As anyone who read my post on house rules will be aware our group is getting a little stuck with people being unable to get out of the brig even once both cylon players are revealed.

We have had one game where the cylons were able to keep the two non pilot human characters in the bring for 2 turns once they were both revealed.

This wasn't much fun for the brigged players aqnd the cylons players felt lame for locking players out of the game to win.

I light of this I have suggested to our group that revealed cylon players should not be allowed to contribute skill cards to checks to get out of the brig, this makes it simpler for the human players but they still have to chuck in higher value cards to make sure as the destiny deck will still make getting out less of a surity but it does stop locking player out of the game whilst i nthe brig.

Eg of this is Roslin in the Brig, she has lost the presidency and has already used her once per game ability. She can sit in the brig exec ordering others around (less fun every turn you do it) or she can discard 3 cards to try and get out and possibly fail if the other players are pilots or in the brig themselves.

Thematically this makes it harder for revealed cylons to affect the inner working of the fleet and makes it harder for them to get the other cylon player out of the bring to blow up, more-over it provides and incentive to the unrevealed cylon to stay unrevealed, they can wreak havoc on brigged characters.

Let me know if you have found the same problem or if we are just overreacting.

Thanks

I haven't encountered your problem so far. Maybe you misinterpreted the rules somewhere?

There are a couple of facts that I can agree on:

1. Getting out of the brig is hard
2. If (all) other players gang up on you, you will never get out of the brig

but also

1. Every character draws skill cards with the right color to help him get out of the brig
2. If the rest of the crew wants you out, they can get you out easily

Now, for your scenario. You said that you had two humans in the Brig and two revealed cylons. Since you were four players, you must have played with the Sympathizer. Seing as the Sympathizer became a Cylon, Galactica was doing pretty good after half the game (or the Admiral wasn't clever enough for some metagaming).

Now, the difficulty for getting out of the Brig is 7. Both humans and cylons can each toss in one card for the check. Let's assume they cancel out each other, then you must have the destiny deck work in your favor. Getting a 7 is not so easy, but not impossible. However, if you Declare Emergency, you only need 5 points. And from my experience, this is quite achievable through the Destiny Deck.

Now, others might still find this too difficult. Well, here's the solution: Either you have a character that draws Leadership cards or Politic cards. The latter lets you draw Leadership cards, too. So whatever character you play, you can get your hands on Executive Orders quite easily. If the humans play them on each other, every one of them gets two chances to get out of jail in one turn. Even if the Cyclons would try to prevent it, it will quickly deplete their hands of cards. Remember that revealed cylons only draw two cards, while humans draw five. Coupled with the guideline in the former paragraph, this allows at least one human to escape Brig very easy. Once the first human is free, the second can get out even faster.

There are some hooks, though. An unrevealed Cylon player can toss in more cards than a revealed one, sinking your chances quite a bit - but only for one skill check. Afterwards, his hand is depleted or at least severely diminished. If you keep up trying to get out, he will not be able to keep up with you. Eventually, you will get out.

The above situations scale very well with more players. The trick is to deplete the cylon's hands and work with Executive Orders. Sometimes, humans should also consolidate their power and focus on getting a single person out of the Brig, that is not themselves, so that he can help them in turn.

We've run into this problem in a few of the games I've played as well. Our solution was to allow players stuck in the brig to contribute 2 skill cards to the skill checks for trying to get out. It seemed to help.

I've got a problem with those house rules as they are implying that the game mechanics are broken and need to be fixed in order to tend to "fair play". This game has been designed thoroughly with a lot of tweaking and test games before it went out to the public. I cannot believe, that there is a flaw so big still present.

As such, I tend to seek the fault in other areas. Those could be:

1. The inability to collaborate as humans
2. A number of bad choices that put cylon players into positions of power (always coupled with either 1. or 3.)
3. A misunderstanding of rules
4. The concept that Galactica always has to be fair and unbiased towards either side

Maybe you could elaborate your situation a bit more?

i dont know why use houserules with a game that is not so long in stores ... but revealed cylon cant stop humans from getting out of brig, one player who is not locked out can easily get them out. cylon can play only one card-which cancels one card played by the player in the brig, but the other player may play any number of skill cards, and skill card to reduce difficulty may be helpful too when destiny deck does not cooperate ...

How are your human players getting stuck in the Brig in the first place?

Bleached Lizard said:

Haw haw haw! That is an excellent rebuttal!

I had one game where all the humans got stuck in the brig, and couldn't get out, but i don't think that would happen very often. It was 4 players right after the smpathizer went to the cylon side, and the cylon was unrevealed. That was the problem. A crisis threw one player in the brig, then the presiden't threw the other in. The humans wouldn't work together to each other out. The sympathizer cancelled out one player and the cylon would throw two cards in. So they couldn't get out. Even then they got close a couple times.

To answer a few of the points that have been raised:

First: I am not suggesting that this game hasn't been tested and retested to ensure that it is up to the highest quality. This is a fantastic game and that is shown by the fact that my group has played it 20 times since it's release. But different people enjoy different aspects of all games and so I have never been against trying house rules.

The reason that I am asking if anyone else is finding that once you're in the brig and both cylons are revealed it is very hard to get out if the revealed cylon players choose to make it so.

Next: we have a group that really does distrust each other when playing games like this, so it is quite possible for two human players to get sent to the brig at the same time, factor into this that there are a fair number of crisis cards that can send someone to the brig, or make the president choose between being brigged or giving up the presidency most players in this position will role-play and not give up the presidency, especially not to the admiral, we've all seen how well one person having political and military control in real life so letting a potential cylon have that power isn't a good idea.

As to how we weren't able to get people out, it was six player with the two cylons revealed both with a full hand, one pilot outside galactica and the admiral, another pilot and the president in the brig, one was sent in for being a suspected cylon, then one was a sympathiser and the final one was sent there when the cylon revealed itself. The pilot only drew 1 purple card a turn and was fighting cylons around galactica, roslin had the choice of using 3 of her 5 cards a turn to try and get out or exec ordering the pilot around to try and save galactica, she choose the later. the other two tried to get out, both putting in one card each , roslin chucked in a third and the pilot a fourth and fith, the cylons each chucked in one cards. I can't remeber the exact numbers but the cylons had 5 between them and the destiny deck was on the cylon's side, as it will be 2/5 of the time. The character stayed in, next character tried to get out and again the 3 in the brig helped, the cylons hindered and the pilot was out of cards. They failed, 2 turns mostly wasted. Next turn Roslin orders the pilot who lands, draws 2 politics cards, admiral orders the pilot, who draws 4 politcs cards (from Administration) and the pilot in the brig tries to get out, free pilot throws 5 political cards in and gets the pilot out, another turn used, by this point the cylon players have acitivated the fleet and destryed 2 civilian ships and got a centurian boarding party on the board, By the end of the next turn the admiral is out but the cylons win.

Now I have given this account as earlier in the forum it was mentioned that without a full description it was hard to see if we were playing something wrong, I don't think we are but i will admit that I didn't even think of using a declare emergency on the brig skill check so that is my mistake and does make getting out easier but I do feel that if you are thrown in the brig early and are a character without a lot of access to the cards that help you get out, or if you are a player that has trouble talking your way out of situations it can be very daunting and boring sitting waiting for the cylons to make their move before you're allowed out, at the end of the day there are only so many turns of drawing your cards, exec ordering somebody and then passing that can be considered fun. Also every card being used to get a charcater you are sure is human out of the brig is a card that is missing for passing skill checks which are hard with only 4 players and every player in the brig only contributing one card each.

I do think that this is the weak point of the game, but considering how small a part of the game this is and that this is the only thing that i have found not to be perfect shows what a great game this is.

To all those that would never use house rules, fair enough, we do, we enjoy games more for them or we don't use them again.

Honestly, that scenario you described sounds pretty rare. And, even in that rare case (3 humans in the brig, 2 cylons revealed, 1 human piloting) you could still get out. Suggestion - the pilot abandons piloting and goes to draw 2 political cards on Colonial 1. That, plus the pilot's regular draw, plus the bonuses from the humans in the brig (1 card each) will get you out of the brig. You should be able to at least get a 5 - a pass using Declare Emergency.

Question: if a Cylon is in the Brig, does revealing itself get him out? This hadn't happened to us until last night, and the rules are unclear. They say to immediately move the revealed Cylon to the resurrection ship. What word takes precedence? "Move" or "immediately"? If it's "move", then I suppose they have to stay in the brig. We sort of role-played it: since revealing yourself as a Cylon would likely end in your death, you would end up in the ressurection ship. So, we allowed the move.

Feydaway said:

From what I've been told through repeated playings, reading of forums, and FAQs, a Cylon can take his Reveal action in the Brig, and does indeed get a Super Crisis card and moves to the Resurrection Ship, but because he/she's incarcerated, the action on their Loyalty card (all of which imply some act of defiance, assault, betrayal, or public demoralization) doesn't trigger. Basically, once revealed, you're either executed (i.e. air-locked) or you hang yourself in the jail cell; no matter what, your uploaded consciousness returns to the Cylon fleet in a new body.

yep. That's how we played it.

Big Head Zach said:

Frank is right there. Consider the wording on the Loyalty cards that allow you to damage Galactica/send a character to the Brig/sickbay, etc. UNLESS you are in the Brig. This sounds pretty straightforward to me.

Is there something I'm missing? That's the second time someone's called me Frank. Is someone using a word-replacement filter on me?

Actually, I was just making a joke.

In my group we do not allow revealed Cylons to participate in Brig related skill checks. This is correct thematically and works very well in actual game play.

It should be noted that the Brig pretty much breaks the two player game. If the President is the Cylon during the Sleeper phase, it is incredibly easy to throw the other player in the brig, not reveal and keep them there.

In the scenario where two human players are in the brig and there are two revealed cylon players, one of the humans must be president, and capable of drawing quorum cards with the president title card. There is a 'pardon' card, that can automatically remove other players from the brig.

Other solutions include: Tom Zarek's Friends in Low Places, going to Colonial One for yellow cards, and Declare Emergency (some proposed by other players).

I think the far worse scenario for a four player game is when two human players are in the brig, one Cylon is revealed (via the Sympathizer Loyalty card) and there remains one unrevealed Cylon. I can't see how the humans win in that scenario, with the remaining unrevealed Cylon piloting the fleet into the worst locations, and possibly getting the presidency via election (which would be supremely easy against their jailed incumbent).

As someone who's spent considerable time in the brig, let me tell you, it sucks. I don't think it's the Brig that needs "fixing" though, it's the player attitudes. Early games seem to see more brig action as players don't realize how serious the action really is. Now when I'm playing with experienced players, nobody is getting tossed in there without a very good reason. Simply feeling that someone might be a Cylon doesn't cut it. You'd better have proof. Otherwise that person isn't getting tossed in and the accuser WILL be later. Personally, I'd never consider playing Boomer just because it is such a pain to get out again.

Humans have a harder time winning because of the paranoia which keeps them from acting with the greatest potential. Being a bit more judicious about tossing people in the brig certainly helps them do better.

Trump said:

After playing a game yesterday, I strongly agree with this. Players new to the game don't actually understand how debilitating the brig really is. In a five player game, I (as a Cylon) managed to lock away two of the three non-cylon players (the other Cylon was Gaius, who randomly looked at my loyalty card with his once per game ability, and after seeing the "You Are A Cylon" promptly told everyone I was safe, and made me vice-president a turn or two later). The first person accused myself and Gaius of being Cylons with absolutely no evidence (though, I have to say her gut instinct was pretty accurate). The pretense under which I threw them in the brig was because of 'fear mongering' and that only a Cylon would accuse people baselessly. The second player went under from a crisis skill check which I (and possibly Gaius) sabotaged to fail (it was the one where the consequences of failing are -1 morale and the current player jails someone, which was so very clearly a crisis to risk exposure on).

The players trapped in the brig were locked in for most of the game. Gaius and I could act with such impunity that even though we reached a point where we were pretty clearly Cylons, the remaining player was unable to throw us in the brig without support from the other two, and otherwise powerless to stop us (through brig usage, crises, and election shenanigans, I managed to become the Admiral and President at the same time). One player eventually broke free, but I simply revealed myself to throw her back in (I had that particular You Are a Cylon card that throws people in the brig). We called the game shortly after, every human resource being at 3 or less, and two of three players still in the brig.

I think that all players will not treat the brig lightly once they've played a game or two where it's been a decisive factor, I'll certainly be suspicious of any player who attempts to toss others in the brig. It also certainly seems to be a very strong play for unrevealed Cylons if they can evade the suspicions of others. Players spending time in the brig slow the game down considerably, giving Cylons precious time in order to win.

The Brig certainly is a bad place to be, and you'll most often be discarding Skill cards and thus losing resources because you can't play enough cards. Plus, a lot of character's special abilities suck in the Brig: Baltar only draws 4 Skill cards, Roslyn can't use her special ability, and Appolo will often be forced to discard random (and possibly useful) cards.

Trump said:

Agree 100%. Focusing on positive cooperation and planning seems much more important than the negative punishment aspects, especially since its often difficult to be very sure of identifying the unrevealed cylon.