| Zombie |
|---|
| Power of immortality |
| Never goes to warp |
|
| FFG |
|
| Wild Each time you lose ships to the warp, you may prevent one of your ships from going to the warp, instead returning it to one of your colonies. |
| Super Each player who allies with you during an encounter may retrieve one ship from the warp (if any) and place it in the encounter. This ship does not count towards a player's normal limit of four ships in an encounter. |
Zombie is an alien with a simple noncombat power: whenever its ships would normally go to the warp, they instead return to any of its colonies and can continue to be used.
While Zombie's power is very simple, it has caused various rule questions to come up. Two such questions have been answered by Fantasy Flight Games' official Cosmic Encounter FAQ:
- Does Zombie collect compensation?
- No; it does not lose any ships to the warp, which is how compensation is measured.
- Can Zombie use its power to avoid Void?
- No; Zombie's power can only be used to save ships that would be going to the warp, but Void's power makes it so that the ships never go to the warp in the first place.
Text[]
| Edition | Power Text | History |
|---|---|---|
| FFG | You have the power of Immortality. Whenever you should lose ships to the warp, use this power to instead return them to any of your colonies and keep using them. In addition, you may free any player's ships from the warp (back to any colonies he or she has) as part of a deal. |
Shadowy forms on a dark and murky world, Zombies prized all sources of energy. They could flourish only by careful recycling of their own kind. Living on decomposed organic matter, they abhor the needless waste of war and have developed effective techniques to make sure their numbers will not be reduced. |
Strategy[]
Since the Zombie ships do not go to the warp, the Zombie player can use them recklessly. He can intentionally lose a fight in which he has 4 ships in order to kill his allies' ships. He should always launch four ships as a main player and send four of his ships to ally whenever invited, as he has nothing to lose.
A slow, patient strategy seems to be good for Zombie. Target the opponents' population; don't rush for colonies necessarily. As time goes on, your numerical advantage will grow as more enemy ships fall into the warp. If you are trying to press numerical superiority by keeping enemy ships in the warp, you should also try and save any Card Zaps you get to negate Mobius Tubes; although doing so repeatedly is unlikely to earn you any friends.
Zombie can also use their power to take an advantage in deals, by forcing the opponent to either hand over a colony/card, as Zombie essentially suffers no consequences for failing to deal.
House rules[]
Normally, Zombie cannot take compensation because none of its ships end up in the warp (which is how compensation is measured). The Cosmodex suggests a house rule that Zombie is allowed to take compensation based on the number of ships that would go to the warp but saved via its own power.
The alternate timeline version of Zombie introduced in Cosmic Odyssey actually does rework zombie to implicitly include this change.