SPOILER ALERT (Season one though...)

When the fleet first escaped, Baltar made a Cylon Detector out of a nuke. The first person he tested was Ellen Tigh, on order of the President and the Commander. The second person he tested was Then-Commander Adama. Granted, the tests were frauds, but they resulted in both character's innosence being "proven". From then on out, the vast majority of the other characters laid down their lives for Adama, the few who did not were either Cylons themselves or seriously messed up in the head.

END SPOILERS

Wouldn't it be possible to have Baltar simply look at the Admiral's loyalty cards and see wether he/she is a Cylon or not using the Cylon Detector ability? Most likely, this should be done as soon as the sleeper phase hits or the first Cylon (in bigger games) reveals. Baltar then tests the Admiral. If Baltar isn't a Cylon, he has no reason not to tell the truth. If he IS a Cylon, since the other one already is revealed, then it can't be the current Admiral. The only thing he gains from lying is the loss of 1 morale and his futhre execution.

Baltar is not a Cylon, the Admiral is a Cylon: Baltar reveals the Admiral's guilt, and he is executed. You now have a non-Cylon Admiral.
Baltar is not a Cylon, the Admiral is not a Cylon: Since they can not both be Cylons, you can assume Baltar is telling the truth.
Baltar is a Cylon, the Admiral is not a Cylon: Baltar says the Admiral is human, and it makes no difference becuase he isn't a Cylon anyway.
Baltar is a Cylon, the Admiral is not a Cylon: Baltar says the Admiral is a Cylon, and he is executed. Surprise, he's a human! Baltar lied, and you execute him.

Eruletho said:

It's never quite this simple. If Baltar is a cylon and the Admiral isn't, Baltar falsely accuses the Admiral for the free loss of cards (from everyone) to execute and from the consequence of being executed. Sure it opens up Gaius to a round of getting hit with executions or brigging (assuming it wasn't done with an executive order), but everyone just lost a ton of cards. Moreover, this is indistinguishable from your first case.

Baltar's ability is never cut and dried like this. Furthermore, you fail to account for 5 player games, when it is possible for Baltar *and* the Admiral to be the cylon.

Lastly, the mechanics of the New Caprica phase and the crappy scenarios that exist are not reasonably "band-aided" by someone picking Gaius Baltar as a character. That just isn't a reasonable solution; someone might want to play Ellen, Roslin or Zarek.

Spoiler: the first person tested was boomer.. and guess what the result was?

@iceberg: its only 1 fuel. besides you left out the autopreparations of cards which are most likely 2-4

Sinis said:

It's only indistinguishable by the fact that either way, the Admiral is cleared. If he is executed as a human becuase Baltar lied, he simply chooses the next-in-line for the Admirality and continues on as Baltar is now clearly a Cylon. Yes, there is an impressive card loss and time waste to this, but isn't it better than losing automatically when Galactica jumps away? That, and it is completely thematic (Should Baltar have accused Adama of being a Cylon, he certainly would have been airlocked. If/when this was later proven false (by the real Cylons revealing themselves), then Baltar would have hit the chopping block for his murder, Cylon or not..)

Sinis said:

Eruletho said:

Actually, I did. Naturally, this could still be stopped by both Cylons (Admiral and Baltar) waiting until the NC phase to reveal, but by then, as previously discussed, it would be too late to do any real damage. Also, if both were Cylons, Baltar would lie to the Admiral being a human (I have actually seen this done) but would then have to protect his own butt from suspicion in order to keep the Admiral alive until NC. Once Baltar was revealed as a Cylon, the next logical step would be to execute the Admiral he vouched for, since you still have one infiltrating. If CylonBaltar was telling the truth about the Admiral being a human, at least it had then been proven. Again, the two unrevealed Cylons would not likely have done enough damage by then to win, and if one happened to reveal (wether by using his reveal card or over-using the canyon), then the other is exposed and sumariliy executed.

Sinis said:

On this I agree totally. However, it is a thematic way to combat the topic at hand, and a fairly effective one.

We played 20+ NC games by now. The tactic for a cylon admiral to wait arround and yump when galactica comes back ti win the game does not realy work in aour games, and when ewer cylons tried that they lost miserably. Why? becouse it's a tactit you can use on players that don't realy know how to play the game and pay wearly little atention and its a weary easy to see throu tactic.

For us it worked only once when bouth the admiral and Ellen Tigh were cylons with a greate deal of luck and player skill, so i realy do not see that cylon admiral is owerpowered in any way.

Gul Dukat said:

It doesn't work with a lot of groups, even after a few games. The situation normalizes, a unrevealed Cylon admiral usually knows that he'll never be able to take advantage.