I know a lot of people say they win as humans most of the time, but so far in our games the Cylons have a 100% success rate. Closest the humans ever came was a premature final jump (we would have been dead next turn anyway) where we failed the roll and lost the last of our population. This is with just the base game; we do not have the expansion but will be getting it next week.

So does the expansion increase the overall difficulty of the humans winning? If so, what are some house rules that could mitigate this bring it back to base game difficulty?

In my experience, Pegasus has helped humans slightly more than Cylons, for the following reasons:

1) The new skill cards give humans more options.

2) The Pegasus ship has some very useful locations.

3) The Pegasus ship is a great meat-shield.

4) Cards played by Cylons on Caprica no longer skip the "Prepare for Jump" step.

5) New Caprica is one unit of distance closer than Kobol, and there's very little for Cylons to do there.

6) The new "You Are a Cylon" loyalty card is weak.

7) Some of the new human characters are very strong (e.g., Helena Cain).

8) The execution mechanic is a strong option for human players.

9) Hostile Cylon Leaders are arguably advantageous to humans, in that they remove a "You Are A Cylon" card from the Loyalty Deck.

That being said, the Cylons have also received boosts:

1) The Cylon locations Human Fleet and Resurrection Ship are arguably stronger.

2) Treachery cards give Cylons abilities they never had before.

3) Treachery cards are in the Destiny Deck, increasing odds that the deck will hurt skill checks.

4) Investigative Committee has been nerfed.

5) The Quorum deck is diluted by new cards that are on-average weaker.

6) Quorum hand limit is now 10 cards.

7) New Caprica increases the likelihood of Morale and Population being reduced to zero.

8) Sympathetic Cylon Leaders generally do more for Cylons than did the old Cylon Sympathizer.

I definitely recommend the Pegasus expansion, but it won't be a silver bullet for whatever issues your group is experiencing with regards to game balance. In truth, the expansion isn't likely to either correct or exacerbate any balance issues. For our group, Pegasus' big contribution was that it rejuvenated the game and made it more interesting for the players. Hope this helps!

GrooveChamp said:

I don't know where you're getting your information, but I read these message boards and the ones on BGG and I really don't think a lot of people are saying that. If you have a 100% Cylon win rate, my first thought is exactly how many games have you played? It's very typical that it'll be a number of games before the humans will win. It's harder for them at first.

As for the expansion, I've only played with it twice so far, but anyone who's voiced an opinion has felt that the expansion helps the humans more.

Trump said:

Personally, 4 games. The group I play with has about a dozen though.

We usually get screwed by the big card crunch at the end. The cylons are revealed and are free to openly sabotage everything plus super crises. Then there's brigging the obvious cylons. What I'm most looking forward to in the expansion is the airlock. Too many times we've had a player who's obviously a cylon and is openly trying to sabotage us, but it's a big drain on cards trying to brig him and keep him brigged. Even worse if they're the president and we have to toss more cards to elect someone else. There just aint enough cards to try and pass everything and we're forced to throw half the crises.

GrooveChamp said:

1. It should not take many cards to keep a cylon (or anyone in the brig) locked up. Remember that destiny probably isn't on his side, and that he can throw one card, maximum into the check. Worst case scenario, he throws in a 5 and uses Declare Emergency after, needing at least a neutral destiny. But if a single one of you throws 2 or 3 against (those piloting cards have to be good for something, right?), the cylon player is wasting their turn. Of course, if someone helps them get out, you have a whole other can of worms.

2. Pick your battles. Some crises can be failed with few repercussions. Some crises offer a middle-ground 'or' choices that are actually quite palatable.

3. Cooperate. I hear about groups where a player brigs the admiral just so they can be the admiral, and call elections just to be president. Those are a giant waste of cards.

4 Remember that revealed cylons and brigged players can only add 1 card to skill checks, ever. That makes things much easier, I'm sure.

We played 5-7 games before our first human win, then there was four human wins, as the humans got better in managing resources, fighting off the cylon threats, rooting out cylons before they reveal, etc. We played only one game with pegasus, the cylons won by huge luck... So we're looking forward for more games to try to manage the resources the same way in the expansion. It made the game easier for the humans, but the cylons have more options to do, not just sit around and wait for the humans to draw an unlucky card.

Daver said:

Yeah, that's the consensus thus far in Pegasus for our group; that the New Caprica phase is like a free pass for the humans. Between executive order, the impotence of the cylon actions, and the general weakness of space combat, we're finding the humans can easily pass through the new caprica phase.

I'd certainly disagree about the alleged weakness of Cylon actions on New Caprica. Breeder's Canyon is like Caprica on steroids. Crisis, no prepare for jump step, and Cylon ships activate.

Katsue said:

We've found that the cylon ships don't really get to activate for very long. Unless it's been an attack crisis heavy game (and it's never been *that* heavy since we bought the expansion), the first thing that happens on Galactica's return is an executive order to the admiral for two nukes against the basestars. Soon after, a pilot, or a person parked at command takes care of the remaining ships, also via executive order. The cylon ships really don't last long.

The crises themselves don't typically have much teeth, though it's something for us to try more, I suppose.

Plus, the Cylon ships don't activate on a Cylon's turn ever. It's really confusing because the space doesn't mention it at all. In the original rules, it says that on a Cylon's turn, you always skip the Cylon ships step and the Jump Prep step. In the Pegasus book, it says that now you DONT skip the Jump Step, but it changes nothing about the Cylon ships step.

Locutus Zero said:

It really doesn't matter. Between the nukes and strategic planning/calculation (which we often hold on to for something like this) there will be typically four raiders that survive the nukes (one nuke will go to 7-8, the other will typically 'only' destroy the basestar). The vipers that get launched as part of galactica's return is more than enough for someone at command to use (two shots against those paper-mache raiders, or four if they get executive order/that new purple that grants an action in lieu of a move).

Furthermore, the person at command can split his attention to different zones, so long as they have vipers. And the civilian ships go right to the launch points.

We find that the New Caprica space battle for the cylon is pretty much written off, unless there's some unusual factor in the game (Cavil, most notably).

Even lacking nukes, the Pegasus CIC with strategic planning/calculations/Helo/Kat are quite devastating (though, not quite as brutal as nukes).

So what can the Cylons do? Just make sure to stay on the Resurrection ship to get some more Cylon attack cards to supplement their forces when they get double-nuked? It's really a shame because this should be a tense part of the game. We had some tension launching the civvies up, but we really didn't have any problems with the Cylon space forces either.

Trump said:

... We just don't know. The last strategy we tried was continually using the Arrest-a-human action available to cylon players, in an effort to stuff people in detention. It didn't really work, and the humans did not even have Strategic Planning to make sure they go to the medical bay (or maybe get an 8+ result). The resurrection ship is a bad deal for sure; it'll give humans basically a free pass on crises, and it's not really clear that more ships will help. We will probably try using more occupational forces or Breeder's Canyon next.

Trump said:

If your game group's gestalt is that they save their nukes until post-NC, overwhelm them with ships before that? A non-infiltrating Cavil helps here to create ships, if there aren't any, otherwise just spam Cylon Fleet.

It's certainly possible to get screwed over by the Crisis deck such that you never get more basestars, though this is lessened somewhat by the Treachery deck.

antherem said:

Okay, what your proposing is easier said than done. There are just not that many attack crises, and some of them are quite toothless (like Thirty-Three, or Scar). One cannot just 'spam' the cylon fleet if there aren't any basestars on the table, and you can spend a huge amount of time at the Caprica location looking for attack crises and never finding them, or never finding them at a good time (i.e. the fleet is about to leave). Forcing the human players to use a Nuke is based strongly on luck more than anything else. Obviously Cavil is an exception, but unless your group has a weird dynamic, no one is going to play Cavil every game, but the humans will have an easy time with NC every game that Cavil isn't in.

Secondly, there is no 'being screwed over by the Crisis deck such that you never get more basestars'. After the New Caprica phase starts, you only draw crises from the New Caprica crisis deck for the rest of the game, and there are precisely 0 attack crises in that deck. In short, those two basestars are all you get, barring two of the existing supercrises or Cavil or Broadcast location (though, our group is very conscious of the last one, and avoids reckless skill checks after Galactica returns).

Sinis said:

Fry said:

... Thirty-Three gets shuffled back into the deck pretty infrequently with us. I mean, it's a single basestar, unless it shows up when we're about to jump, it gets hit with Weapons Control a few times and dies. With Pegasus, its life expectancy is even shorter (Pegasus CIC, more die-roll altering cards).

That is a good point, though. It's just that if it's quiet, we tend to launch scouts to avoid that sort of stuff anyway. In any case, Thirty-three rarely is worth picking with the Caprica Cylon location (it's like wasting your turn, when you could have picked a crisis that did something, even if it only wasted some of the human's cards).

To reply to the OP, how often have your group used "President's Office" location, or the "Executive Order" and "Investigative Committee" cards? They are all very helpful to human survival in the base game.

On the subject of New Caprica being cakewalk, I have yet to see a human victory with Pegasus. I really like the expansion, but my group usually waltzes through the first part but then the humans get hammered by the New Caprica crises (making New Caprica actually the most exciting part oddly enough).

I have been a leader once (Leoben), a normal cylon twice, and a human thrice and every time it seems there was no way for humans to keep enough cards for critical checks in New Caprica. I guessing group playstyle is a huge factor in the enjoyment New Caprica and the whole expansion in general.

Tepes said:

Oh we used them.

We lose due to the exact problem you mentioned: we just run out of cards late in the game. Once all Cylons are revealed you no longer get their minimum token contributions as well as their sabotaging which effectively increases the difficulty of every check by about 4 per cylon. This is a HUGE drain. Investigative committees also become a double edged swored; the humans know just how much is needed to pass but the cylons know just how much is needed to make it fail. Revealed cylons usually leave ship damage, centurions, sickbay, and brigs in their wake. More card drains and we end up only being able to try and pass every other crises.

We did almost win one game, but lost due to a number of bad luck factors. We weren't in the red for any resources right before the sleeper phase, and the turn before the jump that brought us to the sleeper phase, a hidden cylon had his turn and crises choice to put our fuel in the red which he of course didn't so we go the sympathizer for a total of 3 cylons 3 humans. Then a revealed cylon passed a cylon loyalty card to the president who started openly sabotaging with multiple cards, drawing Quorams in hopes of brigging someone, and using Admiral Quarters to try and brig someone which we'd have to at least throw a card or 2 into or else his revealed buddies would have tipped it. We had to spend cards to get him brigged and keep him there (cylon buddies kept trying to bust him out) and we didn't have the time/cards to have a new presidential election. We got zapped by the worst super crises in the game (2 centurions) while the armory was damaged. Had to repair the armory then got horrible luck on die rolls to kill the centurions: 10 rolls and not a single success. One crises we intentionally failed since it passed the presidency. It came down to surviving just one more crises then we'd force the final jump: a 25% chance of winning and 75% chance losing our final population.

We didn't =(

Another expansion inquiry: does it remove most threats that cylon ships pose? It seems like someone sitting in Pegasus could mow down most raiders before they reached civilain ships, and I don't see anything that increases the threat of cylon ships to compensate.

Nother question: how is playing with cylon leaders? Our group is kind of leery of it. We liked the paranoia and "us vs. them" of regular game cylon/human players. Cylon leaders just seem like an annoyance. They may or may not want you to win but will probably be out to reduce your resources to a certain amount either way so there's not much point in trying to guess which, and even if you did there's not much you can do about them. You can brig or execute them but they can just keep coming back.

GrooveChamp said:

Critical masses of cylon ships haven't really come up for us, but we rarely find the right combination and order of cylon attacks/activations to be dangerous enough to cause the human players serious damage. Generally speaking, there has to be an attack crises with two basestars, or a basestar and a fair number of ships, or multiple attack crises, a raider launch icon, and then repeated raider icons on the crises. More often than not, pilots can handle it, or someone can use ftl control, or something. This contributes to the rarity of critical nuke usage in our group; there are often solutions that are not twice-per-game, and nukes are viewed as a terribly valuable resource.

We have played Cylon leaders twice, once in a five player game and once in a four. The first game (the five player one), the humans won, and the cylon leader's agenda required a cylon win, so it was like having a revealed cylon at the start of the game. It's not clear whether he would have been able to meet his objective (he played Leoben). The second game had four players, where I played Caprica Six. I received an agenda that required the humans to win with population and morale within 2 of each other. The result was that I played as a relatively weak human for the vast majority of the game, and sabotaged a skill check here and there to make sure population was low enough for me to share in the win. Cylon leaders are certainly not for the faint of heart, and some of the agendas are truly difficult to master (grant mercy, reduce them to ruins, notably).

Continued from my last post: That said, the Pegasus locations are very good for destroying raiders and basestars. A strategic planning with the Pegasus CIC all but dooms a basestar to be destroyed, crippled, or ripe to be destroyed with a use of Weapons Control. The Pegasus Main Batteries don't see a lot of use with our players, but we have totaled many, many raiders that were not locked in combat with colonial ships or vipers.

I'd say that they don't have a horrible impact on the game, CIC is risky without a strategic planning, and the main batteries are often silent because raiders tend to move into zones with vipers so quickly.

There is a slightly higher ratio of Cylon Attack cards in the Crisis deck with the expansion. It's not a big jump, though.

Fry said:

If that is the case (I haven't checked, I'm taking your word on it), some of them are truly toothless, like Scar.

Just played our first expansion game!

Scar was pretty deadly. He took out 3 civilain ships. He did bring up a question though: although vipers or galactica need a 7-8 to destroy him, what about pegasus main batteries that don't roll against individual ships? Do they just treat him as a normal raider when you destroy 2-4 of them? Same for nukes rolling a 7-8.

Actually used a nuke for the first time, not because a basestar was a threat, but just to get a morale from the victory celebration card.

But yeah, our group gave a unanimous thumbs down to the cylon leader character. It takes the fun out of trying to root out one of the cylon players. Additionally it's kind of pointless trying to figure out their agenda since they either act like a lukewarm human sabotaging the occasional skill check or a lukewarm cylon occaisionally helping out a skill check, and the human players have to have all the agenda cards memorized to even have a vague guess at what they're trying to do. Regular games revolve around asking "Who's a cylon?" and "What can we do to stop them?". With cylon leaders, the answers to those questions are "There's no real way to tell" and "Nothing much".

Their agenda is so specific and hard enough to influence that they can't really meander around trying to put on an act, not that they have any incentive to try and gain trust because there's not much other players can do to affect them; at most you spend cards to throw them in the brig (not a big deal since they only get 3 cards a round to throw in anway) and delay them a turn. The worst part is there's absolutely no point in airlocking them since brigging is easier to pull off and more inconvenient to them. We were so looking forward to carrying out some hot execution action! My admiral Cain went to waste all game =(

It almost feels like they're off playing a totally seperate game and not really participating with anyone. They're also not very fun to play as since you're mostly isolated from either side. No tension in trying not to get caught, no real possibilities of gaining trust to be put in a sensitive position to wreck havoc (admiral/president). Spend half your turns either moving to the human fleet or commiting suicide. Cavil can use his once a game to bring an instant loss for the humans, but that's it and it's just another thing neither side has any control over.

I guess the point was to throw in a wildcard that no one is totally sure of, but it doesn't work out. It's such a wild card that not even the cylon leader has a great deal of control over their win conditions, and the best option is to just ignore them either way since you can't do much except make the game boring for them.