One of my players brought up the fact that Executive Orders makes the Brig a great place to be. He argued that a player in the brig can still draw a full compliment of skill cards, but not a crisis card (which ends up stressing human resources). The XO card then allows them to prevent their restricted movment from slowing the human team down. This he argued makes Bringing someone not very restricting at all.

I guess I would agree if it only happened to one player, but it seems that as more humans are brigged and not drawing Crisis cards and not contributing very much the more the Cylon players can control the Crisis deck. So one human is fine having 2-3 would be a big problem.

What is the communities thoughts? Have people had to make house rules for the Brig (say a player can only play one card as an action OR contribute one card to the skill check)?

Well, not drawing a crisis card is a double edged sword. While it's true that you aren't stressing human resources on more checks like you mentioned, you aren't advancing the jump track any further either. So you aren't actually saving the humans anything, because it will still take exactly the same amount of crisis cards to jump whether you are in the brig or not.

Now, consider the fact that you can only now play one card into crisises, and the further fact that you'll end up discarding a bunch of cards if you sit in the brig too long, you'll begin to see why the brig is far from an optimal place to be.

While it's true that the XO card can somewhat cut the sting of the brig, it's still better to try to get out if you think you can.

The main point of the Brig's "do not draw a crisis card" restriction is that it takes "current player chooses" choices away from the brigged player. Combined with the fact that a brigged Admiral loses his title, this takes a lot of control away from the brigged player to control the outcome of crises.

Then of course there's the restriction of only allowing one skill card to be played per crisis...

Being in the brig is bad for a few reasons:

1. Crises are good. They're the things that have jump track icons, which propel the humans toward victory. A player in the brig allows the cylon player to have more turns (see 2).

2. Greater ratio of cylon to human 'turns'. A human in the brig delays the humans passage. The game becomes longer in terms of actions; cylon players will get more turns as the jump track icons are being passed by while the human player is in the brig. This can mean that a cylon player might get an extra Cylon Fleet activation in, or another use of Caprica before the humans jump.

3. The 'full compliment of skill cards' isn't very useful when you cannot use them. You draw your cards, but only being able to contribute one card to skill checks disables your ability to do anything. Sometimes you draw useful cards that do not take actions (like Strategic Planning, or Declare Emergency), but really, you're not going to be able to spend all the cards you draw. Moreover, you will not be able to counter an unrevealed cylon's negative cards.

4. Your personal abilities may not be brought to bear. If you're playing a pilot or chief Tyrol, you will not be able to make use of your strongest abilities. The brig prevents that. Additionally, if you're the president, you will not be able to use the office on Colonial One, which doubles the effectiveness of an action related to quorum cards.

The brig is a crummy place to be. It hurts far more than it helps, and I don't think it would be wise to ever intentionally find your way there.

There are rare occasions where having a character in the brig for a turn or two doesn't hurt, or doesn't hurt much, but they are very limited. Also it matters a lot who is in the brig. Having Boomer or a politician, especially the president in the brig doesn't hurt much, having a pilot, military leader, or support character in the brig hurts a lot. If you do plan on putting a human in the brig for a few turns you also need to have a plan for getting them out of the brig as well.

bioball said:

Honestly it depends on the character and the situation. Sometimes it can be real beneficial, other times it can be a detriment.

Boomer is crazy effective in the brig

Also assuming you're not being assaulted, Chief is a great brig character because he draws XOs and and drop scientific research on challenges which is a big win.

Our most recent game had a human victory that was hinged on chief being in jail.

More often than not though, jail is jail...and jail can suck.

Melonball said:

Cylon Boomer is. Human non-President Boomer can't take any useful actions against Launch Scout, and her Launch Scout is much less useful when she's in the Brig than when she's outside.

Roslin in the Brig is realllly bad. She loses her crisis card ability, and needs to discard 2 cards to try to get out of the brig....

Of course getting a Cylon Roslin into the brig is vital aswell!