OK,

Obviously I haven't played Pegasus so take this with a grain of salt.

But based on the preview, why wouldn't the humans always execute someone after the 4 jump? Even if there is a morale hit, it allows you to either expose a Cylon, or more importantly know that one of the players can clearly be XO'd with impunity as well as can be trusted with the reigns of power. If your morale is low enough that you cant take the expenditure of the resource you have bigger problems.

Like wise the roll to airlock someone is a 12 (which I've routinely see hit on a brig challenge), and there are 3 possible card types to aid...plus a nice place to dump all those treachery cards that are bogging down your hand.

But then if, for example, only three executions are allowed before the humans lose, then you've just put the Cylon players 1/3rd of the way towards winning. Seeing as there are crises that also allow for executions, this would be very risky.

One other thing to keep in mind is that there may not be a Sleeper Agent phase if playing with the expansion, so the 4+ distance part of your statement may not be valid.

Ignoring for a moment that removing the Sleeper Phase would be removing what is arguably the best part of the game, eliminating the sleeper phase would make a turn one execution even MORE valuable as you would know immediately who is safe to XO

Yes its impossible to predict how this will function without playing it. And Yes the fact that if hypothetically 3 human execusions loses the game for the humans I still think its a price worth paying.

assuming that rules function identically to as they currently do for a moment:

In a 6 player game there are 2 cylons and a sympathizer. Lets assume for a second no one is playing sharon or baltar

If I'm a human, and someone else is the sympathizer, that means there are 4 prime targets who are statistically more likely to be the cylon. it's nerely a coin flip to pick a robot. and if you're wrong all you do is identify that you can trust someone completely.

Sure the idea of crisis cards that can kill someone will complicate things, as does the ability to give loyalty cards. but in general as it currently reads its a big boon to off someone.

Yes, but what if you execute a human, he gets new loyalty cards? Maybe there is a "future characters" loyalty Deck and when you execute someone, you have a minor chance of actually geting another Cylon in the mix? Don't think this would be a risk worth taking (and it's just an idea of course, maybe you just keep the same loyalty cards).

Well, the way I read it (And obviously this is only based on the preview) if a non cylon gets executed that player chooses a new character..who I assume will also get a new loyalty card, so you won't know for certain or not, unless you got lucky enough to smoke a cylon, in which case all you've done is avoid the super crises.

I think the new characters will get new loyalty cards from a seperate deck, so they might be Cylon. The more you kill the more they likely a new person will be a Cylon.

After all it is your character that is the human or a cylon, not you as a player, if you lose your character it makes sense that a new arrival might be a Cylon.

I think that discarding all their skill cards, losing morale and getting closer to meeting a losing condition is reason enough not to just kill people randomly.

It is also possible that one of the Cylon secret agendas involves winning the game if someone has been exectuted!

If you execute a loyal human then the other Cylon loyalty cards might be out there. If the new character new draws cards with the possibility of being a Cylon then there might be an extra Cylon in the game. Maybe the new character draws from the unused pre-sleeper agent phase cards if the execution is before the Sleeper agent phase?

Dan said:

Cross-posted from BGG:

There's nothing to suggest that there will be a Sleeper Agent phase if using the expansion. Seeing as the timing of the SA phase is shown on the Kobol objective card, and presumably the Pegasus expansion will have a new New Caprica objective (plus, there were no more sleeper agents after Boomer) it's very possible this phase won't exist any more (which would also imply that the "Boomer" card will be updated to an "Athena" card).

My vote is that the SA phase will be replaced with a Galactica/Pegasus stand-off phase, representing the fire fight that took place between the two ships. More specifically, it might involve the execution of a character... maybe whoever holds the most treachery cards at that point?

there would have to be a lot of extra loyalty cards for you to draw from then. Currently in a 6 player game if boomer and baltar are playing there are no loyalty cards left to use.

From looking at the previews we've seen it appears like the theme for the expansion is to ramp up the speed of the game as well as making the game more team based from jump.

Given the fact that there is a cylon leader one of the concealed players is no longer an issue, there are more people you can trust.

Likewise, because the game would start with one revealed, the secret cylon can make bigger, more risky plays since he knows he has support on the board.

Other speed factors are:

The ability to expose somoenes loyalty at a terrible price

The ability to advance the jump track at a terrible price

Reckless cards

I think it will be really interesting to play, and i dont think its a bad thing to shake up how people traditionally play (after 50 games or so there are set patterns that emmerge), it just seems that on all sides of the board the game is pushing for speed.

I dont see anything to speed up the game, if anything it will be longer

Also, 6 player is likely to be 2 secret Cylons and 1 Cylon Leader.

In the first preview of the expansion they said there were more loyalty cards (also a picture shows at least one more not a cylon card). If it is still 3-6 players, then that means they are all "bad" cards or they have given us some more "Not a Cylon" cards which I think will be for if people are killed, including using Baltar and Boomer. (epsecially so we dont have to use the Sympathiser card if playing with the no sympathiser variant and want to use Baltar and Boomer)

If the sleeper phase is skipped, it will be odd but I assume it is easy to create your own variant. What would be interesting is if the Cylon Leader was the one who dealt out the loyalty cards and was allowed to look at them and know who were Cylons from the start. (would make sense as they did know that). Though I think that would be tough for the Cylon Leader to not give it away!

Kamakaze said:

I like that idea!

We already play with a variant that all players receive all of their loyalty cards at the start of the game, but can only look at however many they would normally look at then have to shuffle them up. Means that quite often, someone else can know you're a Cylon before you do yourself! I've never had a problem as Baltar using my Cylon detector before the SA phase not letting on to the unsuspecting Cylon what their true nature is!

Yes but what if the Cylon Leader gets an agenda where he has to help the humans? He can just tell the Cylons from the beginning, thus breaking the game very quickly... Although I guess it's uncertain that everybody will believe him.

[LNA]Gary said:

A good point (though I'm sure it would still be protected by secrecy rules).

Kamakaze said:

All the squares on pegasus facilitate speed. either you damage the basestar quicker, or you damage pegasus, making it weaker and thus easier for the cylons to win.

The engine room ensures a jump track advance, but you lose some cards which can make losing a challenges happen more often

The Main batteries can destroy a ton of vipers, or cripple your fleet, allowing the cylons to kill you

in addition,

The reckless cards allow you to pass challenges easier, but at the risk of losing severe resources.

Mark my words, the Engine room is the most important new location (pending seeing New Caprica). The ability to guarantee that you get a jump marker means that in 5 turns you’ll jump every time.

Yes that means you’ve discard 10 cards over those five turns in order to guarantee that jump, and it may have been a waist because some of the crisis cards will have jump markers. But all it takes is ONE crisis card with a skill check (an no jump) on it for your team to drop 10 skill cards down trying to pass it. Jumping as soon as you can gets ride of unnecessary crisis.

It’s just like picking a 1-destination marker when you jump, no fraking point because you have sooo many more turns until you jump again.
This Engine room allows the humans to take control and pressure the cylon’s to act fast. Have characters spend more actions to draw skill cards, then XO move to engine room and dump those nasty treachery cards.

I see your point about just offing people as soon as you can, but frankly it can be costly because you also have to pass the skill check, discard that characters hand (they don’t draw again until their turn) possible loose a moral and keep a character off the board till their turn. Pfft I will welcome this tactic when I’m a cylon cuz it will be so fun KILLING HUMANS!

Sorthlador said:

Ultimate Engine Room Strategy:

Have one or two guys who can draw Purple Cards camp out on the Engine Room. When it is not their turn people who can will XO them.

The guy in the Engine Room will then use a Launch Scout for his first action. If he sees no Jump Icon on the Crisis he will use the Engine Room action. If there is a Jump Icon then he'll take some other action.

This strategy would actually make Colonel Tigh absolutely awesome.

On Tigh's first Turn: Move to the Engine Room and make yourself President with Marshall Law.

Have People XO you for the rest of the game. If you don't need to take the Engine Room Action, then Draw or Play Quorom cards.

Now this plan might fall apart if Tigh is a Cylon, but he'd still have to keep doing the Engine Room if there is an icon or else he'll give himself away.

I don't see why the person needs to be president. Someone sitting on the pres office would do the same or better job drawing cards.

My playgroup would NEVER let Tigh be presadmiral without knowing he wasn't a Cylon and had no chance of becoming a Cylon.

well killing someone with the Airlock on purpose after distance 4, would not be a good idea, mainly because I still believe that when you get a new character you might become a Cylon, not to mention that a real Cylon could then use the AIrlock and try to win by killing as many humans as possible. This is also assuming that the skill check succeeds (12 with yellow, purple and treachery probably is reasonably hard) and I would guess the person being Airlocked might not agree!

WIth regards to the Engine Room thing, it requires that you discard 2 skill cards, no character could do that for more than 3 XO's and then that is 6 less cards in skill checks, not to mention the lack of doing anything about enemy ships, board parties or damage to the ship. If the card has a jump icon anyway then you are just spending an extra 3 cards every turn for very little reason (1 XO, and 2 for the engine room). It does not stop Cylon Attack cards or prevent ship activations from happening.

Kamakaze said:

I think you missed what he was saying. He was implying that you look at the top card if it has a jump you keep it. Then do not activate the engine room but instead play or draw a quorum card. If he wasn't president then he would have little choice in what actions he could take staying in the engine room. (unless he uses another card which he needs).

This tactic is actually brilliant because unless your an idiot cylon your not going to constantly try and make a jump marker appear all the time. People can tell if you trying you best to get one there all the time and if your stalling. it may split the effectiness of the president some because he wouldn't be using the presidents office, but I think that its worth it to make sure that president is human and as helpful as possible.

So scout the destination deck as your second action if you need to. I don't see why you need to take such a giant step as handing the admiral the presidency for the rest of this to work.

Locutus Zero said:

The main reason would be to ensure that Engine Room guy can do something worthwhile with his second action if there is allready a jump card. (There will be most of the time.) If the engine room guy doesn't have anything good to do with the other action, you're reducing the efficiency of the XO card considerably.

The reason you need Tigh to take the Presidency when doing this is that he actually draws a decent number of Tactics cards (3) which ensures he'll have enough Launch Scout cards available to do this well. The other Political leaders can draw no more than 1 Tactics card (Roslin draws none, Zarek can draw one, Baltar can get one with his ability).

Doing a Second Launch Scout for the Destination deck will not work as well as using Quorom cards, because:

a) There usually is a point where scouting the destination deck becomes pointless. After you know there is a good card on top you can stop.

b) If you're using 2 Launch Scouts per XO'ing you're going to run out real fast.

But I admit that this is a bit of a big step, and the strategy would still work fine even without Tigh, I just don't think you'd be making as efficient a use of actions. You could also just have the player who is playing Boomer look at the next destination card at the end of her turn, and announce if the player going after her should go use the Engine Room.

However, it looks like with the expansion there will be more types of Skill Cards in each color, so you probably won't be guaranteed as many Launch Scout cards, thus lowering the effictiveness of this tactic. This however makes Tigh awesome for this again since he draws more Tactics cards than anyone else.

I will admit though, I really hope this strategy doesn't work, cause this would be the lamest crap ever if it did.

Now that I've thought about it some more a character who draws Yellow might be better for this. Probably Baltar or Zarek.

How's about this:

Step 1: Launch Scout.

Step 2: If there is no jump Icon then use the Engine Room. If there is a jump Icon, play Consolidate Power for more Purple cards.

This might guarantee a more steady stream of Launch Scout cards in the hands of Engine Room guy, than doing this with Tigh.

Either way there are couple of cool actions you can do while in the engine room that help out the humans. You don't need to be the admire or the president but having that person be one of them just puts power in safe hands. Unless its a long term gambit but i don't think thats worth it.

I'm sure theres going to be so many new things to do any ways that humans many not always have the time to do a engine room but its just one of many tactics. Can't wait to see NEW CAPRICA!

I was going to say the same thing, DC

I think consolodate power would be an awesome card to have in conjunction with the engine room.