What would you like to see in a new expansion? (hypothetical)

By SomethingBruin, in Battlestar Galactica

Okay, so the un-official Daybreak expansion got me thinking, let's imagine that a new BSG expansion gets announced (still got my fingers crossed for that one ^^), what features would you like to see? Are there any character's you feel should become playable, what ideas would you have to mix up the scenarios?

Personally speaking, I'd like to see Gaeta, Anders or Tori to make an appearance, I've seen some interesting custom rules for them here on the forums and I'd be keen to see what they could add to the dynamic. In terms of a companion board, perhaps this time we could have a Cyclon basestar as a companion ship? The idea of human-centric Cylon resources could be interesting.

Anyway, those are just some of my crazy ideas, how about you?

A reprint of all of the characters, with cylon stats on the back to use if they get to the halfway point and start hearing Jimmy Hendrix in their heads. Sotr of like combining Cylon Leaders with the Sympathetic Cylon variant.

Ideally, FFG will have two more expansions: a small one (The Five) and a big one (Daybreak).

For "The Five," I'd anticipate it being mostly characters, Loyalty cards, Quorum cards, Crisis cards, Super Crisis cards, Agendas, and however they would like to incorporate the relevance of The Five mechanic-wise; I assume a second-half mechanic since none of the characters discovered themselves until halfway through the show.

Characters:

D'Anna (Cylon Leader), Tori (Political Leader), Anders (Support with Piloting?), and maybe Callie (Support).

Then for a second big expansion, "Daybreak" would incorporate a longer-run view, where we could also use the Pegasus Expansion/New Caprica phase or springboard from Kobol if consumers hadn't purchased Pegasus. This would be bigger because of that last run for the fabled "Earth" and the pow-wow ho-down had at the end. But again, we'd get the same stuff, but maybe with an added emphasis on Cylons not necessarily being the bad guys, but also creepy humans.

Characters:

Felix Gaeta (Military Leader), Doc Cottle (Support), Athena (Pilot), Gaius Baltar Redux (Political Leader)

I sort of hope that there are revisions to some characters, like Tigh, who sucks, or updated versions of characters to reflect who they are later in the show (Baltar at the start of the show is different from Baltar later in the show) or to compensate, adding some sort of mechanic to pick-up a skill or level-up your character through the game (like a skill-check, where if completed, the current player or admiral or president, keeps the card and can use a limited ability thereon, or until they reveal as a Cylon).

That'd be nice.

I agree. Character-specific Cylon-reveal abilities would be cool.

Characters like Anders, Callie, Gaeta, D'Anna, Tori etc would be welcome. I would also like a new title, I have seen some experimental rules with a CAG that looked nice. Some updated characters would be nice too, If there for example where 2 versions of Boomer, the one in the starting box and 1 as a Cylon Leader, that would be awesome. Or 1 as Athena. If you chose 1, the others are no longer an option... Same thing could be done with a political leader Apollo, Baltar etc.

I'd certainly like to see the Final Five mechanic worked in somehow. Perhaps even revealing one of the players as one of the Final Five, introducing a new mechanic for them. I think Tigh is a character I would like to see overhauled, his abilities have never really made for any exciting plays in the games I have had.

I wonder if you could extend the game even further by setting the initial resources set at a higher level, and then playing through baseset, New Caprica and the new expansion scenario?

Revealing 5 cylon characters would be kinds hard...in a game with 6 or 7 people at most

More crisis cards, More characters, maybe an algae planet phase and an extended "final jump" From earth, where you have to deal with mutiny.

Also maybe add a cylon basestar that joins partway through the games and helps and an endgame that involves saving hera

Dangofrank said:

Revealing 5 cylon characters would be kinds hard...in a game with 6 or 7 people at most

Presumably not *all* of the Final Five would make their appearance in a single game - only one of the players would be "one of the Five", but that's all.

I have dozens of ideas for Final Five mechanic, Rebel Basestar mechanic, Earth mehanic, etc. But I ususally dismiss all of them because the only way to make them work would be to add at least a third part to the game, after NC, which would prolong the game by an hour or two further more. And also, escaping NC should be made easier, otherwise the humans will have to manage the whole third part with 1-3 population. (That's how much we usually escape NC with...)

But if you're interested, I can tell some of my ideas so we can dissmiss them together :)

You might be able to move New Caprica earlier. If it happened at the start of the sleeper phase or the jump just afterwards it'd give more time to slide things in without prolonging the game much.

Yeah but there's also the problem of in a 6 player game there'll be 2 cylons, 1 cylon leader (who, speaking from experience can be devastating against humans) and hopefully one of the five (who I suppose could be with the humans, but we all remember tory...). So that leaves two ordinary humans. The president and the admiral can finally order each other around...

But Deanna, Gaeta, Anders are must, character specific reveals would be cool (for adama: "you're screwed if I'm a cylon", for tigh "I'm a frakkin cylon!" etc), and I'd be dying for a rebel basestar location which would be for cylon players until - say end of NC, and from then on rebel leaders (more agenda cards maybe...) and humans...

The five could have victory conditions completely separate from human and cylon victories. Or it could be another variant similar to the sympathetic cylon (which could itself kinda be viewed as being one of the Five).

If I was starting with a new expansion I'd probably go with a name called "Exodus" I think I would stick to the same format that they did with Pegasus probably. Meaning I would probably put in 1 Pilot, 1 Military Leader, 1 Political Leader and 1 Support and 3 more Cylon Leaders.

I'd choose Felix Gaeta as my Military Leader, I'd go with Romo Lampkin as my Political Leader, I'd go with Margaret 'Racetrack' Edmonson as my pilot, and Dr. Cottle as my Support Character. For the Cylons obviously a number 2 'Aaron Doral' , a number 3 'D'Anna Biers' and a number 4 'Simon'

I would add Racetrack over say Hotdog because I think the expansion should make more use of the Raptors and I think Racetrack (other then Athena or Boomer) spends the most time in a Raptor. She could have some ability to effect cards that use the Raptors.

Other then that Obvioulsy new cards in every deck pertaining to season three stuff. If I were to add a new board it would probably be a Cylon Base Star board that would let the Cylons move to one of 4 locations on the base star. Some of these locations would only be useful when a basestar was on the same game board as Galactica. Some like the Hybrid chamber would let you see some of the cards in the destiny deck ahead of time sort of thing.

I wouldn't add anything like a New Caprica stage because I wouldn't want to make the game any longer lol.

I dont know much about the future expansions as of yet but I would like to see some method of backstabbing amongst the five. This whole new level of betrayal would give the game an extra dimension that was developed in the show as it drew to a close (i.e Brother Cavil going psycho, Six and Sharon getting all touchy feely for humans etc). Who cares about human vs cylons? What I want to see is those who doubled crossed other getting screwed over themselves! So a new card type for this would be a welcome addition.

I could imagine a final five mechanic similar to the cylon reveal. Think about the idea of five different "You are a Cylon" cards, one of which is randomly added to the game, perhaps in lieu of a sympathiser or one of the cylons, depending on number of players. This card would then have an Agenda attached, that the FF would have to complete,or perhaps even a dual agenda if the character reveals as a cylon, they have one win condition, if they stay unrevealed, a different condition. I don't know, it's just a thought that immediately jumped into my head, and could use some work, but I think I like the concept and would want to work with it somehow.

I favour something that picks up where the ‘Pegasus’ expansion ends and goes to the end of the series, so would cover most of season 3 plus all of season 4.
So it would cover factionalism within the Cylons plus the Cylon ‘civil war’, factionalism of the Humans and the mutiny, and have the ultimate destination as per ‘Daybreak’.
A (Damaged?) Cylon ship as extra locations would be interesting.
Current rules on treason cards and Cylon leaders should stay, though the game should be a stand alone game, not dependent on following on from /owning ‘Pegasus’.
A 7th skill deck type would potentially add further options/more variation to the new characters (no idea what it should be, though).
For new characters, I would want to see all the Cylon characters (‘original 7’ and ‘final five’ ) plus all significant Humans from teh TV series included in the game series, but not have ‘duplicates’ (so no #8, since we already have the ‘Human’ version; no ‘season 4 variants’ of characters already in the base game).
Thus, assuming 7 character cards (because that’s the number in ‘Pegasus’):
3 new Cylon leaders: #3 D’Anna (with access to leadership skills), #5 Aaron (with access to Politics skills) and #4 Simon (with access to tactics).
Then 1 each of military, political, pilot and support:
For military it has to be Gaeta; for piloting, Anders is the most significant character that fits the pilot role; for Politics: Tory; for Support, probably Cally, though Dr Cottle may be a better choice if some form of ‘medical role’ can be fitted into the game system, alternatively, Romo might work, since he is a character ‘outside’ the normal chain of command militarily and politically (who says that support characters have to have Engineering skill? Romo would seem to qualify for politics, leadership and tactics cards).
This leaves a few of the supporting pilots from the series not featured, plus Billy, and possibly Dr Cottle, and Romo, but pretty much every other character of any significance I think would now be included.

However, it would also be great if there could be a set of campaign rules as well, enabling the basic game to be followed by Pegasus to be followed by the second expansion, where the results of one game influence the set-up of the next. No idea how to make that work though.

Aside from some new characters and the like, I'd like to see some variation where the extra game boards are determined randomly rather than preset (like destinations, but in some other mechanic, maybe a seperate deck). Other boards could be added (rebel cylon board perhaps?) that are randomly encountered when the ship jumps.

I also think a sympathetic cylon character should keep their character abilities/drawbacks when the become a cylon leader.

A final five mechanic might be cool, but again I think it might be good if it only appears sometimes in the game (shuffle the final five cards with the "you are a human" cards and before building the loyalty deck, so it may or may not show up?) .

rowanalpha said:

Aside from some new characters and the like, I'd like to see some variation where the extra game boards are determined randomly rather than preset (like destinations, but in some other mechanic, maybe a seperate deck). Other boards could be added (rebel cylon board perhaps?) that are randomly encountered when the ship jumps.

Check this out:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/464030

(scroll to the end of the second page to see the work-in-progress).

One thing I'd like to see in an expansion (which is an idea someone else has already come up with in another thread) is the idea of having the *very* minor characters - the ones not worthy of their own full character card - represented in the game in some other way, such as another deck of skill cards, or such (the "ally deck"?). Maybe this deck could have one card of each minor character, each of one particular colour (so when you draw one you don't know which colour you're going to get) plus each has a unique special ability.

So for example you could have:

Elosha

(yellow - strength 3)

Action: Look at the top two cards of the crisis deck then place them on the top or bottom in any order.

Or whatever...

EDIT: Actually, what might be even better is for them to have abilities that are *only* triggered by having them played into skill checks (similar to Reckless Skill Check cards, but without the check needing to be Reckless). So Elosha's ability above should actually start with " Skill Check: Look at the..."

Personally, I want to see something happen for the cylon players. After they reveal their impact on the game is marginalized so much most of the time just sit out, snooze, play on comp or hand held thingies. All really need is to know the total of skill checks and what the target number is, a quick glance at hand to see if they can sabotage the check and thats it. They are completly left out of the game by the humans and is a very lonely and boring position. The game usually defeats the humans itself and the cylons only help the game out a bit. They need to be more active and Interactive with other players so not left out.

How about characters from the original BSG. LOL...I was just thinking how cool it would be to have the original Lloyd "I guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue" Bridges as the real commander Cain. Call it ,. The Living Legend expansion. now that could be fun integrating.

napoleonWilson said:

How about characters from the original BSG. LOL...I was just thinking how cool it would be to have the original Lloyd "I guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue" Bridges as the real commander Cain. Call it ,. The Living Legend expansion. now that could be fun integrating.

If you go to the BSG section of boardgamegeek.com and check out the images, there are several fan made versions of original characters.

this might be the wrong thread to mention this (don't really know if there's a thread regarding this), but an expansion of galactica going o earth would be awesome, but maybe a separate spin-off game focusing on the combat played out between the galactica and the Cylon mothership thingy (sorry, don' know the cylon's main base's name). Probably an irrelevant suggestion, but i remember reading something about corey (the creator) coming up with an awesome dog fight mechanic that he almost used in pegasus, but was withdawn due to it veering off of the games main mechanics


The game could simply be a two player game (one human, other, cylons) and play out the final battle, but play it out different than what the show did. have space battles between vipers and raids then progress on to a ground battle when the galacticacrashes into the super basestar (or whatever the name was). maybe if the cylon's do an amazing job at repel galactica to the point of completely destroying and never getting to the ground battle or something (just making it up as i go).


Like i said, probably the wrong thread to post this, but just a thought...

napoleonWilson said:

Personally, I want to see something happen for the cylon players. After they reveal their impact on the game is marginalized so much most of the time just sit out, snooze, play on comp or hand held thingies. All really need is to know the total of skill checks and what the target number is, a quick glance at hand to see if they can sabotage the check and thats it. They are completly left out of the game by the humans and is a very lonely and boring position. The game usually defeats the humans itself and the cylons only help the game out a bit. They need to be more active and Interactive with other players so not left out.

I agree with you, but isn't that what they did with Pegasus? I just got it for Christmas so we haven't taken it for a test run, but isn't that the point of cylon leaders? I guess you're referring mainly to revealed cylons though. I guess it would be cool to make them able to play by the same rules as the leaders (in terms of infiltration etc) but that might be overkill for the cylons, who I think tend to win more often than humans. It's a tricky balance. It sucks to be a revealed cylon, but I have the most fun as an unrevealed cylon than anything else, so I guess you have to lump your 'fun' into the first half of the game and accept the fact that it won't always be that way :)

As far as new game mechanics are concerned, maybe letting cylons move ships independently of the raiders pre-determined flight paths or something would be nice, to give them a feeling of control; to let them choose to go for galactica head on or choose directions.

Maybe it would be cool to have a basestar board companion like the pegasus for cylon players. Then maybe they could add a final battle between the cylon players and the remaining humans! I like the idea of the two sides actually competing for something rather than just the cylons trying to deplete the humans' resources... maybe the humans could attack the Cylon hive at the end of the new expansion once they reach their destination. That way the players can decide which end game they wish to pursue: distance points (original game), evacuate/rescue on New Caprica (Pegasus), final battle scenario? (second expansion). That would appeal more to strategy gamers I think :D

Above all else though, more crisis cards! I played the core game about two dozen times over the last year and I'm already tired of all the crisis cards so some new ones would be nice! (looking forward to using Pegasus' cards). Crisis cards make the game go round so you can never have too many!

I don't think it needs too many more characters though. Maybe Anders, Gaeta and Three but we don't need playable characters for people who weren't that relevant (that's what fan-made character sheets are for).

Cylon leaders are lame. More than half the time you are gonna be working for the humans to win. In a five player game it REGULARLY turns into a 4 on 1 against the cylon player. So, ...I'm afraid the cylon leader isnt gonna help the cylon players out that much with the bordem factor.

I do like your idea of a baseship that a the cylon could control for free or something. Playing an unrevealed cylon is kinda cool but unless you are an admiral or president there is little damage that you can do. Youhave to be SO careful to throw in votes that rarely can you affect the votes anyways, at best you can throw in 1 maybe two, which is about what a revealed cylon player can do. Sure you can get teh sweet backstab, but after that get ready for a cold walk home to the ressurection ship where you are once again, all alone and reading the latest issue of x-men, and just asking for a tally of every vote while waiting to take your meager 1 action.

I also agree that the humans do loose most of the time so adding anything for the cylons is gonna be real difficult, heck the game mechanics alone easily kill the humans without help, but they need to make the cylon players feel more apart of the game.

Napoleon

napoleonWilson said:

More than half the time you are gonna be working for the humans to win.

Doesn't that depend on how many players there are?