we played yesterday our first play, and we managed there is a little choise for what you can do. The cards also has only two action types in each color. Locations have also only a few choise when admirals quarters is used only when cylon player appears to reveal, after that its useless. Killing centurions is the same, fire with galactica is useless when there is no basestar ship... etc, well we just go and get skill cards and discard them at the end of turn. i hoped there will be some more useful actions to do for a non-pilot player. I guess it will be fixed with some expansion ?

I think the game is just fine as it is now

An expansion would be good, but as the game stands now there are things you can do on your turn beyond 'draw more cards'.

* Repair locations or vipers

* Use Command to activate unmanned vipers - having some vipers outside can help when the cylons arrive

* Try to get a change of President

* Try to throw a suspect in the brig

It's rare to have a situation where there is 'nothing' to do, and if you've just made a jump chances are you are low on particular cards so getting more is a good idea.

Unless you're in the brig, having a huge hand of cards and 'nothing to do' sounds wrong - use the cards, give someone else an Executive order (which can double their action), play your special action, risk a Raptor on a survey mission and check out the next crisis card.

And of course at times drawing more cards (especially cards you can't usually get - such as Engineering for a vital repair after your Engineer has been revealed as a cylon) can be good.

I've played a few games now, not once been a Cylon, but never thought there wasn't something important I could do.

Even just launching more Vypers is worth it to prepare for a Cylon Attack.

Therefore I don't see any problem with the number of actions you have access too.

Rasiel said:

Maybe you missed out the metagaming part of the game, Rasiel? Did you try to find out who the Cylon in your midst was? Did you, as a Cylon, blindly accuse other people? Did you try to become Admiral or President (or both?) "just because"?

When I have downtime, usually I just give executive orders to the president, or to the person stationed at command. Certain quorum cards can be lifesavers or turnsavers such as teh "brutal force" card. Mission specialist is also very useful.

In the two games I've played... the actual cylons arriving does almost nothing.... they happen too infrequently. Then no cylon activity. It gets boring of just losing fuel or food each crisis card. I feel the game has potential. I mean once before galatica lost due to food depletion we had a basestar show up... and get nuked. But that was it after the first jump.

I certainly agree that the Cylon fleets show up too infrequently. Appear just in time to do no significant damage and watch Galactica and the fleet disappear via FTL control. The only time we've ever had a serious engagement was from two active Cylon players, one of whom found a cylon attack crisis, and the other played the Massive Attack Supercrisis after, pushing the FTL marker back to the start. Even in that engagement, only a few civilian ships were destroyed.

I don't feel as though the Humans have too few options. There's always something to do, drawing extra cards for us is a last resort. We're always firing the ship's guns at Raiders, destroying Cylon boarding parties, using FTL control or commanding unmanned vipers. Or using Executive Order to do it double time. I feel like the Cylons have limited options, especially ones revealed by being a sympathizer, who cannot command the Cylon fleet and have no Supercrisis to plan around.

Q: In the two games I've played... the actual cylons arriving does almost nothing.... they happen too infrequently. Then no cylon activity. It gets boring of just losing fuel or food each crisis card. I feel the game has potential. I mean once before galatica lost due to food depletion we had a basestar show up... and get nuked. But that was it after the first jump. ---

Well, I would have to ask, if the vcards were shuffled well enough in your first few games?

We thought ours were, but we realised that all of the Cylon Attack cards was in the beginning, and had the opposite effect on our game, too many Cylons, 4 lost civilian ships in 2 turns, and a population dial, that went from 12 to 4

We didn't know the cards, so we had passed on the Caprica survivers earlier.

This games just needs to be played more times to be real fun, and real good - did you read the new Cylon tactics article? If I become cylon, and did that stuff, when I am going to play with my family this holiday, I will crush them and they will find it no fun, because supirior knowledge of the game, will put me in an advantage.

Also, as soon as I read the rules, I knew it was a game, that you would want to play again, straight after the first. And so it was - had my group had the time, we would have played again, staight away.

...Idless

We just played 2 Games of BSG.

We really wanted to enjoy this game, but nobody did. So we tried it again, and we didn't enjoy it again. It all comes down to having the right cards to solve the crisis, no tactics, no strategy, just drawing the right cards.

The only fun thing is, finding out who the toasters are.

Shadows over Chamelot does the same, but in a much better way.

Sorry FFG, but this game is a disappointment to me.

Attribution theory tells me you did something wrong in your gaming rounds.

Vincent_V said:

Really?

I've played through one game only, and have found this not to be the case - unless by the right cards you mean the "right colour skill cards",

Few crisis can be resolved by playing a card against them - most require a difficult choice on the part of one of the players (in which case the "strategy" is to ensure that the key roles are not in the hands of Cylon players so that the right choices get made) or a skill check (which only require the correct colour skill cards - and picking those up is hardly a matter of chance), the remaining crisis cards being groups of cylon ships turning up (which require reasonable die rolls by either raptor pilots, the galacticas gunners or the FTL controller to deal with).

Most of the players only have access to skill cards - and their abilities are so common that you should have access to most of them throughout the game (and there are locations to help, if, for example, your only tactician or engineer turns out to be a Cylon...),

Yes, the right colour skill cards. I think the yellow and green ones are most needed in crisis-solving. Blue ones are almost as good, maybe better, because you can make them to help any skill test.

It's just that the best choice (or-cards) is often obvious

skill-test: give the right coloured cards (or not if you are a toaster)

cylon-ships: try to fight them (or get an excuse to do not)

same with the locations.

Your optimal (if their is any) move is obvious.

I don't want this game to be bad.

I like BSG, i like FFG and i envy the people who can enjoy this game. But I'm selling it, because I've got about 80 games at home which I like better. So BSG the Boardgame is not coming to the table again.

Sorry for my bad english