Take advantage of those mobile planets

One of the unique features of the new Cosmic Encounter boardgame is that the planets come as "individuals" rather than grouped together in fives, as in past editions. This has already led to much speculation — which I happen to agree with — that Fantasy Flight Games has plans to showcase this feature in a future expansion.

But for now, we've got The Warp, which has already blasted out two pretty nice homebrewed aliens that focus on the single-planet aspect of the game. Allow me to introduce Focus and Shift.

Let's see what the powers actually do ... for Focus:

You have the power to Channel. At the start of the game, arrange your planets in the order you wish them to be challenged. Arrange your ships on the planets in any denomination you like (as long as there is at least one ship per planet). Other players must attack you in the order you select. At the start of your turn, you may rearrange the order of the planets.

And for Shift:

You have the power to Transpose. Whenever you win an encounter as a defensive main player, you may use this power to exchange your planet that was just attacked with one from the offensive main player's home system. Your planet is now a home planet in his or her system (and an external base for you and any other player with a colony there). His planet in your system is now treated as one of your home planets.

Good stuff, as always, from The Warp.