to keep it if the other players forget what's been played.
  2. Know what to offer to whom. Take note of the other alien powers. Don't dare offer low cards to Anti-Matter or Loser (plus, offering Anti-Matter huge cards is one of the delights of being Fido). Offering mid-range Attacks to Pacifist is not a bad idea; Pacifist likes to "cycle" his cards, and those cards may keep him from doing so. Offer the Attack 11 to Mirror ... and so on.
  3. Know what you want for a reward. Down to a few cards? You may want to offer good cards, so you can get ships from the Warp and later get a whole new hand. Huge hand with good Flares? Offer low or mid-range Attacks so you can preserve that hand.
Three ways to win against Fido:
  1. Watch his ships. If Fido has a ton in the Warp, he may offer up really nice cards to get them out. Consider passing on those.
  2. Negotiate against his Attacks from time to time, so you can get some of the good cards he's probably picked up.
  3. Don't outguess yourself. If Fido's offering a good card, and you could really use one, take it. Maybe his reward won't be so hot.
At CE Online? No.

— Submitted by Rob Burns

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nice analysis. In the FF version, is it clear that Fido may offer a card either face up or face down? It would seem to help Fido a little if he could offer a card face down ... the player to whom the card is offered would know the cards played in the prior encounter, but might not be sure if the one offered would be any good to them. Of course, as you point out, aliens like Tripler or Anti-Matter are great for Fido because he can offer them high cards with impunity.

Adam said...

Considering that the other card will go to discard and all discarded cards can be seen by other players, they could easily find out by the process of elimination which one you took. The text would have made it clear if you are supposed to be able to offer it blindly to a player.

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