Experiences with Kat

By James McMurray, in Battlestar Galactica

What are peoples' experiences so far with Kat? Unlike all of the other new characters, she just doesn't call to me.

Hotshot: This looks nice, but negates the Strategic Plannings she will draw since they're usually better for her at value +2. Though she can hoard them for other peoples' turns. Using Hotshot requires burning away a hand that will be filled with otherwise useful actions and skill check values, and using it to its fullest means tossing away cards that could make or break a skill check.

The odd thing is that she looks to be much more useful aboard Pegasus than in a viper, because of that ship's drawbacks on its weapons.

Sacrifice: Her once per game can definitely save the fleet, but it's also one of the few OPGs that isn't also useful if you find out you're a cylon. Or at least not very useful, as blowing up a single civilian ship is usually going to be a bad way to reveal yourself. Though I guess it's better than nothing if you can convince someone to XO you.

Stim Junkie: Even with the errata this one is a major pain in the ass. She can't reliably protect the civilians unless there's someone in Communications having them chase her, and even then her crisis on the turn she moves away could wipe them out if raiders activate. On board ship it's not as bad, but still pretty rough.

Skill Set: 1 Leadership, 2 Piloting, 2 Tactics is pretty nice. But since it's so much weaker than Starbuck's I can't see any reason to ever pick Kat over Kara except that someone already did it.

What have peoples' experiences been with Kat? Has hotshot saved the day? Did it come back to bite you when your cards were gone on an important crisis? What about Sacrifice and Stim Junkie, how have those played out?

In a three player game, Kat singlehandidly negated the occupation forces. I had to use a few executive orders to get her out from medical center, but since I was playing roslin, it was still cheaper than spending 2 cards on activating the shipyard (which Kat did after I XO'd...)

James McMurray said:

Sacrifice: Her once per game can definitely save the fleet, but it's also one of the few OPGs that isn't also useful if you find out you're a cylon. Or at least not very useful, as blowing up a single civilian ship is usually going to be a bad way to reveal yourself. Though I guess it's better than nothing if you can convince someone to XO you.

I think the ability deserves a little more credit, for this reason: any other pilot revealing in space has zero options to hurt the humans with his/her first XO action. At least Kat can do SOMETHING if the situation is such that a pilot staying on Galactica will draw too much suspicion.

Sadly, Kat's real strength is outside of the pilot's seat. Sure, you could pitch a card to kill a heavy raider, or something, but her ability applies to so much more. Here's a short list of things that might involve a die roll in during your action step:

Pegasus CIC

Pegasus Main Batteries

Weapons Control

FTL Control

Admiral's Nukes (Kat can executive Order the admiral, firing the nuke during her action step, or, in some cases can be the admiral, depending on number of players and who the cylons are)

We've found that she's particularly a pain considering FTL control. It is well worth tossing a 5 value card to jump at -3 and not lose anyone. That's two turns less the humans have to spend dealing with crises between jumps. The Pegasus locations almost as bad; tossing a 5 from CIC destroys (50% of critical hit) or cripples a basestar (12.5% of disabling launch bays *and* missles, 37.5% of one of the useful damage tokens and structural damage), tossing a 5 at the Main Batteries will floor silly numbers of raiders no matter how they are engaged, and tossing a 2 at the Main Batteries is more than passable compared to what she can do in the pilot seat.

We haven't had her 'save the day', but when you add up the flexibility of all these things that she *could* do, we find she's quite a shade more powerful than the others. Many of these (ab)uses are best with 5s, but some are quite passable with a 2 (Main Batteries can destroy more raiders than Kat ever could in the pilot seat). Thankfully, this doesn't interact well with executive order (it's only Kat's actions step, so you can't destroy whole fleets with the Pegasus Locations).

I love playing Kat as a cylon. I could put anybody in detention on new caprica, and i jumped the fleet at the start of the game loosing 3 population. Card of one value + 2 = 3. Less than 7, so they lost pop. Her hotshot ability is really good

Dangofrank said:

I love playing Kat as a cylon. I could put anybody in detention on new caprica, and i jumped the fleet at the start of the game loosing 3 population. Card of one value + 2 = 3. Less than 7, so they lost pop. Her hotshot ability is really good

I don't quite understand. I think you cannot use the "roll a die to jail" action as an unrevealed cylon. As a revealed cylon you lose all character abilities unless you are a cylon leader.

Concerning the OP topic, my group has found the Hotshot ability extremely powerful in conjunction with the Pegasus locations and FTL. In our first game, my group decided to all play new characters (except one guy who played Baltar). We soon realized that Ellen can give Kat a consistent supply of 5-value cards (between both their draws), and completely blew through the first half of the game before Ellen turned cylon in the sleeper phase.

The guy playing Cavil called her ability overpowered claiming that games with and without her are completely altered by the fact she can reliably jump the fleet early without consequence.

That being said, I do think it is strange how she is much better not piloting but I feel Stim Junkie does balance her, as she cannot just set camp at Main Batteries or CIC.

Speaking of Kat being more useful "indoors", we've found that the Pegasus expansion has made pilots manning vipers pretty pointless. 90% of the time you're better off using Pegasus guns to shoot down raiders or command to move civilain ships out of the way. The remaining 10% of the time where civilains have nowhere left to go and raiders on top of them, you can just jump.

GrooveChamp said:

Speaking of Kat being more useful "indoors", we've found that the Pegasus expansion has made pilots manning vipers pretty pointless. 90% of the time you're better off using Pegasus guns to shoot down raiders or command to move civilain ships out of the way. The remaining 10% of the time where civilains have nowhere left to go and raiders on top of them, you can just jump.

While it's certainly true for Kat that the pilot seat is a lousy place to be, it's not the case for other pilots. Specifically, Maximum Firepower will tend to yield better results than the Pegasus Main Batteries, especially in circumstances where a the civilian ships are in the same zone as the raiders slated to be destroyed.

That said, Kat and Strategic Planning certainly more beneficial to the Pegasus locations.

Tepes said:

That being said, I do think it is strange how she is much better not piloting but I feel Stim Junkie does balance her, as she cannot just set camp at Main Batteries or CIC.

Stim Junkie does not balance her. She can be targeted by executive order between turns, so she can move and then take an action, and then her next turn, go back to the same abusive location. Further, it's rarely necessary that Kat abuse a Pegasus location over multiple turns. Firstly, when you damage a basestar twice, it's likely to be destroyed or be rendered so damaged as to be useless (and really, it's pretty infrequent that there are two basestars and that it's worth pitching a five to damage one of them twice rather than using FTL control and freely getting away). Secondly, there are only so many fives that Kat can draw or be supplied with for the abusing of said locations.