Hey all,

Looking for a bit of advice. My group has played about 20-30 games, and aside from our first few games, the Cylons NEVER win. It's been close a few times, but for the most part the humans sail to victory.

My only theory is that the humans play too well. We metagame every aspect of the game. We almost never overshoot a crisis card. We root out the Cylons fairly early. Even if the Admiral or President is a Cylon, we usually get them brigged fairly quickly. Even if a Cylon manages to stay unrevealed for a while, we usually root him out by counting negative destiny cards. Even with both Cylons revealed, dumping crisis after crisis on us, the humans still manage to win. When we have a human president, the quorum cards usually get used quite frequentely to check loyalty cards, brig cylons and raise morale up to ridiculous amounts.

I notice in the victory count thread that in other groups, the Cylons win the majority of the times. I need some help figuring out what we're doing different.

We've looked over the rules and the FAQ many many times. We're playing the game correctly. We follow the secrecy rules to the 'T'. Cylons honestly try to cast doubt onto other people. But their lie typically gets figured out rather quickly. We've tried 3,4,5 and 6 players games. It never seems to go any better for the humans. Even when both Cylon players get their cards before the sleeper phase, they never seem to win. We keep a very tight eye on cards that go into skill checks and they never seem to get away with playing many negative cards.

Does anyone have any advice? Help! My players are getting frustrated. We love the game, but some games its not even close, and the Cylons waste two hours of their lives drawing crisis cards and activating raiders.

Thanks in advance,

-LTW

I can think of a couple of things you may be doing wrong.

1. Your Cylons are being obvious. Much of the time, when you're a cylon, it pays to act like a human. Don't always sabotage, don't try to throw people in the brig without cause.

2. Sabotage doesn't always mean throw in negatives. Sometimes it means throwing in a pair of 1s and saying "large amount".

There are tactics available to cylons that are not always so obvious. Like an Admiral picking distance 1 locations. Those are extra turns being added to the game that favour the cylons.

Our cylon/human victory ratio is pretty even. Sometimes the cylons get a raw deal, and they just can't get by because of repeated easy crises. Sometimes the humans get ruined by a series of crises, and the cylons are left wondering how they could have lost. Most of the time, it's a fairly even fight.

To be honest, I don't see how the humans could win every time in the situation you describe, even counting negative destiny numbers. I mean, how can you attribute cards in skill checks to players with accuracy? If there is a negative purple in the skill check, how on earth do you pin it against anyone?

There must be something your Cylons aren't quite doing right.

Knock the resources down a level or 2. Keep knocking them down until the ratio is better.

Also remember, some characters in the brig are still effective Cylons with their regular abilities (eg-Boomer and her ability to throw away good crises and her once per game ability can be very detrimental if used right).

Another thing that can help is to ensure you wait for an XO and use your once per game along with cylon reveal power when it's most effective.

Sabotaging skill checks isn't the best way to play a Cylon. Have you read the article on BGG and the Support under the BSG game about how to play a Cylon? The best way to play a Cylon is to be the best human possible and wait for someone else to screw up and throw the blame on them.

Despite what you've said, you must be playing something wrong. I've never heard of a group complaining that the HUMANS win too often. It's usually quite the opposite.

"We almost never overshoot a crisis card."

I'd very much like to know how this is possible when playing the game correctly.

"We root out the Cylons fairly early."

This doesn't lead to an automatic Human victory, but it doesn't hurt. Again, I have to wonder if you're playing the game correctly.

"We follow the secrecy rules to the 'T'"

Do you? This seems to be the most likely place to go wrong.

"We keep a very tight eye on cards that go into skill checks and they never seem to get away with playing many negative cards."

A Cylon who plays negative cards is probably not a very good Cylon. They should be mis-playing good cards and only slamming the negatives when they're about to reveal.

Anyway, explain that first point to me and we'll see if we can help you out.

Trump said:

I said almost never. We usually make liberal use of investigative committees, or outright fail crisis cards we don't care about. When we dont have an investigative committee in play, we say your typical "I played a low amount" or "I played a high amount" or when playing multiple cards "I played a medium amount". When we see cards we dont expect in the pile, we make a note of it. Everyone plays with a notepad to write down Cylon like stuff. By looking at card types and by counting negative destiny cards, we begin to root out Cylons. Counting negative destiny cards has proven extremely useful in rooting out Pilot or Engineer Cylons. I'm starting to think my group of players might know eachother TOO well.

Quite a deal of card counting goes on in my group. Whenever someone plays a card, most players make a note of it on their notepad. We all know the number and strength of all the skill cards in the game by heart. We also keep extremely tight watch on what colors people draw, especially when people draw off-colors by use of the two locations or by using Consolidate Power. This helps in knowing when someone is lying about putting in a "low", "high" or "medium" amount and it also helps when we see negative cards.

Trump said:

If there are Cylons before the sleeper phase, they usually get brigged pretty quick. And after the sleeper phase we spend a good deal of time looking for the Cylons and doing nothing else, usually by burning through Quorum cards. A few times, but not always, the brigged Cylons waste a few rounds trying to cast suspicious on their accusers, but it almost never works. So they typically blow their once per game ability in a negative way and then reveal. Revealed Cylons almost never deal much damage to us. We either save a lot of cards for their super crisis, or flat out fail it because we don't care about it (Bomb on Colonial One, Inbound Bukes if our resources are fine). The only time they ever seem to pose a threat is when both Cylons are our pilots and lots of raiders get spawned. But we usually EO and move the ships away, and/or shoot them down slowly, and/or Quorum them to death.

Trump said:

I thought this too. But I've read the secrecy rules and the FAQ many many times. We never reveal the strength of our cards, only using the typical "low", "high" and "medium" if you're playing more than one card. Any time someone looks at the top of the crisis or destination deck, they only discuss it using the extremely vague "good" or "bad". When someone is allowed to look at another players loyalty card, he never reveals which Cylon card he sees, if he sees one. When someone looks at the back of a civilian ship, he only says "a lot" or "a little" resources. We've learned that "a little" typically means zero, or morale.

Open accusations do happen, but its usually because someone has reached a significant level of suspicious as per that player's notepad. This usually isn't wrong either we've found. When an open accusation isn't supported by data on our pads, we usually assume that person is a Cylon. This is also usually correct.

Trump said:

I agree on the first point. If one of our Cylons tries to get away with throwing negatives, they usually fail due to destiny card counting. When someone says they're going to play a high amount, we usually make a rule that everyone else should throw in only low or medium amounts. This makes it easy to tell if the person that said "I'm throwing in a high amount" was lying. We sometimes also limit the number of people who are going to contribute, through group agreement, in an attempt to minimize possible suspects in the event we see something we don't like in the pile. We usually only do the above two things until we've rooted out the first Cylon, or until we're satisfied that there are no Cylon's prior to the sleeper phase.

In closing, I'll also say that there HAVE been some games where it's been close. But this has usually been due to a Cylon President or Admiral. And they usually get rooted out if they decide to pick a bad destination card or refuse to draw Quorum Cards. Past Cylons in my group have admitted that they were extremely frustrated because they felt that their hands were tied as we passed skill check after skill check and that anything they might do to stop us would tip the Humans off.

It sounds like you're playing a "too rigid" game.

Do away with the notepads, for one thing. I can assure it will make for a different game.

Another idea is to try a house rule that disallows people to comment on cards at all - in a skill check they may only state the number of cards they are playing (no high/medium/low), and with a decision like scouting, they have to decide on their own, without any group input.

OK, let's see what we have here...

LikeTheWhirlwind said:

Personally, we prefer to be even more vague about cards played, saying something like "I can't help this one much". When you have a range of 1-5, low, middle, high is still a fairly definite giveaway.

A notepad?! Lords of Kobol! You'd better break that habit fast because I can't imagine many people who'd put up with that kind of nonsense. Your group might think that's just fine, but it's NOT fine in the "outside world". Of COURSE it's easy to count Destiny Cards, etc if you're writing everything down. I'm stunned that you think this is acceptable behavior.

I also wonder that you know all of the cards by heart. You're treating the skill cards as if you're playing Spades, Bridge, or whatever. Except that you're using a notepad too! Surely you're not using a notepad when you play a game like Spades?

In short, your group is allowed FAR FAR too much knowledge about the skill cards and that's got to be a major reason you're games are "broken".

LikeTheWhirlwind said:

As alluded to above, destiny card counting should not be such a simple thing. It's not impossible, but it's not easy when you're dealing with everything else as well.

Make a rule about what to throw in? <shaking head> And what are you going to do when you play with anyone outside your group? They are NOT going to be playing by your "rules". These internal rules are NOT helping your game at all.

LikeTheWhirlwind said:

Small wonder after seeing the paranoid zeal you're using regarding the skill cards.

I'm sorry if my message sounds harsh in places, but I really am amazed that you believe that your treatment of the skill cards is acceptable. That has got to be the main reason your games are so skewed.

Creating your own behavior rules within the game is also a big problem. This sort of thing can often happen if you're always gaming with the exact same people, but your group appears to be doing this overtly rather than subconsciously.

Despite what I've said about why things aren't working for you and your own desire to understand, I have to advise you not to change how you play the game but rather to play another game instead. Seriously, your group's methods didn't just come out of the blue when playing BSG. There are PLENTY of games out there that would work just fine with the way your group plays (well, except for the notepads. I have a LOT of trouble thinking of games where that's acceptable.), but I don't believe BSG is ever going to be one of them.

Well, let me say this much. My group of players are all PC game developers; programmers and the like. We all work for the same company. I think we have a naturally tendancy the metagame the crap out of just about everything we do. We see the systems and the patterns. The things I outlined are not "hard set" house rules, but rather some of the very common things our human players end up doing.

The notepads are not used to count destiny cards. Thats easy enough to do in your head. Counting destiny cards IS a very very easy thing to do. Theres only 10 of them per "destiny round" as we say. If any time during those 5 skill checks you see 3 negatives of a single color come up, in ANY of the checks, you know you have a Cylon (or a human player that made a mistake or wanted us to fail for whatever reason, be it presidency or admiral title changing hands, etc). You can then use that cards color to start to make some deductions about who the Cylon could be. Especially so if its red or blue.

The notepads get used as a tally for Cylon-like behavior. We write down each players name, and when they do something that is considered Cylon-like in my opinion, I put a tally by their name. Lets say for example we do a skill check, and purple is a negative color, and I see three purple cards in the pile, I'm going to put a tally by every player that draws, or that I have seen draw, purple cards. I'm going to reiterate, the notepads are NOT used to count cards. Thats very easy to do in your head.

If any one player is getting pretty high in the tally count, the humans are going to start doing things different. We might take the presidency or admirality away from this player. We might use an investigative committee on skill checks where he is likely to put cards down on. We might even brig them just to be safe. On any skill check he players, where he says he can help a good amount, we're going to attempt to keep the number of contributing players to a minimum. This helps us determine if he's against us or with us.

We're unlikely to stop playing; its a very fun game regardless of who loses. I was just looking for some advice, namely Cylon strategies, so that the 2 hours we spend playing, aren't as boring for the Cylon players.

If anyone has any more input please post it. Thanks!

LikeTheWhirlwind said:

I understand what you mean about seeing the systems and the patterns, but I think there's more going on here. <shrug> Or maybe not.

Counting destiny cards as far as seeing three reds being played isn't so tough. Remembering who could have played a red every time you've seen them played... that's not so easy. Not impossible though. Probably harder with more commonly seen colors. You might consider a change in the destiny deck rules. Make the first deck as normal. When any cards get used, discard to one central pile. When a new destiny deck is needed, shuffle the entire discard pile and deal 5 to the new destiny pile as long as the top card from each deck. THAT will stop the card counting.

I still find your use of notepads unacceptable. Do it in your head or don't do it at all.

With your group's tendency to let two people play cards and the rest sit out and see how it goes, I'm surprised that you find yourself hitting the difficulty number so often. The destiny variance can be tough without Investigative Commitee.

If I were a Cylon in your games, I'd consider a variation on the destiny deck rules. Either do as I suggested above or just flat out create a deck every time you draw instead of going through the whole thing. Maybe a little less table talk would be in order. Simply see how many cards people are contributing and take your actions from that. I'd also consider revealing ASAP. I'm talking about the very first turn it looks remotely doable. For example, the player to my right has taken their turn and I can tank that skill check and then reveal on my own turn before anyone can get me in the brig.

Just asking why would anyone throw their main skill into the pot to foil? Far better for say, Chief, to throw in politics instead of engineering since it’s less likely to be him (unless of course you have Baltar, Boomer, and Starbuck all in the same game, then it becomes smart).

And if what you’re saying is true about card counting and having an “only one big card” rule and such then go to the other extreme. Say “I’m throwing in a small card” and toss in a fiver, use a strategic planning on a minor roll, burn through those cards so you can’t help out as much when it really matters.

Course I only have a few games under my belt so what do I know.

Vonpenguin said:

It's generally a safe (and maybe good) idea for a Cylon in late position (current player, or directly right of the currently player) in larger games to throw in negatives if all of the other players have thrown in a few cards.

On your second point: I'm starting to agree with you that an early-game Cylon can often do a lot of damage by blowing his cards on minor skill checks just so he has an excuse to not play positives in later skill checks.

Try doing away with the "medium" amount when playing more than one skill card. That might help all by itself. I helped a little, and I helped alot.

Further, I really don't think Skill Checks are where a Cylon should be trying to screw the fleet unless they can get away with it very easily. The most effective use I've seen is where a Cylon uses their turn to screw the fleet over (piloting a viper out of the way of civ ships or using their once-per-game power) and revealing.

Maybe you guys should also start picking different characters. You could try forcing yourselves to not pick one of the regular classes. (eg-no political leader, no pilor or whatever) even though it's technically against the rules.

Get rid of the notepads though regardless of what you do.

As it says in the "How to play a Cylon" guide, sabotaging skill checks is the most obvious way and most likely to be detected way of hurting the humans. There are countless other ways of hurting them.

You could try changing the Destiny Deck also. Grab a random amount of cards of each type instead of 2 of each. This would require more work, but may help out your cylon 'friends'. You'd have to have one person take the skill decks and mix them up (he'd mark the locations of where he put them, but then leave the room so he doesn't know how many of each were taken). Then someone else rolls a d3 for cards taken from each pile until 10 were selected.

Try adding large quantities of alcohol, or other intoxicants, to your gaming group.

LikeTheWhirlwind said:

1. I still don't know how you determine who is a cylon when the negative card is purple. Just about anyone in the game draws purple cards. It is the most common colour to appear on the skill cards, so it's not terribly suspicious when Gaius picks one up, or someone Consolidates for a pair of them.

2. Counting destiny cards becomes a lot harder if you have a variety of colours on skill checks. When you have say, a purple and red crisis, do you count the greens and yellows as destiny, or cylon sabotage? How are you accounting for this.

3. Cylons who throw in red or blue are asking to be ruined, especially if they do it repeatedly. No cylon ever does that unless it's the skill check before they're going to reveal (and then you'll see the Max Firepowers and Scientific Researches come out).

I don't see how you can accurately count exactly what the destiny deck is putting in. I realise you've said 'any three negatives of a single colour' but any cylon worth his salt is not going to throw in the same colour over and over (unless it's purple, because that could have been anyone). I absolutely understand how counting destiny works; you can only typically count blues and reds, but a cylon (unless they're about to reveal) isn't going to toss in those.

Oh man, notepads? You guys are hardcore. I read the thread and I think you really should listen to Trump. Another game might be better for your group. You say that you enjoy BSG? I get the feeling that Humans do enjoy rooting out those cylons with your notepads and such, in fact I think that really stimulates the analytical minds of such programmers as you, but how about your Cylons? I bet they don't enjoy it very much. I know I wouldn't. There's no chance against such a careful approach.

I really see three options

1. Change the people. Get yourself drunk and throw away those notepads.

2. Change the rules. You really need to make some heavy house rules to make it easier for Cylons. Modifying the destiny deck and making secrecy even stricter sounds the way to go.

3. Change the game. I bet there must be some nice detective game out there that rewards that kind of careful logical analysis stuff.

There is another special strategy that the Cylons can now employ to ensure victory.

Plastic Base Stars.

That is all.

Omnisiah said:

Indeed. Such a tactic provides greater missle coverage and raider launch capabilities without harming counter-fire solutions.

Holycrap humans never loose???? dang in our game humans never win always almost loosing either rather quickly or short of 1 jump.

To me sounds like you play the game totally wrong somewhere or the cylon is just poor playing cylon or the most obvious cheating.

1st of all you say you guys throw the cylon in the brig pretty quickly? how about the cylon reveal himself start sabotaging you from the cylon locations.

2nd you also say you always pile up cards for the super crisis card hmm find it rather hard to actually believe you're able with all crisis cards needing checks rather frequently and you never know when the cylon will play super crisis cards sounds very wrong somewhere.

Seems to me you're cheating yourself from a great experience using notepads this is a boardgame using notepad sounds just too fishy.

Also the fact you guys seems so amazingly good at rooting out who is cylon is very strange but then again I recon pokerface is not the 1st thing that comes to my mind as well as if you're a cylon you don't toss in tons of cards to sabotage unless you intend to reveal yourself soon.

1 card is enough remember 2 cards from destiny deck is the random factor unless ofcourse as I suspect that you're actually cheating meaning counting cards. This is the most obvious thing that strikes me reading this.

Nevertheless even if the cylon or cylons play pretty stupid the crisis cards usually make things rather hard and the destiny cards is a nice touch too you never know what's going to come but in this case I suspect you guys already know.

We don't use high or low at all we just ask players if they want to put cards into the skill check. Also we place all used skill cards faced down when discarding not revealing to anyone what numbers we throw away just place them faced down in next to the colour they represent so the only thing people know we throw away is what colour, not numbers or type.

I suspect you guys have all the cards on your notepads and using basic maths to calculate what's left of the numbers. I know you will ofcourse claim this isn't happening but seriously it pretty much seems like what's happening for outsiders at least.

I'm sry my posting sounds like I assume you're cheating but honestly when you guys say you use notepads it's the most logical assumtion to draw the conclusion you're cheating and you're only cheating yourself from a good gaming experience.

So my tips for you guys is drop the notepads and also play with discarding skill cards face down.

funnylumpy said:

I don't think that's an issue. After all, some of us do that without the use of notepads. What I don't understand is how they can tell who threw in a bad purple or green when so many characters draw it. Their Cylons are probably playing quite poorly.

I think its a combination of poor Cylon playing and using notepads. BSG is kinda like poker, in the sense that its all about gut-instinct and bluffing. Using such an stringent playing style sucks all the fun out of it. Starbuck and Husker would never use those--- all about rolling the hard 6. Humor us all here and play 3 games without them and see what happens,

My only other suggestion might be that everytime you lose 2 or more resources everyone has to state who they think the Cylon players are and noone can say "no one here".

You're reveled Cylons are still allowed to play a card into skill checks so I'm surprised you find it easy to pass checks once they've been revealed. Also in a six player game you can potentially end up with 3 cylons in the game if you're playing with the sympathiser card. Cylons can pass on their unrevealed loyalty cards to other players. You are remembering these things right?

Sinis said:

Well 1st of all the game is not that complicated so notepad is not needed for anything seriously.. unless keeping track of something like what cards are still left in play.

Maybe the don't have anyone good at playing cylon or just don't want humans to loose. It's rather hard to discover who put in one or two sabotage cards and since there is 2 destiny cards put in as well it can be as simple as no one has sabotaged.

To me it seems like the cylons are "stuck" in brig when thrown there and they sit there do nothing since they think the brig can keep the cylon inside forever alas not able to do much.

But for them to use notepad it's only to count cars as I see it honestly.. you got 2 of each colour in destiny deck so by monitoring which cards has been used from that deck you can know what's left and thus can easily when there is few cards left to assume who is cylon. As well as for them making all the checks fairly easily is also based on this you know more or less what's left and how much you need to put in so destiny won't affect it too much.

Even with cylons playing poorly it's rather challenging for the humans.

Either OP haven't been totally honestly with his post or they have made a pooh with some vital rules. Eg. if a cylon is thrown into the brig he should reveal himself and thus end up in cylon locations.

Diffucult to know really but notepads are not nessacery since this is not that advanced and nothing you need a notepad for unless you're keeping track of something.. and only thing I can think the use of notepad in BSG is to keep track of the cards used and who used what cards.

funnylumpy said:

Well, it's not necessarily that simple. An example in which we'll assume that we have fresh destiny deck:

Say a crisis gets drawn that has yellow, green and purple count towards completing it. When the skill check is done, there is a red and a blue card in the stack. It's assumed to be destiny, so everyone writes down on their notepads, one blue, one red. That means there's one blue, one red, two yellows, two greens and two purples still in the destiny deck.

In a later skill check, requiring only purples and reds, a green turns up (everything else helps). That means (unless this was sabotage) there was a green in the destiny, and either a purple or red. So, the destiny deck presumably contains one green, two yellows and one blue, and then one or two reds and one or two purples. Now, if a third skill check were to arise, and a red card subtracting from the skill check is shown (and let's say it's a high value for dramatic purposes), how is the group to know if that red card is destiny (and the previous skill check drew a purple) or if it's cylon sabotage? Or, what if in the first (or second!) skill check, a cylon threw in one low bad card to shake up everyone's note-taking?

To be honest, it's completely believable that LikeTheWhirlwind's group is playing by the rules. They're just terrible liars, and they haven't thought to work against their own system of note-taking. It's usually quite easy to count the reds and blues because they don't appear commonly on skill checks, but when someone throws in against with a purple? What about when one of those piloting/engineering crises turns up? It's awfully hard to be sure of any sort of counting when those flip and counting cards can go right out the window.

When playing a Cylon, I tend to throw in both negative and positve cards to counter card-counting players so that most of the time, the negative cards in the pool do not match with the amount of cards in my "contribution".

Actually the problem here is not poor cylon side play but illogical human side play!

Let me explain: if you receive a 'you are not a cylon' loyalty card at the beginning of the game you still have no idea which side you will belong to. Because you might get a 'you are a cylon' card in the sleeper agent phase, or as a courtesy from an already revealed cylon player if he has more than one such card at him. So at such point if you start working 100% for the humans you can easily make the game lost for yourself. You will help with all of your power those who turn out to be your enemies. And than it will indeed be impossible to bring the game back and win it on the cylon side.

Unless you get a 'you are a cylon' card or all the cylons are known you can't be sure about which side you will end at so logically you should make your play kinda sub-optimal till that point. You should think about what could you do if you would suddenly turn into cylon and what weak points you could grab than to make this a win. And you should create such points or possible opportunities for yourself if you want to win as a cylon later. If you don't do that than the humans will waltz away to Kobol with ease.