I’ll look into lowering the cost of nubby. It’s probably okay to lower it; honestly you could make an argument that an entirely free nubby wouldn’t be too unbalanced since a 6 max HP universe is as much of a liability as it is an opportunity.
The math works out that you can get 8 extra dollars in play if you keep it alive the whole game. I feel like progressively making it more expensive is the best strat so when you are really cash strapped at the beginning you can try to farm it, but if you just want to gamble for points at the end, you better be confident.