I feel dirty.

In our first Pegasus game I grabbed Ellen Tigh and got a "You are a Cylon" right off the bat (the one that sends someone to sickbay). I played it mostly straight, only dumping skill checks when it couldn't be traced to me. I did manage to be mostly useless, and even "accidentally" executed someone for being a cylon. But in the end I stayed unrevealed until New Caprica and the instant the Galactica showed back up I grabbed the admiral position, hopped aboard, and left all the humans behind.

I won't be doing that again. It was a victory, but it felt cheap.

It's true that Ellen is another can of worms with this particular problem.

Sinis said:

The Ellen thing is incredibly thematic, though. If Ellen is still alive when Galactica returns, the humans deserve to lose.

It wouldn't have worked if it hadn't been our first game, since nobody had the new characters' abilities memorized. The Cylon Leader's player even mentioned once we hit New Caprica that a cylon admiral could win easily, but nobody put that and my OPG ability together. I was expecting to have the ploy fail seconds after he said that, as someone called for an execution I couldn't possibly stop (it's only a 7 on New Captica, and 2/3 of my skill set counts positive for it).

It'll definitely never work again with our group. If we get to NC and there's still an unrevealed cylon out there, the Admiral is on the chopping block, as is Ellen if she hasn't already used her OPG ability.

James McMurray said:

Well, our group is pretty funny about this. If there is an unrevealed cylon and Ellen is in the game, more than likely the human players will demand Ellen use her OPG superfluously. If she refuses, it's the Resistance HQ. If she acquieses, it's the Resistance HQ for the admiral. Our group is very reasonable, and when they see the logic of the risk, her ability is trivial enough to be sacrificed; even a cylon in our group would give it up in short order, knowing that the execution is not an empty threat.

James McMurray said:

Exactly! It does feel like a cheap victory. It doesn't really take any skill. Just play it straight without drawing any suspicion and play the "I win" card once Galactica arrives. I know it can be prevented by executing the admiral and Ellen Tigh, but that just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. You really shouldn't want to execute anyone unless they have actually done something to make you suspect them. It doesn't feel right executing someone that seems to be a loyal player just because there is an unrevealed cylon and Galactica is about to arrive at New Caprica. Now... that said, if I'm playing a cylon admiral am I going to jump early and abandon the fleet if given a chance? Yes! I play by the rules, but that doesn't mean I have to like the rules.

Now lets think about how things would go on the show. If the admiral were to give an order to have Galactica jump and leave civilian ships behind, don't you think there's a chance they would refuse to execute the order? Wouldn't they think, "Hey... if he's so eager to leave everyone behind, couldn't he be a cylon?" That's why I like the idea of a skill check when the admiral wants to jump. The fewer things he is leaving behind, the easier the check will be. If he's leaving nothing behind, there's no skill check at all. Not only that, but if it's obvious that the admiral is leaving enough behind to cause a lose for the humans, you're going to see a lot of cards going against the skill check. On the other hand, if it's obvious that the humans have enough resources to accept the loss, you'll see a lot of cards supporting the skill check. I would like something like this a lot more than executing players simply because there is an unrevealed cylon.

But how do you set it up so that the cylons can't win just by holding back and then dumping the skill check to leave? If you set the difficulty too low you don't do anything to prevent the admiral from jumping away. If you set it too high you create a situation where the humans might never get to jump.

It seems like, as others have said, a self-correcting problem. If a cylon who is not the admiral has stayed hidden throughout the entire game, it is likely that he has not done enough damage to win whether or not the cylons execute him. If a cylon who is the admiral has stayed hidden throughout the entire game, it is likely that he has not done enough damage to win if the humans execute him. This makes staying hidden as the admiral almost always a bad idea, and definitely a risk.

James McMurray said:

The difficulty is based on how many civilian ships and human players are left on New Caprica. 2 * civilian ships + 2 * human players. So if there are five civilian ships and two players left on the board the difficulty would be 5 * 2 + 2 * 2 = 14. If there are no civilian ships and no humans on New Caprica, there is no skill check. This way, the difficulty varies based on how much is left behind. The destiny deck is not used, and it is treated like a super crisis (no cards that affect skill checks can be played... like reckless cards or Declare Emergency).

Again, it's not a perfect solution by a long shot. It's just an idea for something that would go towards fixing this issue.

James McMurray said:

Agreed. And I may be in the minority here, but this rule just gives me a bad taste in my mouth. Even if it does self-correct, it seems to me that the self-correction shouldn't even be an issue. The fact that the admiral can just jump the fleet whenever he wishes shouldn't be a factor in any decisions made throughout the course of the game. Let's face it, if the admiral in the TV series attempted to jump Galactica and leave everyone stranded, would he really get away with something like that? I doubt it. I know that you have to take some liberties in a game like this... for example, Baltar wouldn't know anything about firing at a basestar from Galactica, but he can do it. However, the admiral jump is a big deal that can cause the entire game to be over in an instant. It's a little different in this case.

Syragar said:

Uh...he did.

GrooveChamp said:

SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!!

He didn't leave them to die. He left them to colonize the planet. That's a big difference. The New Caprica phase in the game starts just as the cylon forces arrive on the planet (long after Galactica left). Galactica then returns to rescue everyone from New Caprica. When Galactica left before, New Caprica seemed safe. For Galactica to leave everyone on New Caprica after it has been occupied by cylon forces would be genocide... that's NOT what happened.

Yes it ist. Galactica left as soon as the Cylons jumped into orbit of NC.

James McMurray said:

Cylons can only add 1 card into the skill check. However, I would be loathe to add even more rules to the expansion. Firstly, as I've said before, I think that it's a self-correcting problem. Secondly, Ellen isn't really a threat if the players think about it. As I've said before, the other human players can demand she use her once-per-game ability without effect (i.e. you're admiral for a turn before Galactica returns). If the Ellen player refuses, they get executed. If they agree, then the problem is 'solved'.

The only thing I don't like about these scenarios is that it really is a lot of metagaming. It's a lot of contingencies, "If the Admiral is an unrevealed cylon" and "additionally if Ellen is in play". The base game was more of a standup fight that way, players knew the score, and the actual characters that people played had an effect, but not anything too crazy (president was powerful, I guess). In this, I feel like they have too much effect and have to be countered with metagaming (i.e. Unrevealed Cylon Admirals, Ellen Tigh).

Is metagaming bad? Well, not intrinsically. The only problem that I have is when the metagaming decision trees become much larger than actual in game decisions. It feels like we play more with the framework of the game than the actual game.

Rubinon said:

I had to go look it up to confirm, but you are correct. My apologies. It's been a while since I've seen the episode... but I guess I just remember it differently.

Sinis said:

And that's the reason why I wanted to either add the skill check or at least do something to change the admiral's ability to jump too early. I know you don't like the idea of adding a rule, but that one rule addition could totally eliminate the metagame. Indeed it may be a self-correcting problem... but as you said, it requires a lot more metagaming than desired. That's what I meant when I said that even though the problem may self-correct, it still shouldn't even be a factor in any descisions made throughout the course of the game. Self-correcting or not, it still has a major impact on the game.

It's a board game, not an RPG. Practically everything you do is metagamed.

James McMurray said:

I hate this argument to excuse unthematic metagaming in board games. The qualification of a board game is not binary - there is a range of different styles of game, which is where the whole Eurogame/Ameritrash divide comes from. BSG is obviously an Ameritrash game, meaning that it is meant to be a board game simulation of the events it depicts. When something so jarringly unthematic finds its way into the game, such as executing the admiral for completely unsuspicious behaviour, people will complain and I don't blame them.

That's well within your rights, though it doesn't make it either logical or useful.

I'd love to hear how many people have actually executed an unsuspicious admiral due to this possibility. My guess is that it's so incredibly few that all the hubbub about it is just sound and fury signifying nothing. The fact of the matter is that the victory cannot work unless your opponent is a fool, and makes it so much harder to win if it fails, that it just plain won't happen.

It's like the Fool's Mate in chess. Sure, you might upset a five-year-old (or even a fifty-year-old if they're not forward thinking and have never played chess before), but it's not a meaningful strategy in any game that doesn't involve rank beginners.

If a house rule makes you feel better, by all means go for it. That's every gaming group's right and my guess is that both board games and RPGs would have lost at least 70% of their customer base if house rules didn't exist. But to decry it to the masses as something that has "a major impact on the game" indicates either a low level of play in the group in question or a lack of understanding of the Cylon Admiral strategy.

James McMurray said:

No. Metagaming in this sense is when you talk about a universal result of a decision. So, if there is an unrevealed cylon, it is unclear who the unrevealed cylon is, and if it is the new caprica phase, then execute admiral. That is always the outcome of the question "what should I do about this?". Similarly, if there is an unrevealed cylon, it is unclear who the unrevealed cylon is, Ellen Tigh is in play and if it is the new caprica phase, then force Ellen to superfluously use her once-per-game ability by threat of execution.

These decisions are universally the best play decision for the situation, given the consequences. Under those conditions, you may as well perform those actions as a rule.

The majority of actual gameplay is supposed to be more concerned with individual decisions that have more bearing on the state of the game as it is. So, there's no universally correct answer about what an Admiral should choose when the Riots crisis appears. It depends on a large number of factors that are not concrete (i.e. are not yes or no questions): how far have the humans traveled, what is the state of the resources affected, etc. Similarly, when to use a nuke is not something you can give a concrete answer to: there are a number of variables that make a difference like when the next attack crisis that places a basestar is, how close you are to jumping, etc.

Individual decisions are more fun on a basic level (for me anyway); if all our decisions were metagamed, and were always the correct decision for a situation, there would be no point in playing the game: all decisions would already be made, and we would just be acting out our previously calculated optimal decisions. It has nothing to do with RPGs vs. Board Games, and everything to do with decisions made while actively playing the game decisions made while not actively playing the game (and by 'actively playing the game', I mean sitting down and playing with other people instead of posting to these boards and thinking about contingencies to deal with Ellen Tigh in the new caprica phase when there is an unrevealed cylon on the loose).

All well and good for theorycraft; however, how many times have you executed an unsuspicious admiral? i.e., when has the metagame necessity of countering the cylon admiral strategy actually mattered?

James McMurray said:

The only reason we didn't do it before was no one had yet realized how broken a cylon admiral was at New Caprica. Now that the trick is out of the bag, the answer is "every single time a cylon is still unrevealed by New Caprica and the admiral is not a confirmed human."

We never even thought about Ellen Tigh doing the same thing. Now that we do, her execution is mandatory as well.

GrooveChamp said:

So is that once, never, seven times?

Sorry, that probably came across as me berating the people who don't like the strategy. It wasn't intended to be. My goal is to find hard data on how much of an effect the metagame choice to execute an unsuspicious admiral has on the game. If it turns out that the dislike of the metagameyness is rooted in an actual problem that crops up repeatedly in games we're much more likely to see some sort of errata on FFG's part. If it's just a matter of not getting a warm fuzzy from it, that's less likely to happen.

James McMurray said:

Twice. And as I said before, the problem seems self-correcting with my playgroup. The players in our game tend to cut and reveal, to better work against the humans during the New Caprica phase, so to speak.

James McMurray said:

I've played three games with the expansion so far. How many times have we executed an unsuspicious admiral? Once (and he was a cylon). In our first two games the admiral was not suspicious, but turned out to be a cylon that jumped the fleet early.

So how many times would it have been necessary to counter the cylon admiral strategy in our games? 3 out of 3... 100%. I know, it's totally against the odds that the admiral would have been a cylon three times in a row... but that's the way it happened. But still... these happen to be situations where the admiral IS a cylon... it's still an issue if there's an unrevealed cylon and the admiral is NOT a cylon.

To me, threatening to execute someone if they don't use their OPG and executing an unsuspicious player simply because there is still an unrevealed cylon doesn't sound like a self-correction. It sounds like player constructed rules to compensate for an imbalance in the game.

It feels like we're at a similar problem we had pre-expansion. In a four or six player game, the humans had to sabotage one of their resources into the red in order to prevent the sympathizer from becoming a cylon in the sleeper agent phase. It was a metagame that made absolutely no sense. Why would the humans willingly sabotage one of their own resources? For the same reason the humans would execute an unsuspicious admiral... they wouldn't. The expansion introduced cylon leaders in order to fix the sympathizer problem. Now with the New Caprica phase, they've introduced a new problem.

From what I've heard, if the admiral doesn't jump the fleet early the humans almost always win if the game gets to the New Caprica phase. I'm starting to think that it would be better to just use the Kobol objective with the expansion rules. No New Caprica could mean no metagaming, and probably a more balanced game.

Syragar said:

Heh, sounds like you shouldn't have taken your chances, and executed your admiral in the other games. When they're not a cylon, it isn't an issue; the executed player simply picks the highest available person in the order of succession for admiral. The rules state that the title moves after the selection, so except in the circumstance where the very person next in line is already in play (a rare circumstance, to be sure), it's much like the Admiral lost his hand, changed his character abilities, and 1 morale was lost. Oh, and we verified his loyalty.

It's not exactly player constructed rules, but I take your point. It's a fairly ridiculous strategy to execute people in order to verify their loyalty, but it is the power of certain abilities that force us to do that verification. In pre-expansion games, we certainly had the problem of running fuel into the red (because it was supremely easy, and the least punishable resource) so that the sympathizer would be a human. Mostly, our players wouldn't want to play four player games (it was rare that the sole person dealt the You Are A Cylon card would be the sole victor, and it was at least an uncommon occurrence for the players to fail to put a resource in the red).

As for not using the new caprica phase, it's something our group has strongly considered. One complaint is that the sleeper phase and the NC phase are too close together; you could be dealt a You Are A Cylon card, and barely be able to reveal before the NC phase. However, it becomes difficult for a player to complete certain agendas without the breeder's canyon location.

Re: Game data for James McMurray

We figured it out on the first game with an unrevealed cylon in the New Caprica phase. There was an unrevealed cylon, and the New Caprica phase was merrily going along when I realized the risk of a cylon admiral. I explained to my comrades, who all immediately understood. Our Admiral revealed on his turn (which happened to be next), because we expected him to use the HQ and target himself (he apparently had planned to early jump all along). It was in two further games where we were playing with less regular players (who got the same idea), but we executed them without much discussion; we simply said, "unrevealed cylon, admiral, I guess we kill 'em" and each of them were cylon admirals. Every game in which there is an unrevealed cylon during the new caprica phase, it is a palpable risk that the cylon could be the admiral. More strongly, players in other positions (pilots, presidents) are more likely to reveal earlier, because they want to make use of the New Caprica location cylon abilities rather than assist the humans. That makes it even more likely that an unrevealed cylon in the New Caprica phase is the admiral (no other unrevealed cylons would have a benefit, except Ellen Tigh).

Wow, I'm lost...