Hey all,
My group received the Pegasus expansion this week and have been playing it muchly. I greatly enjoy the additions it makes, but I must admit many of our players are still on the fence as to whether we'll stick with it. While it captures the spirit of the show quite a lot, and New Caprica is a very exciting end-game, we've identified many specific things that require clarification or errata, or at the very least some house ruling.

There are a few things that we've discussed that I haven't mentioned, as we want a bit more time to try them out, for example: we also share a bit of the common concern about execution, as we've successfully executed the cylon player in all of our games with very few downsides. But I think we need to experience it more before coming to a definite conclusion on whether it adds to or subtracts from the game.

It's a bit of a wall-of-text and I apologise for the length, but I've tried to cover lots of things and I've tried to explain our group's thoughts in as much detail as possible. Here's what the post touches on in brief:

Suggested FAQ additions:

• Training Snafu crisis card
• Negative effects of Crisis on Cylon playres
• Dee's character ability
• Laura Roslin's Negative on New Caprica

Suggested Errata:

• Cain's once-per-game
• Kat's character ability
• The Sympathetic Cylon mechanic
• Cylon Agenda Cards

Things we're unsure about and may require FAQ rulings:

1) In Training Snafu , it says "damage 3 vipers in space areas or in the reserves". Do you chose a location? (ie, can you pick space areas if you only have 1 or two vipers flying) or do you just lose three vipers and have to choose where they come from?

2) The expansion rulebook "reminds" players that Cylons ignore only the negative abilities of Crisis cards , but never explicitly says it other than the example given on Page 7. If this example is correct, who decides what is negative or positive? Does the cylon player do it on a case-to-case basis, picking and choosing which crisis cards effects affect him?

3) Dee's ability stats "when you activate the communications location, you may look at every civilian ship on the game board and may move any number of them". In our game, a player argued this let him look at the back of every civilian ship on New Caprica, (very useful to determine if you can afford to leave them behind) even though he can't move them. The wording does seem to allow this and nothing in the rules forbids it. We've assumed that this isn't supposed to be possible, but the rules never state it so this is in need of official clarification.

4) When Laura Roslin attacks occupation forces on New Caprica, does this count as activating the location she's currently in? We don't believe this to be the case, but are quite uncertain and the rules do not clarify.

Things that we've found unbalanced:

These are the things that our group, after playing the game several times, think may actually be broken, and detrimental to the game:

1) Cain's ability . It knocks 5 crisis cards out of the park instantly if used intelligently. That shortens the game significantly. In a game where you only have to go 7 distance and the likliest scenario is that you draw a 2 distance when blind jumping, this is just far too strong. If you can use this while the jump track is still at the bottom (which isn't hard with an XO), you remove any chance the cylons have of reducing resources quickly enough before the game ends.

In a game where humans win by advancing the jump track, a complete free jump is too powerful, and 2 civvy ships lost just aren't a significant deterrent.

Some variants have been suggested by our group: The ability could be worded to only wipe the board clean from cylon ships. You don't gain any actual distance, but you leave the cylon fleets behind, so still a very powerful ability in a crunch (compare with say, Apollo's ability, or Kat's, and you begin to see just how amazingly powerful Cain's ability is, even ignoring jump distance). Or two, it's changed so that Cain keeps drawing destinations until she comes across a one distance card, which is then resolved, potentially limiting the amount of gametime this ability otherwise removes.

2) Kat's ability to discard cards for dice rolls. In our first game we had a player choose Kat, and he quickly realised that there is no reason for her to ever get into a Viper. He spent the space battles about pegasus, hopping between Main Guns and CIC, scouting or XOing if he was required to move to an unneccsary location. It seems that she saves many cards and gets more definite results by spending her cards on Pegasus, to the point she didn't get into a Viper the whole game and the humans sailed through.

Some possible fixes: Not sure on this one, as card numbers are generally variable enough for you to get the exact result you want with the Pegasus guns. (Rarely will you need to spend a 5 strength card, or even a 4. As a specific example, discarding an evasive maneuvers card can insta-kill two raiders, and discarding your 5 strength max firepower will take out a guarenteed 4, no rolls required.) Possibilities include limiting the ability to while she's in a Viper, or removing the +2, making it more suitable for shooting raiders than aiming Pegasus's guns or jumping. I don't like either suggestion there to be honest, but Kat needs more incentive to get in a Viper, and this hasn't seemed neccessary at all in our games.

2) The Cylon sympathiser . The sympathiser gets amazingly penalised, and is not an enjoyable position to be in. As a common example: the four player game. If you don't have a cylon leader, you will have a cylon sympathiser. Let's compare the two. They both get sympathetic objectives. However, the sympathiser only gets theirs when the game is more than half over, so has much less chance of actually finishing it. The sympathiser loses all access to character abilities and once-per-games. The only advantage they get is that they can draw from any colours. If you draw an agenda card at half distance, whether you complete it or not is almost blind luck based on how the game has already gone. Both are forbidden from getting a super crisis at game start. The sympathiser card basically punishes that player for not choosing a cylon leader in the first place.

Some possible variants to fix this: The sympathiser maintains access to their character abilities and skill set (though still only draws 2 cards as a cylon player would). Or, the sympathiser could be given a supercrisis when revealed to try and balance the two, or the sympathiser could only be required to fulfill the "humans must win" or "cylons must win" part of the agenda, ignoring other requirements (it effectively becomes a loyalty card, and the difficulty in getting specific conditions is removed, since the game is already half over)

3) The Agenda Cards: We also found the agenda cards themselves to be ridiculously balanced in regards to each other. A cylon leader's objective would markedly alter the difficulty of the game, both for himself and all other players. Specifically, compare "Join the Colonials" in a four player game, to "Illusion of Hope" and "Convert the Infidels". In the former, the cylon leader will pander to the humans all game, and winning just requires that the humans not execute him for his troubles. Meanwhile, Illusion of Hope and convert the Infidels will require the cylon leader to pound the humans constantly all game, and particularly in the case of Convert the Infidels, he's still not guarenteed a win. The second two are both much harder for humanity, and for the cylon leader himself.

I approve of the concept of not knowing what the cylon leader is up to or if you can trust him. I think the concept is awesome, but it's been so awfully implemented, and the rampantly varying difficulty this brings on all players does not make the game enjoyable. As an example, in last night's four player game, our lone cylon player just gave up and I don't think he's going to want to play the game again. It became evident it was him alone versus two humans a cylon leader that was intent on doing everything he could for the humans, the cylon leader never having to do anything that would raise any suspicion or cause to remove him (He had Join the Colonials). The lone cylon player just had no chance of winning.

Unfortunately I have no suggestions for fixing these problems, as they would most likely need a redesign of several of the Agenda cards.

Despite all of these I personally have greatly enjoyed Pegasus. It adds a lot of positive changes to the game and fixes a few balance issues with the first. I love the new characters, particularly Cain and the battlestar she brings with her, as well as the cylon leaders. However, the expansion adds many more balance issues and I am somewhat disappointed though that some components seem to have suffered from very little playtesting.

I'm hoping that the FAQ will address some of these problems, as our game group isn't too keen on house ruling and would probably go back to playing the original rules if needs be.

Thanks for reading all that!

You make some good points.

Cain's blind jump does seem a bit good now that you mention it, and I had myself considered the question of why Kat the 'pilot' would ever want to actually pilot anything....

Only point I'm not sure I agree on is the sympathizer. I think the Cylon Sympathizer is a much better solution to the 4player game than the current iteration of the regular Sympathizer card. So far, in all the 4p games I've played with the regular sympathizer, if the sympathizer goes Cylon it's all over for the humans. This makes the best strategy for the humans in their first few jumps to be to tank resource loss and get one resource below half. Very un-thematic.

Cylon sympathizer is a little better I think, because the most likely scenario is that they need to hurt the humans, but still allow them to win, which is just what the game needs for balance. Sure, playigng the C. Sympathizer might be a little tough, but not too much more so than playing a Cylon that was delt to you in the sleeper phase. I think the Cylon Sympathizer is ok.

Terpoma said:

1) Training Snafu. Based on other cards in the set I would say that you just remove 3 from either. Your pick, any combination.

2) It was my understanding the cylon ignored all effects from crisis cards. I'm not sure exactly where I read this but they don't get to draw cards when you pass a skill check or look at another players loyalty cards. Crisis cards only effect a cylon when it specifically says so.

3) The game board would refer to only the main Galactica board.

4) No laura would not have to discard two cards because she is not activating the location, rather she is using an action avaible to her player. This works just like a action that would printed on her card.

1) I see you point but I'm sorta inclined to say so what. Humans have a hard enough time as is, give them the benefit. As you've said if you don't like it change it.

2) I rarely use pilots as pilots any ways.

3) I agree that the new Sympathetic Cylon (not Cylon sympathiser) is much better.

4) Still love the Cylon leader, and the games really meant to be played 5 or 6 players.

I’ve got a hold of the Pegasus expansion in the last few days and while I’ve only had the chance to play one game, simply reading the rulebook has got red lights flashing in my mind so I’ll discuss the OP’s issues then list my own. P.S. This ended up as a wall of text... sorry guys

Regarding the OP’s question about Cylons and the ‘negative’ effects of Crisis Cards I think it’s pretty obvious in most situations what is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ effect. But even if this is not obvious maybe the players judgement is good enough, perhaps one player could see an advantage in suffering some loss along with the other players. I believe the clarification on who is a ‘human player’, ‘Cylon player’ and ‘players [in general]’ has done something to help this issue but I think that outside of those issues then the player can decide for themselves which bits of a crisis card to suffer.

Regarding the OP’s question about Dee’s ability, I would say that it can be used to affect the civilian ships in the space areas around Galactica prior to reaching New Caprica, but upon reaching it then it can still be used to move evacuated civilian ships around the space areas on the main board, but not to examine/rearrange the ships waiting to leave the planet’s surface. When you think about it thematically, the civilian ships in Galactica’s fleet are probably a run as a relatively slick operation given the circumstances – if they’re told they’ve got to move to avoid being shot at they’re just going to follow orders. The civilian ships on New Caprica represent a really rapid and disorganised, desperate even, attempt to get as much as possible off of Caprica, resources are probably being crammed into any which ship there is so being able to look at them shouldn’t even yield a correct answer. Thus I’d say it the communications area, Dee’s power or otherwise, shouldn’t be able to affect the ships still on New Caprica.

I feel the OP’s other points have been sufficiently discussed so I’ll chuck in my own gripes now.

1) The Occupying Forces rule clarification . There’s something seriously messed up with this concept, to begin with the rules in the rulebook and on the game board are both different. In the rulebook (page 15) it is implied that when the Occupying Forces are activated (whether through a Crisis Card or as a result of the Occupying Forces HQ) then all tokens currently on the board are moved and that if there are none then one is placed on. However if you look on the game board then the action on the Occupying Forces HQ says that the Cylon players can move one token and then place one token on the track under the HQ location. We played the rulebook interpretation for a turn or to but it’s INSANELY overpowered then, the humans were losing civilians ships like crazy, the rule on the board seemed far fairer when we played it.

2) The Occupying Forces concept . Aside from the rule issue... WHY OH WHY would Cylons WANT the Occupying Forces track to advance?! The more civilian ships that are still on New Caprica means that the human players have to spend more time waiting around to free them up then launch them into space or risk taking a massive resource hit when they leave them behind. If the human’s resources tracks are particularly high then it’s probably more efficient to simply throw Caprica Crisis Cards at them than destroy the civilian ships which will do double the damage if you just leave them. Understandably the Cylons want to wipe out as much of the humans as possible but it gives a far higher chance of winning if the Cylon players just leave the civilian ships alone or only activate Occupying Forces that are far away to stop them reaching the end of the track. The only reason I can see putting Occupying Forces on the track and it still being worthwhile is the chance to detain players... and speaking of which...

3) The Detaining Humans rule . I’ve read the recent clarification but why does the game suddenly change the “Higher is better” dice roll rule? Roll an 8 and the human walks free? I can understand if this is to give humans the chance to play Strategic Planning and thus raise the dice roll (a higher roll then being better for the humans – which also doesn’t seem right somehow when it’s a Cylon’s turn...), which does get around the problem that you can’t play Strategic Planning to mess with Cylon rolls otherwise. But if that’s the case, don’t bother flipping the dice roll rule from “higher = better” when instead Strategic Planning could be changed to read: “Play before a dice roll to increase or decrease the result by two”, this way Strategic Planning still has the downside of having to be played before a roll (and thus potentially wasted) but you can still impact critical rolls even when made by Cylon players. Also, when was the last time anyone created a Strategic Plan to avoid being detained, an action that probably occurs randomly in the streets when poor Laura is spotted by some Cylon foot soldiers? (There’s probably some modern satirical answer there)

4) The Resurrection Ship location . Yeh I’ve seen this one mentioned elsewhere but I thought I’d add it to the collation of questions on this thread. The rulebook heavily enforces the concept that Cylons draw their ONLY Super Crisis Card upon revealing themselves, and this is the only one they’ll ever receive. However the game board says that Cylons can draw a Super Crisis card as an action at the Resurrection Ship. I believe that the action listed there should just be struck off altogether, letting players farm their way through the Super Crisis Deck (even if this does buy time for the humans as the Cylon will have no other action and reduced Skill Card draw rate) just doesn’t seem like the game’s intentions.

5) The “Reduce Them To Ruins” Agenda Card . This has also been mentioned in another thread but got no reply so thought I’d add it here. Does the destruction of Pegasus count as 4 damage tokens? I guess they can remain on the game board but this causes problems for the other Agenda Card that goes something along the lines of “Humans win & less than 2 damage tokens on Galactica” – imagine drawing this card as a Cylon Sympathiser part way through the game and Pegasus is already gone, you CANNOT actually complete your objective. Is the key phrase here: “On Galactica?” thus damage tokens can only be on there, where they are easily repairable? Not sure, haven’t got the Agenda Card to hand I just remember reading it and being like “huh?”

I’ve finished my list for now, some more’ll probably pop into my head in a bit but I’ve got a few more points to regarding the Sympathiser discussion above. I played a four player game and we decided to keep things simple to start and not use the Cylon Sympathiser and instead use the normal one. We didn’t burn down the resource tracks and as a result got another Cylon player in the game, albeit slightly weakened. We actually lost the game by a very narrow margin, we’d left only one civilian ship on New Caprica and it just happened to be the one with the last morale resource we had left on it. Now the Cylon players hadn’t been too hot on the idea that destroying civilian ships was a waste of time but even so it was a very close match so the sympathiser balanced things well considering how well we’d done in the first half of the game.

I also agree that the Cylon Leader is a really great concept but with terrible execution, painted out as a enigmatic figure to be negotiated with in order to gain help, but in order to fulfil his own goals he’ll probably just, (as someone said), “pander” to the needs of the humans, effectively playing as one full-time just with a slightly different rule set.

Anyways I'm hopefully going to be playing a 5 or 6 player game soon, so I'll see if anything else flashes up as questionable when I do.

Final words, I REALLY like the concepts the Pegasus expansion has brought to the game and I hope to see more expansions in the future but a lot of them just need some tightening to make them really work and bring those extra diplomacy tools to the table. Anyways thanks for reading if you've made it all the way through the wall of text!

1.) Occupation forces: The book does read that "Each time they are activated (Icon or Location), each occupation forces moves one space to the right..." But I also agree that that is way two powerful. I believe that Icons should react that way and Locations should be one activation and one placement.

2.) I Do agree that Cylons should Balance their powers to try and lower their resources down before hitting them too hard. That being said if you got one Cylon activating Occupational forces and one activating raiders in space then you can take out all the ships in one quick movement. Or focus on just the space battle.

3.) "Also, when was the last time anyone created a Strategic Plan to avoid being detained, an action that probably occurs randomly in the streets when poor Laura is spotted by some Cylon foot soldiers?" Are you serious? What do you call hiding underground, or not meeting during the day, or when you do meet you meet in public when it doesn't look like your meeting. Rouslin was a publicly know school teacher, she walked around all the time. What about having look outs posted to warn you when Cylons patrols are coming? Seriously? Strategic planning makes perfect sense for this. Also making that card positive or negative makes it way to powerful.

4.) I've said it other places and I'll say it again, its costly to not draw skill cards and not put pressure on the humans to draw super crisis cards that may not hit them where it hurts.

5.) I didn't even read your thread cuz I don't want to know the agenda cards until they are played with.

I personally love the Cylon leader. I've only seen two agenda cards but I agree that they will have their own goal and just stick to it. But so what? What nice about it is that even if they are a fully human player they work differenty, jump around change sides. Even if hes acting human and we all know it from day one doesn't mean hes a bad machanic. Hes fun I like it. definitly won't play with him every game.

I think most of the issues in my post weren't explained quite clearly enough, though your points do make fair enough sense and I admit the Strategic Planning point the way you look at it does make good sense.

Many of my points are more about rule clarifcations, I tried to shove thematic scenarios in just to test them so I'll just try and simplify my questions without all my vitriole thrown in - though your thoughts were very interesting to hear.

1) Occupation Forces rule - The rulebook and the game board are in direct conflict about the Occupation Forces rule, which is correct? The game board seems to be the more balanced option.

2) Occupation Forces concept - Fair answer here, so I won't repeat myself, it's simply another strategy you could use, though I think there are better options available to the Cylons.

3) The Detaining Humans rule - My problem here isn't with the use of Strategic Planning to alter the roll it's more a problem that one of the underlying principles of the game is: "the higher you roll the better off you'll be" thus why flip this over all of a sudden? Yes it does enable players to use Strategic Planning to help avoid Detention, (which at that late stage would cripple most groups), but I'd like to think there was a really good reason for having it the other way round.

4) The Resurrection Ship location. My issue here isn't whether having the power to draw more Super Crisis or not is a good/bad thing, I think that with the rule book being so strict on Cylons only getting one Super Crisis Card there is NO reason for that action to be listed on the board. It should just be scrubbed out altogether, if not then at least edited to be able to "Discard current Super Crisis, draw a new one", like the old Resurrection Ship. Sure they can then farm their way to the one that's most useful but as it's been said it's a waste of time and resources and they're still only getting one Super Crisis at the end of the day, rather than stockpiling a load.

5) The Agenda Card "Bring Them To Ruins". (Yeh I realised that I got the wrong card name in my last post) While this is a spoiler as to the cards content my issue here is purely a rule clarification, *Spoiler starting now* Do the damage tokens on Pegasus count? Bearing in mind that some Agenda cards will be dealt halfway through the game and, in the instance of the one I last mentioned, may become impossible to complete.

Anyway I hope that's simplifed my points, I feel that points 1), 4) and 5) are rule clarification questions, while rules 2) and 3) are just asking for opinions particularly when a fundamental principle is at stake.

4) (Agendaspoiler) Cylon Leader do not start with Super Crisis. "Mutual Annihilation" makes it mandatory to play one to win the game. So there has to be a way to draw a Super Crisis Card.

1)Seeing an Occupation Forces symbol on a card has you activate all the Forces currently out. If there are none out, you place one. It's just like Heavy Raiders in space. If you see a Heavy Raiders Icon, activate all Heavy Raiders. If there are none, you make one from each Base Star (or, in the case of Occupation Forces, make one at Occupation Authority).

Occupation Authority has a Cylon Action that lets you make one and activate one. This action is totally different from the Occupation Forces symbol.

5)It says right on the card that it counts damage on Galactica and Pegasus.

GrooveAttack said:

Oddly enough I'm debating that one in another thread right now.

Locutus Zero said:

Yeh totally my bad, I didn't have the card to hand so was making a bit of a guess to help incorporate someone elses query on the card in another thread, should've checked. The reason I meant I was confused was cos one card stated specifically Galactica while the other was both Pegasus and Galactica, I assumed they would both hold the Galactica AND Pegasus criteria but the two were in fact different.

I was Dee, yesterday, and it really bothered me, that I wasn't allowed to look at the ships on New Caprica(our consensus agreement). I guess, I just want an official answer. So I probably have to email FFG.

After 2 playes of Pegasus. I love the game more.