DCAnderson said:

What I meant was that if you do not execute the admiral, and if they are an unrevealed cylon, it is a coin-flip situation. I don't think it's a coin-flip situation when the humans metagame and execute the Admiral (which, again, I see nothing wrong with given the circumstances).

I don't think that the humans really have a problem (when I first posted, the metagame left a bad taste in my mouth). It is absolutely the correct move to execute the Admiral on New Caprica if there is an unrevealed cylon still lurking about, that much I am not disputing. I'm also not disputing that it would be foolish for an experienced player to think that he could get away with such a strategy (see some of my posts above).

I want it to be clear that I'm not griping about humans or cylons being at a disadvantage, or even that this is a good strategy. It just seems like a crummy metagame. I mean, imagine a situation in which you are sailing on a ship, and one person aboard is planning on running it against a reef. The solution? Clearly to kill the captain, and then appoint the next person who shows up from somewhere to be the captain. That way, everyone will be safe. I guess I just find that a bit weird.

Sinis said:

Well, everything is going wrong and no one knows who else to blame. Therefore you blame it on whoever was leading this doomed expedition and mutiny.

But things likely aren't going wrong at that point. An admiral trying to pull off this move would be helping the humans the whole way through. You have no reason to execute them, aside from metagame requirements, which is a disappointing departure from the base game.

There's a lot of talk in this thread about metagaming and optimal plays - whatever happened to playing boardgames for some rip-roaring fun ?

I wasn't happy about executions as soon as I heard about all the optimal-play groups just having players 'volunteer' to be executed to prove loyalty or to replace one character with another character with an in-demand skill or ability - the morale loss seemed trivial, and the 'game loss' factor of running out of characters pretty weak since there are now 14 human characters in the game and at most 6 will start leaving a minimum of 8 characters 'in the bank' for executions before you would lose the game on that rule.

My solution has been to have a blind pull for the replacement character, from a reduced pool of unknown characters (we are using 5 initially), and all unused character cards are used to create the pool (this includes cylon leaders) - this will result in an unknown number of unknown human characters for replacements. If a Cylon Leader is chosen then it is discarded and you select another card (or if you want a real challenge you discard it and wait until your next turn to select again ) - this also means that when you get down to the last character card in the pool, unless you have seen all three leader cards then you cannot be sure that human characters will run out at the next execution.

TomH said:

Well, a lot of people have the most fun from a game well played. My group has a ton of fun, and we're not always optimal hardcore gamers either (many of us play table-top RPGs as well). I mean, we also like the game for the themes and story-like implications which provide a very interesting framework, but all in all, I think individually the people in my group fundamentally enjoy winning, and feel silly when they make a move they know to be worse than another available option, even if it makes no thematic sense in that framework.

That said, it is easy to be disappointed in that situation. Until now, optimal gameplay very usually lined up nicely with the thematic elements. A person is sabotaging the ship, or leading the humans the wrong way? Lock 'em up! Dissatisfied with governmental performance? Call an election! All those things are perfectly good in terms of theme and metagame, and the only thing that didn't was dropping a resource into the red to manage the sympathizer. But Execution? It's weird. In our games it doesn't happen often because it's expensive, but when it does, it often has quite counter-intuitive motives.

TomH said:

Why can't strategizing and playing the metagame be fun?

Zack said:

This is Battlesatar Galactica. By default, nothing is going right.

When you reach New Caprica you are being crushed under the boot heel of the Cylons and just struggling to survive. It makes sense people would be demanding blood.

DCAnderson said:

No one was calling for Adama's blood (or Tigh's if you want to say he was the real military leader) on New Caprica. If anything, at that point, the President was the figurehead everyone hated and the military was mostly obsolete (or the savior once they reestablished contact and planned the rescue mission).

If someone is being blatantly subversive and saying that your brig is actually very comfortable, then executing them is in theme. If they're doing everything you would want them to do, it's just silly.

Ok i've now read the rules a few times.

I may have a solution, but should dramatically make the game harder for the Humans, and a Sympathic Cylon Leader.
maybe to hard. but anyway.

How about do not leave the jump up to the admiral?

we can do this in a few ways.

#1 - the Humans must hurry to move as many ships to orbit before the next jump.
once the FTL reaches auto jump, any ships left on the ground are toast.

or

#2 - the humans can't jump until all civi's are off the ground.

This will make both sides have to play on both caprica and the galactica as ground forces can still attack civi ships on the ground, and cylon fleet can attack them in orbit also.

Will also mean they will have to play more crisis cards.

I thinking having to wait until the FTL is prepped would probably be the most likely solution.

They could even jump early risking more population, and may also resolve the other problem i've read about with to much population using certain cards to build up the population.

There would also be no metagame to need to kill the admiral. AND..you could still have a hidden cylon trying to sabatage crisis checks.

You could even have to make the admiral have to pull a destination card, as I believe there are now 0 destinations, and if you dull pull a 1 or higher, you have to survive the risks involved...if they do, then the humans win. if they don't...

KAGE13 said:

Thinking about it this might not work if there are no crisis cards with only evacuation icons.
I haven't looked through the NC crisis deck yet.

that would mean you would only ever get 3-5 civillion ships into orbit.

Would defiantly make it challenging.

If there are NC crisis cards with only Evacuation icons, this might work great.

KAGE13 said:

Only if the humans neglect to launch any ships on their own. Most ships tend to get launched by the humans themselves.

Zack said:

oh ya, I just looked at the shipyard location and you can prep or evacuate ships.

This probably would for sure work then having to wait for the next FTL jump instead.

Nah, I still think Sinis has the best two fixes :

1) Don't use New Caprica.

or

2) All Cylons are revealed when you land on New Caprica.

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Here's another idea that's also thematic (a big plus in my book). Once the humans have reached a distance of 7+, the President decides whether to use the New Caprica end game or the Kobol end game. If you still lost because of a Cylon admiral then, the President would be the hated one.... much like in the show.

Trump said:

seems very anti-climactic compared to having a timer where the humans have to save as many ships as they can, and not needing to metagame and execute the admiral.

KAGE13 said:

I don't follow you at all. Why does it seem anti-climactic?