Aliens

Illustrated by: Conceptopolis

Purchase the Aliens Faction on Forgefire! (link coming soon)

Aliens love to mess with people, and they love to mess with other players even more. From bouncing minions back to players’ hands, to replacing bases in play, aliens are out to have a great time, at any planet’s expense.

Aliens are from the Core (Base game) set and do not have a Titan card.

Mechanics

• Returning Minions to hand
• VP Gain

Like those in our stories, the elusive and mysterious Aliens of Smash Up take people for who knows what reasons. Aliens are experts at returning anyone's minions back to their hand. They can Beam Up their friends to safety, and Abduct their adversaries to Probe them for information. Can you withstand their bubble-helmed Invasion?

In isolation, returning minions to their owners' hands is not that significant of an ability, but Aliens leverage their expertise to enable a number of unique strategies. All of their returning abilities can target friend or foe. After you return an enemy's minion, use Probe to discard it, and also spy on their hand. You might preemptively deny them a powerful minion you weren't aware of! Aliens have a minor ability to play extra minions to help replay your own minions you return.

Aliens can do more than just return minions to hands. Send them to their decks instead with Disintegrator! This is especially strong against Tenacious Zs. As always, you can use this on your own minions. How about bases? Enter Terraforming! You also get to play an extra minion.

Strategy

Aliens' overall power is quite low, so they're not too great at breaking bases. Their Scout minions, however, are specialized at maintaining presence on the bases. You may return them to your hand after the base they are on scores, so you can reuse them. You're not likely to win bases this way, but second and third place are enough to support you along with the next strategy.

Invaders probably have the most powerful on-play ability in the whole game. By playing, returning, replaying, and rereturning them in an "Invader Dance", you can theoretically win the game without breaking any bases. More commonly, Invaders make up just one component of the Aliens' overall game plan. Relying on this tactic consumes a lot of your minion plays, so reserve Crop Circles to simultaneously slow your opponents' efforts at breaking bases. While fairly easy in a 2-player game, this gets harder the more opponents you face, because they will more and more easily break bases without your input.

Synergy

Aliens work best alongside factions that are also good at returning minions to hands. The next best have and/or support on-play abilities and help slow down the game for your opponents.

• Ninjas: Master Ninja and Tiger Assassin are even more formidable if you can return them to hand and re-use their minion-destroying on-play abilities.
• Robots: Zapbot, Hoverbot, Microbot Fixer, and Microbot Reclaimer all have useful on-play abilities that provide extra minion plays.
• Tricksters: Blending their tricks and hindrances in with the Aliens, Tricksters also offer much-desired extra minion plays for you to farm VPs.
• Time Travelers: Directly replay Invaders with Do Over! and take control of the bases.
• Star Roamers: Ship's Captain can fetch any minion you need, and even play them as an extra minion if their power is 3 or less (like the Invader). Science Officer's talent lets you return one of your minions to your hand to play another with a different name, giving you access to a VP farming engine with Invader. Collector and Supreme Overlord are good partners for that combo, allowing you to repeatedly return other minions to hand. Medical Officer lets you return your Invaders and other minions to hand if they would be destroyed. Ensigns and Protector Fields can protect your Invaders and other minions from removal outright.

Cards - Minions

1x Supreme Overlord

Power 5 - You may return a minion to its owner’s hand.

Errata? No

Clarifications: NA

2x Invader

Power 3 - Gain 1 VP.

Errata? N

Clarifications: NA