Greetings,

We've had a chance to play this a few more times and the following questions came up.

1) In the initial set-up, each player except the 1rst player may draw 3 cards from amongst their skill set. May they draw more than the number of a specific type than they receive in the Receive Skills step? In other words, may Starbuck choose to start with 3 Engineering cards?

2) Does Lee "Apollo" Adama start the game in a 3rd viper? Or as 1 of the 2 shown on the set-up? We assumed as a 3rd, but thought we'd check.

3) When you draw cards, are you allowed to look at them before you draw the next? For example, if you play Consolidate Power, could you draw a Piloting card, look at it, and then decide what your second card will be, or do you need to declare what the two cards will be, and then draw them? Same goes for someone like Apollo, who can draw 2 Leadership/Politics cards and may want to change his selection based on what the first of the two is. Page 9 of the rules says "..he must first decide how many cards he will draw from each type." This led us to believe, NO, he must state "I am drawing 2 Leadership cards." and live with it, but the Consolidate Power card was fuzzy.

4) If both Cylon basestars are on the board (or other ships for that matter) and a new Cylon attack card is drawn, may the current player re-arrange the ships? The rules say no new ships are added, but doesn't specify if you could move them to what is shown on the card.

Finally, in our last game, our revealed cylon came up with a possibly "broken" strategy in a 6 player game.
If both revealed cylons only draw Engineering cards, and do not add any Repair cards to any skill checks, there are only 14 Repair cards in total. This means after 4 rounds (even faster if the Cylons drew Engineering cards in their Skills and when discarding to 3, kept 3 Repair cards), the Cylons could have all the Repair cards. How can the Colonials compete with this? Damage to Galactica is now permanent? Is there any way to make a Cylon discard cards?

I'm sure we'll have more questions after tonight's game...

Thanks for the help!

DarthHansen said:

No. The rules explicitly state that you may draw three cards from amongst those you could receive for the turn.

DarthHansen said:

Interesting question. We played it so far that he's launched in a third Viper. However, based on the game mechanics, one could argue that the game already activated his ability and thus "launched" him with one of the two Vipers during setup. I am sorry I can't answer this with 100% clearance.

DarthHansen said:

No distinct ruling here, either. But the way I've experienced Galactica so far (own games, game reports, rules, etc.), I never had the shine of doubt that you had to initially state which cards you draw. Technically, you draw all those cards together, as the rules do not state "drawn one card of your choice, then draw another" (like, for example, the President's office). As such, my ruling would be that you have to decide beforehand and then draw.

Out of curiousity - under which circumstances would the look-then-choose-variant be of advantage?

DarthHansen said:

They are not rearranged. The first player places ships until there are no ships placeable anymore. Furthermore, he also decides which ships to place if he runs out of tokens in the way.

DarthHansen said:

You cannot make a Cylon discard cards. But you should look at the implications of this (valid) strategy:

1. Cylons have to waste their turns for drawing engineering cards and thus
2. cannot effectively influence skill checks which list blue cards and
3. are pretty fracked if any other Engineering-drawing-player plays the "all blue count as positive for this skill check"-card.

To put it short: Cylons are only as dangerous as the humans let them to be. Focusing on such a highly narrow tactic offers a lot of attacking points for the human players if they are intelligent enough to see and exploit them.

DarthHansen said:

I'll happily answer them for you!

Thanks for the reply!

Mike said:

A couple of times when the decks were fairly low, a player would draw the 5 of a particular type, and then want a shot at another 5, rather than a 1. Or if you want to draw an Exec Order, which you do with the first draw, but then would rather get a Politics card for more drawing capability (when you get Exec Ordered), rather than a second Exec Order you can't do much with (and doesn't help much towards skill checks).

Mike said:

But wait! The Cylons draw the 2 Engineering cards and use the Human Fleet location to take a 3rd card (presumably a different color, or another Repair!). They then get a better than 50% chance to damage Galactica. They still have 1 card to put into a skill check if they want (so 2 total for one round), and even if the humans pass most of the skill checks, the Cylons are not looking to deplete resources at all. Sure, if the humans draw Crisis cards with quick jump icons, then they'll be more than likely winning regardless I would guess, but otherwise they CANNOT push back at what the Cylons are doing. No Repairs. Forget it's even harsher with a lucky draw of the FTL location as a damage token...
Plus, this strategy employed before the sleeper phase would probably add a 3rd Cylon to the mix! Even faster damage...
We just looked at the odds of this strategy and it seemed to have a huge chance of success if once both Cylons revealed, the game lasted 12 rounds. That's 6 rounds to get all the Repairs, and 6 rounds to finish the damage (that's 12 shots at 50% for 6 damage...).
Sure, we can add 6 more rounds for the chance the Cylons don't draw 2 Repairs, the fact that the Humans should get to repair 2-4 times before the cards are sucked up.
Would you guess the humans could jump 8+ distance in 18 rounds? That's at most 72 Crisis cards drawn. We haven't looked that closely at the ratio of Crisis cards with Jump icons...

The biggest hitch we thought was the fact that you couldn't be sure the 2 Cylons are in the first loyalty cards dealt...

Cheers,
Darth Hansen

Mike said:

What do you mean "waste" their turns drawing enginering cards? They draw skill cards every turn just like any other player so I don't see how the turn is wasted.

Any way, sounds like a very sound Cylon tactics, draw enginering to drain the repair cards and use your action to activate the human fleet location. Shouldn't take long to severly criple Galactica that way.

Smuggler said:

A diverse hand is the key to success in skill checks. Providing that the cylons want to fail crises, they need a variety of cards in their hands. If they have only blue ones, it will be very hard for them to foil the human's agenda.

However, I think I might agree on the cylon engineer-depletion plan. I need to try it out myself.

edit: I just checked. There are 21 engineering cards. That means, that with two revealed cylons, there always remains one single card. Both engineering cards - repair and scientific research - help the humans in the described situation tremendously.

However, I still concede that they will have a hard time if the cylons are pumpkin bombing the living hell out of Galactica while at the same time hoarding all repair cards.

Mike said:

The rule in question (page 5, "Setup", #8): Each player, except the starting player, draws a total fo three Skill Cards from among any of the cards he can draw during his Receive Skills step..."

The only "limit' is see in that is a) only 3 cards, and b) only skills listed on the character card. I believe, for example, Baltar could draw 3 Engineering Cards, if he wanted. Not saying that would be necessarily a good idea, but I think it is legal.

TK

Re the possibility of a repair card exploit....

The exact same thing occurred to me the other day while I was watching a game. I realize that it may make it possible for the humans to more easily succeed in some skill checks, but the repair skill card is so crucial to controlling damage and keeping vipers in space that it could potentially be a strategy that places the game way out of balance. And when you consider that some Cylon players will be able to do this from turn 1, this could really become a problem for the humans, even by the mid game.

Has anyone tried it?

(Think I'm going to next time I draw a Cylon card...<G>)

I disagree. The rule says from "among the cards he can draw during his Receive Skill Step" is very specific. Let's take Saul Tigh (because he's the only I remember off-hand): 2 Leadership, 3 Tactics. Which Cards can you draw during the Receive Skill Step? Exactly 2 Leadership and 3 Tactics. These are the elements the set of valid cards is composed of. The set does not include more than 2 Leadership cards because you could not draw them during your Receive Skill Step. From this set, you choose a subset of 3 cards after setup if you are not the first player.

What is the game mechanic's reason for that? Crisis-cards will come up long before a lot of the players even had their turns and thus no chance to receive skill cards. As that would be highly unfair, players that do not go first are given a cushion, so to speak, with which to survive the first rounds. The mechanic that lets you choose three simulates an earlier game turn in which you might have used all but three of the cards you drew.

Mike said:

You make a good point, and I do understand the reason for all players except the start player drawing cards. Hope this shows up in the FAQ, or "our best friend" responds here soon.

Great game, isn't it?

TK

I agree with Mike, and see no need for a FAQ on this. The sentence - "among the cards he can draw during his Receive Skill Step" makes it perfectly clear which cards (not card types, which would allow the other interpretation) you are allowed to choose from.

Mike said:

That being said, i'd be willing to try it and see what happens. Sticking damage is flavor country (I've seen cylons do something similar with executive orders...that was unpleasent)

I'm surprised this hasn't been talked about or debunked more.

We played our first game the other night and found this strategy. It seems overwhelmingly powerful, especially if there are two cylons to help employ the strategy. I was a revealed cylon from the second round on, and then a sympathizer cylon was introduced at the halfway point. It wasn't until a round or two after this that he started hoarding the repair and I started to as well, and at that point the humans felt there was little they could do to stop us. It didn't really matter that we couldn't participate effectively in skill checks because once we had all the repair cards we could continue to damage Galactica with the human fleet or simply move to new caprica and choose which of the next two crisis cards looked the worst.

After seeing the effectiveness of this strategy, I'd have a hard time playing a cylon differently if I were playing to win (I might choose not to play this strategy since I feels it breaks the game, but that is a poor game if that is required).

The solution to the repair card strategy might necessitate more skill cards, or possibly others, in the expansion, if it comes. Is it Corey's intention that a card exhaustion strategy is part of the game for the Cylons? Because if we add more skill cards, it makes that strategy harder. Of course we all want game balance.

A similar discussion to the repair card strategy was the red card strategy, taking the good cards from the pilots. Both Red cards are good for them. If it's a legitimate Cylon strategy to exhaust the red deck, isn't it the same for the blue deck? Opinions?

As for the Lee in a Viper at the start, I assume it was one of the 2, reading it as a use of his ability, but maybe the setup means a 3rd viper. Corey should answer this.

I am more worried about trying to shoehorn Lee into a Viper with another pilot. There are no two-seater Vipers in the show

Anyone know of a way to get Corey to see and rule on this, or do we just hope he drops in on the fora every now and again

Dan said:

You email him via the 'Rules Questions' link at the bottom of the page and he will reply directly to you .... then post the answer for us ;-)