We've played BSG with the expansion for a few games now, and we're noticing an unfortunate trend with regards to the New Caprica phase and the Admiralcy. Once we touch on NC, the first thing we want to do is execute the Admiral if there is still an unrevealed cylon lurking out there. Far from being dissatisfied with any given Admiral's performance, we very much want to verify their loyalty before galactica returns. After all, it is a colossal risk that an unrevealed cylon would stay hidden the whole game, doing his best to help the humans, only to kill them all the second galactica returns. Once said Admiral is killed, the player selects a new character (if they were human) to take the Admiral title, as though nothing happened.

Now, this isn't an awful solution. There is a very real risk that the humans will lose if the admiral is an unrevealed cylon, and has been playing the part of a human the whole game. So, it makes sense to use loyalty verifying mechanics to see if the 'admiral' is simply going to order the military ships away the moment they arrive. More strongly, it robs all the players involved of a good game of BSG. An unrevealed cylon admiral stands a good chance of success if he keeps his nose clean until he can throw the switch, but that isn't any fun for him, or for the humans he's killing. I'll say it again. This isn't an awful solution. It's an awful problem.

What's the consensus on these boards? How have your players been dealing with it? Part of me thinks that the impending threat of an inevitable execution will cause an unrevealed cylon admiral to play a far more aggressive game, sabotaging skill checks and revealing early. Part of me wonders if that is enough of a threat, after all, Execution skill checks can fail.

Our group has had few issues with a hidden-cylon admiral. Things usually sort themselves out shortly after the halfway mark. Our humans have great teamwork, so Cylons usually have their work cut-out for them by the second half. The usual hidden-cylon admiral strategy for our group is to get "one-big-hit" in before they fly home to the mothership -- sometimes they can stall their reveal by choosing crappy destination locations, but a second crappy choice usually results in a brigging, in the least. But overall, no major issues or concerns.

Figuring out that you can trust the admiral is pretty big. I'm all for executing the admiral if a hidden cylon has stayed hidden that long.... he is probably the admiral. One thing that our group does though, is that when you get executed, if you were human your new character is random, that way, if you did execute a human admiral... oops. Now the admiral title may have just been given to the cylon... again, why is the cylon STILL hidden... what could they even hope to accomplish hidden at that point if they weren't the admiral? Thinking about it though, I'd consider staying hidden if morale was low, then I'd be pretty confident that the admiral would get executed and lower morale a bit more... that might be a fun thing to try actually, hmmmmm.... I always find it fun to try something sneaky and risky like that just to see if it will work for real... if the oppurtunity arises, why not? If it doesn't work out, so what.

We are implementing a house rule that after Galactica returns you continue to use the jump-prep track and the admiral can't jump the fleet until the marker reaches the auto-jump space. Gives the humans a little more time to not only determine the loyalty of the admiral, but also time to get at least a few ships off the ground before jumping away.

abraxus_smith said:

What if you become the Cylon? Doesn't that suck? Do you always approach the Sleeper Phase with the thought "Oh, man.. I feel sorry for whoever gets a Sleeper card!"

If so, then you aren't playing the game to win (in my opinion); or didn't take the FFG gameplay tip "Prepare for the Sleeper Phase" to heart. Your group simply plays the game to see the humans win as much as possible. Instead of tracking Human:Cylon victory ratios, start tracking player wins and losses, period.

If your humans have such great teamwork, then they should be able to pull together and win even with a poorly-played first half as everyone waits to see if they are a Sleeper agent.

With this in mind, maybe pre-Sleeper hurt a bit *too* much and you can't afford to simply do a blind execute of the Admiral on reaching NC, which was my on-topic point.

However, if you play 100% humans must win from the start of the game because you started with a Not a Cylon Loyalty card, then yeah, strategies like auto-executing the Admiral, or making sure you gained a point of population so you can destroy all civilian ships are viable. But if I play with a group like that, I certainly hope I don't get a Sleeper Cylon card.

As wise as it seems to play 'not as well' before the sleeper phase, it bears some thinking on what your probability is of becoming a cylon. If, at the start of a five player game you are dealt a "You Are Not a Cylon" card, and there are no cylon leaders, Boomer or Gaius, your probability of being given a "You are a Cylon" card is about 22%. Pretty low. If you discover that there is an unrevealed Cylon before the sleeper phase, the probability drops to a mere 12.5%.

To play optimally, you ought to be 'not trying too hard' about 20% of the time. With the way crises reduce resources, you are not likely to do significant damage if you don't try very hard for one in five situations where you can and not be suspicious. It seems silly to hedge bets on something relatively unlikely, and so difficult to actually put your chips on.

As for being on topic: it's good to hear that players somewhat inevitably execute their admirals if an unrevealed cylon is lurking out there for too long, and that this will likely prompt them to reveal. Maybe a strategy for non-admiral cylons is to hold out and be subtle until the Admiral gets executed, and then reveal...

Sinis said:

That would be sneaky, but if these metagaming groups already execute everyone to secure Loyalty.. who knows? Maybe tricking them into one more execution is what you need to win. And it's all about winning.

(And for me, about fun)

I'm not keen on feeling you need to execute the admiral... or the New Caprica rules that bring it about in the first place. I dislike it so much that I've considered not using New Caprica, but I like the pressure of getting the civilian ships prepped and launched. So maybe you don't allow Galactica to leave until all of the ships are in orbit? But then you lose the stress of jumping and hoping you don't lose too much.

Sigh.

Here's the problem my group is facing:

We're not particularly wild about the expansion...however we've played the game so much before that certain things become academic in the base game, so the Pegasus expansion is a much needed way to shake up the status quo.

That being said, some of the magic seems gone.

Mordenthral said:

Well, our group certainly doesn't execute everyone. I mean, we're a pretty hardcore bunch, and the second we saw the execution preview, many of us thought "loyalty verification", given the pros and cons of execution vs. the brig. Executing *everyone* is a really bad strategy; it actually costs a lot of cards to execute even a single person in practice (it is difficulty twelve, you can't reasonably kill everyone when it's cheaper during the NC phase, and a cylon player will throw against just to move suspicions around and possibly cause failures, costing even more cards), and during that time you're failing crises (because you don't have cards from activating the airlock and/or being executed) etc... It's really not optimal, executing everyone to determine loyalty causes more damage than an unrevealed cylon or two ever could.

Trump said:

Well, the rule you off-handedly suggested is pretty unfair for the humans, and takes that decision away from the admiral. I mean, suppose the humans are being overwhelmed when Galactica returns, there's 5 population left on the dial and two ships on the planet. Experienced players will know that those two ships will contain a maximum of four population, and so abandoning them on the planet will not result in a loss for the humans. To make the example more poignant, we could well imagine that a set of raiders will destroy five civilian ships if the activate raider icon appears. In such a case, the Admiral's best move is to jump now and abandon the ships still on NC.

I think the players in my group are seeing that if there are any unrevealed cylons left by NC, there's a good chance they're going to be caught on sabotage, or we'll execute the admiral and then we'll know we're okay (while at the same time they will fail to really be able to do anything on NC, because they're still 'human'). Generally speaking, they've decided they'd rather sabotage and reveal earlier.

However, those still grappling with it can use another house rule: when the New Caprica phase begins, all unrevealed cylons become revealed cylons, collect their supercrisis and discard down to three cards but do not have the text on their "You Are a Cylon" card activated. It makes sense from the point of view that during the occupation of NC, the models were basically all known (because there's a few hundred threes, sixes, etc. wandering around), and I think is fair from a rules standpoint (they don't get their loyalty card activation because they didn't spend an action to do it, but it's not like they were brutally executed via airlock).

Melonball said:

Well, a good thing about the expansion is that it's modular: you don't really have to play with most (or any) of the new components. I can easily imagine some groups only playing with the Sympathetic Cylon variant, or Cylon Leaders, while others disallow the Pegasus locations and New Caprica (removing player activated execution abilities, and the NC phase altogether) while still enjoying the new destinations and crises.

Our group is having particular trouble with the New Caprica phase, largely because it doesn't seem that Cylons can do a whole lot to the humans on New Caprica's surface, and that there aren't any attack crises in the New Caprica crisis deck, so when Galactica returns, the humans are often an executive order away from launching a pair of nukes at the basestars. Execution seems to have some annoying problems, but is at least not too awful in terms of cost (it is typically a costly maneuver, and rarely gains you much).

Sinis said:

Hmmmm. I like the sound of this. I might also add that the humans take a morale hit for each Cylon revealed this way. Maybe not. I'll have to consider this house rule...

Trump said:

Well, a morale hit unfairly punishes the humans. I mean, if you're the Cylon with the -1 Morale reveal effect, it makes little sense to reveal unless you're about to be brigged or executed. It's just a waste of an action.

Basically, there has to be a solution to cylon admirals in the New Caprica phase (because it's an incredibly stupid scenario), but it does not make sense to punish the humans for what is out of their hands (namely, a cylon revealing or not revealing and/or being an admiral), nor does it make sense to punish the cylons for not revealing while they still had an advantage for remaining unrevealed (i.e. the Admiral's quarters is damaged, and pegasus is destroyed, there's no reason to reveal until that stuff is a threat).

The lack of loyalty card effects is to avoid a 'reveal bomb' at the NC phase, and because this proposed mechanic spares the cylon players the action to reveal (they would normally have to spend an action revealing to get the benefit on their loyalty card).

My proposed house rule pits the cylons against the humans in the way that the New Caprica board intends without unduly punishing either side.

this really is not a awfull problem, its a viable strategy a cylon can use to win. in fact the first time we played pegasus and i was admiral (cain) i tried this. however the timing was not good (my turn brought galactica back, 5 player game) and they saved to many civilian ships. executive orders can help here a lot.

as i said, its not a problem with game mechanics. its a problem of your view of an unfair or lame move.

How about shuffling "Recover Launch Keys" into the top ten NC Crisis cards, and you cannot prepare civilian ships until the keys have been recovered?

Just to be theme-y.

Turric4n said:

We just had our first Pegasus yesterday. I was cain, cylon. My crisis was InterATMOS, so I brought back the galactica, the next player evacuated 1 ship, and I persuaded the next one to xo me. I launched We lost 8 population out of 9 (we lost 3 on the blind jump already), everyone was executed, 1 morale remained, but fortunately one of the ships destroyed had a morale on it. So cylons won

However, I really see no reason for the humans not to execute admirals on NC. (That's the reason I tried to keep quiet about executing anyone, should the others think up this strategy as well...)

I see the game getting harder for the cylons AGAIN...

as someone said.. execution can fail. besides that, when galactica returns there are 2 basestars. in a 5player game with 2 cylons they can shoot the whole fleet into oblivion in a few player turns. there is not really much time to evacuate ships after return anyway.

My read on this, is that the following will happen if you let the metagame play itself out:

• Cylons will discover that unless they are Admiral, letting the game get to New Caprica will often mean a win for the humans, and if you don't reveal before New Caprica your options for hurting the humans will be very limited (and their reveal ability will often be negated).
• So Cylons will usually start revealing before New Caprica.
• Since Cylons almost always reveal before New Caprica, the humans will excute the Admiral by default if not all Cylons have revealed themselves yet.
• Since Cylon Admirals will know that they are likely to be executed before they get a chance to kill the humans with the final jump, they will start looking for more efficient ways to kill the humans well before New Caprica (like picking all 1s for Destination).
• The humans will likely notice an Admiral who is more blatantly sabatoging things early in the game and will execute him, but the damage will already have been done by that point.
• As such, you will almost always have all the Cylons revealed by New Caprica one way or another, and having to execute the Admiral "just to be sure" will happen only every now and then.

That sounds about right.

Turric4n said:

I don't really have a problem with it being a tactical move or it being 'lame' or 'unfair'. The problem I have with it is that it makes for a silly game. I mean, if you're in a four player game, and the admiral is a cylon, and he simply 'plays as human' the whole game, the end of the game basically comes to a coin flip: either the admiral's turn comes up at the right time for the cylons, or it comes up late enough that enough *random* ships have launched to spare the humans defeat. The cylon admiral has an incentive to lay as low as possible if winning the game is their top priority (which there is nothing wrong with).

Doesn't that sound like a lousy game? I would rather the game be more interesting. I want to stress that I do not think it's 'unfair' or 'lame', it is a usable strategic option. I just think that usable strategic option significantly damages the fun factor of the game.

DCAnderson said:

This is what we're finding. Cylons very typically reveal after the NC phase begins.

So, I haven't played yet, I just bought the expansion today.

But glancing over the rules, does this happen becuase the admiral would jump the ship with no civilians in orbit and thus the cylons would win?

So if you excecute the Admiral, and then you are guaranteed that he isn't a cylon?

I believe you start new caprica when you get to 7 Jumps?

By the sounds of it the Humans automatically win if it gets to new caprica.

Why not have a greater penalty for executing a leader (Admiral or President) and/or have the Galactica have to continue on to earth by still getting to 8 jumps or even 10 after they leave NC. (I bet that is the next expansion)

and add a variation of what one guy said all cylons must reveal when you get to the NC phase. Instead once the Galatica can jump, all cylons must reveal.

Basically just talking out my butt based on what everyone has said here...i'll know more when I get my first few games in.

KAGE13 said:

Basically, you are correct about the problem: a cylon admiral can drop population really heavily by ordering the exit as soon as Galactica returns, stranding all the civilian ships on the planet. Given the colossal risk, if there's an unrevealed cylon during the new caprica phase, it makes sense to execute the admiral, and then for that player (if he is human) to pick a character that is highest in succession for the admiral title, to ensure that the admiral title is not in the hands of a cylon player.

My suggestion about cylons revealing at the beginning of the new caprica phase would clean things up a fair bit; cylons would be able to use their actions, and humans would not have to worry about auto-losing to a cylon admiral.

More penalties for executing the Admiral under these circumstances is not really warranted: this is one of the only moves they can make to ensure that they wont have a coin-flip ending (which makes for lame gameplay). It isn't so much a problem with the execution mechanic as a problem with the admiral having far too much power with a single action.

Sinis said:

I don't really think it is that much of a coin flip situation.

If you put off executing the Admiral till the last possible second, then yah it's going to come down to turn rotation. If you more agressively hunt down Cylons before New Caprica and before Galactica returns, then it is a non-issue.

As I said before, most of the time it is to the benefit of Cylons to reveal before New Caprica, so if you get there and you still don't know who is a Cylon, you're going to execute the Admiral pretty quick.

This pretty much makes the strategy of waiting till the final jump if you are a Cylon Admiral a waste of time, so Cylon Admirals are probably not going to try this strategy more than once or twice in any playgroup and instead reveal earlier.

And all of this assumes that you get a Cylon + Admiral combination. It's more likely you are going to have a human Admiral than a Cylon one in any given game.