2.0 things I like:

1) Huge board versility: Two expansion boards and, what, 3 different ways to play with them?

2) Cylon leaders: I always wondered how they would incorperate the more notable cylon characters into the game while maintaing the theme.

How close is this expansion to the Fan-made one?

I wonder if there will be new skills for the existing colors besides the new orange Treachery deck...

Can you guys make out what it says in the bottommost (Boomer) card? Sympathetic Cylon? Sounds like a replacement for the current Sympathiser.

Hipsu said:

I hope so. I've heard a fair bit of dissatisfaction about the current sympathizer mechanics. Most notably among them is a tendency for human admirals to try to take the fuel into the red by the sleeper phase by running into Barren Planets and/or Asteroid Fields. I'm personally okay with it (except the metagame, where a human admiral picks some terrible locations to make sure a resource is in the red).

I wonder who the seven new characters will be. They show Cavil up there and I imagine D’anna and the sixes at least will make appearances since there’s the new Cylon leader category but I hope it’s not just the seven models. Geatea, Dee, and Cally would be nice. Cain is a likely choice too.

Vonpenguin said:

I am sure we will see more support characters so it makes the setup a bit more interesting and less scripted. I alos imagine at least 2 or 3 characters will be from Pegasus, since, you know, it is the name of the expansion.

What rocks about this expansion is that it appears to be TWO expansions.

Getting immediate modularity from the first box??? Supa +++ awesome!

Finally Your Honour, to conclude my argument:

Plastic Base Stars.

The defence rests.

Omnisiah said:

I think you forgot to mention plastic base stars.

Yeah, I think a few more support chracters are in order. I always thought it was intresting there was only 1 in the original game.

I bet thought we will not see any playable Cylon characters beyond Cavil, or if there are, they will function in the same Cavil role. It just seems removing the hidden cylon mechanic is removing an important part of the game.

ColtsFan76 said:

I don't know. Other than Cain who is there from Pegasus? Kendra Shaw maybe but other than that most characters from the Beast didn't have enough screentime to warrant being characters in the game. Agreed on the support thing though.

There are some great characters they haven't touched yet. Like Sharon/Athena, Cylon Tigh, Cylon Tyrol, Tori, Callie, Caprica 6, Angel Kara, and how about that young guy that assisted the President the first couple seasons?

My group will be pretty excited about this expansion. Purchased in week one of release, played a day or two later.

My bet goes on Dualla and/or Gaeta.

You know looking at those pictures again Cavil’s power seems a little ambiguous. Does he place those raiders and the civilian ship when he adds a basestar or just when he removes one? I can't tell from the text.
Also can anyone make out those locations? I see main batteries and engine room and it looks like NC has a detention center.
Gah so excited.

Sinis said:

Yes. It seems to me that Sympathizer mechanics is implemented only to balance things in 4/6 players game (while the game is intended as 3/5 players game), so that it is still thrilling even if one side is clearly winning in the midgame. Well, I'm don't like this concept much - prefer 3/5 P

I'm happy to see they're launching an expansion however a bit dissappointed that Pegasus only have 4 locations and no space sectors around it at elast appears on the small picture I can see of the board. I hope theyhave good rules to make up for this though. So I'm very much looking forward to obtain the expansion as soon as it hit the shelves,

Citron said:

Well, 3/5 isn't much of an option when you have 4 regulars. Moreover, 3 players leads to really slanted games depending on who the Cylon is (Brig or Sickbay reveal is brutal, Cylon Presidents in three player games are unbelievably savage).

The sympathizer certainly is intended to balance one-sided games (and counter the fact that two sure bet cylons is too many for a four player game, and one against three humans is too little). But, it doesn't help when food and morale are at 8, population is at 11, but Fuel is at 4 and in the red making the sympathizer a human, because the human admiral took two barren planets (there are four of them, after all), or a barren planet and an asteroid field (there are two of these), or Deep Space an Icy Moon and then desolate moon location.

There a ton of options to make it so that the Cylon gets locked out of an ally, and then that lonely Cylon has no way of punishing the humans for taking that one resource into the red, because there are so few ways that a revealed (or unrevealed) Cylon can affect fuel. There are 8 crises that can drop fuel, four of which the admiral can choose to not loose fuel (no questions asked), one of which the President can choose to avoid the loss. Two others are skill checks, and one of those and the remaining one can be chosen to lose fuel (on a die roll). Taking fuel into the red is supremely unthreatening.

My group has *never* lost from fuel. There's always Deep Space or Remote Planet to make up the remaining distance without bottoming out on fuel after you reach the sleeper phase. To make matters worse, Launch Scout will work in favour of the humans; a Cylon launching scout and finding a location that doesn't take much fuel, and then leaving it on the deck does not actually ensure that the admiral will take that location (in fact, if he's pursuing a strategy to make the sympathizer a human, he wont). All this aside, there are always Tylium Planets, so it's pretty much a lock for the humans.

Hipsu said:

Maybe they're planning to switch up the whole sympathizer thing. That'd be nice. In a 4-player game, for example, perhaps you have one Cylon but he gets extra Treachery cards or whatever to compensate. That Sympathetic Cylon card makes me think that they're adding a way for a Cylon player to turn back to the human side. So maybe you're a revealed Cylon and at the halfway point you draw that card and flip back to the human side.

I look at the other game additions and just shrug. I'm not intrigued yet. The only bit I feel negative about are the seven new characters. I don't think we need seven more characters in the first place and I think they're going to have to really stretch to get there. Cavil is obviously one of them. The other six? Gaeda has to be one. Sharon/Athena might be interesting, but I don't know if they'd do that with Boomer already in the game. But they might. Anyone else I can think of is a bit lame. Oh, I'm sure they'll all be potent enough in game terms, but it'll be like playing StormTrooper #435 while everybody else is a Dark Lord of the Sith.

I dunno about that Storm Trooper reference. Strong characters could be:

Dualla, Anders, Caprica 6, Admiral Cain, Ellen, Tori, Cali, Billy. Getting much farther than that and I could see your point, but the preceeding were all fairly prominent characters. At least as prominent as Zarek.

The added boards look like the game will be much more dynamic and keep the game from getting stale. If this is expansion is half as good as the Twilight Imperium 3 expansion, we'll be in for a treat.

So of the 7 new characters, clearly Cavil is one. Seems fairly certain that Cain and some version of Six will be in there (they are on the box, after all). There would have to be more Cylon leaders, I would think. Wouldn't be a fun game if you could only pick Cavil. So the pool of possible Cylons Leader characters are Cavil, Leoben, D'Anna, Simon, Aaron, Six, and Ellen (I exclude the others because they either already have human charachter cards, or would probably get one). Of these, I think we will get Six and Hellen and/or D'Anna. That's 3-4 Cylon Leaders. Cain would clearly be a military leader, which probably means we would get at least another Political Leader and Pilot. And then maybe another Support character. Tory and Anders would probably be a good Political Leader and Pilot. That would give us the final five. If we do get another Support, I figure it's Gaeta or Cottle.

So yeah, my predictions are Cavil, Six, Cain, Tory, Anders, Ellen and/or D'Anna and maybe Gaeta or Cottle.

We may get Ellen, but I doubt she'll be classed as a Cylon leader (that's still a couple of expansions away).

Locutus Zero said:

Personally I’m betting on seven of the following nine. Cavil, Six, D’anna, Cain, Anders, Geatea, Dee, Cally, or Billy.

I don't know if we need more Cylon Leaders. Maybe that's a character who's only in play in the 4 or 6 player version. <shrug> Caprica is an obvious main character choice, but how would they incorporate her? Do they really want a bunch of Cylon characters to choose from? All of the humans listed are marginal at best. I admit Zarek is in the list of marginal characters but they needed a third political leader and he's the obvious choice. Maybe we should look at it that way. One more character for each class? A group of characters which form a new class (besides Cylon leader)? Cain as a character sounds interesting but how do you work that? Pegasus wouldn't show up until part way into the game, would it?

I just read this on another site :

"Fantasy Flight Games dropped a bomb on fans of their cooperative game, Battlestar Galactica (which is naturally based on the Sci-Fi channel hit series of the same name), by announcing a new expansion: Pegasus. The new expansion adds a brand new ship (the Pegasus) a planet (New Caprica – which I assume will serve the same purpose as a ship), some plastic minis, a new set of characters, cylon leaders and a metric ton of other stuff. The expansion can be played as a standalone game or along with the original game and will release this fall (no word on the price, though we assume it’ll be comparable to the original game – $50). One thing of note – the announcement I received refers to this as the “first expansion” – indicating that FFG may be looking at BSG as their next Arkham Horror-style franchise."

Hmmmmm. Did they get it wrong or does the game truly represent the second "leg" of the journey?

I am loving everything so far revealed about the expansion! If there were any tiny thing that I could nitpick as far as feeling disappointed, it would be the Pegasus apparently not having a squad of plastic Mark VII Vipers to bolster the fleet's firepower.

But really, that does not keep this from being pure concentrated awesome!!

L81Corvette said:

Where did you get that from?