After another game where the humans walked all over the cylons when we made it to New Caprica, we have decided to officially retire this expansion from our games. I know that there are many players who like NC, and the whole cylon admiral jumping the fleet and killingoff the humans on NC are big issues, but for us NC just becomes EO city, and the humans prep and launch their ships faster than the cylons have a chance to hurt us. Only being able to detention humans when an occupation force is on the shipyards makes it harder for the cylons, and we even house ruled that the cylons can attempt to detention all humans at that location -- and they still didn't have a chance.

If anyone can tell us what we are doing wrong, I'd be glad to hear it. I like the idea of New Caprica, but all it has done has made the end game of Galactica disappointing, even for the human players. We like the challenge of the game, and NC tends to take that away. Perhaps if the cylons could still play their super crisis cards on NC, or EO cards couldn't be players, or something, but as the rules are written it doesn't make the game very fun for us.

In my group, we've come to the conclusion that the cylon ability at Breeder's Canyon to resolve TWO crises (one for the action, one for the regular cylon crisis step that is not skipped at NC) is very effectiveespecially considering the text of that location says "Skip the Prepare for Jump step THIS TURN"meaning neither of the two cards advances the jump track. For my group, Breeder's Canyon is the reason the fleet dreads cylon turns on NC.

Since I don't recall any place in the rules that allows for the cylons to resolve a Crisis Card on their turn, I'm not sure if you are playing it correctly. However, if it is the case that there is a Crisis Phase for cylons on NC, then this is a good tactic, and in many ways would change the aspect of the New Caprica phase to a more challenging one especailly considering that all but 6 NC crisis cards have prepare for jump icons.

JerusalemJones said:

Correct - Holy Outlaw is playing it wrong, I'm afraid. Cylons do not draw crisis cards during their turns on NC (unless they are infiltrating, in which case they cannot use Breeder's Canyon for its Cylon action).

Why would you retire the entire expansion? Keep the new cards, crisises, etc, and play to Kobol.

Hmm, I guess we have been playing it wrong. My confusion stemmed from the first sentence under the heading "New Caprica Crisis Cards" on p. 14 of the Pegasus rulebook (emphasis mine):

"During a player's Crisis step in the New Caprica phase, he draws from the New Caprica Crisis deck instead of the normal Crisis deck."

The term "a player's" instead of "human player's" caused me to believe NC allowed all players to draw a New Caprica Crisis. I guess that entry's just telling players to switch crisis decks.

Hmm, here I was arguing with the OP. Now I find myself agreeing with him. Are there consequential actions for cylons on NC? Guess I'll be watching this thread closely ... thanks to both of you for clearing up my confusion!

Holy Outlaw said:

The stem of your confusion: the passage is correct - all players DO draw from the NC crisis deck during their crisis step. It's just that Cylon players don't have a crisis step.

It really depends on the circumstances, but when playing as a cylon, I focus on using the Caprica location and try to target a specific resource. I try to hit population as much as possible so the humans are less likely to jump away with civilian ships on the planet.

One way I've seen Cylons win after NC is by destroying the Galactica. If Galactica has already suffered some damage prior to returning, Cylons can activate the Cylon fleet and basestars.

Also, if no civilian ships have left NC, the cylon player could activate raiders. Since there are no civilian ships to attack and there are no vipers in their current location, those initial 8 raiders all shoot at Galactica. Granted, they only hit on an 8, iirc, but I've seen Galactica take 4 hits from that strategy.

So many of the crisis cards on NC send humans to detention. Getting a couple of players into detention or even sick bay can slow down the process of unlocking ships.

I think the Cylons have it the hardest when all the players are human before the sleeper phase. Often it is only one or two jumps to reach NC, and by then it may be too difficult to damage resources. When the resources are high, I generally go with the basestars attacking Galactica strategy.

Yeah we're not too crazy about New Caprica. It's two extremes: either a cakewalk for the humans or cylon admiral/Ellen instantly lose the game for them.

We've also retired cylon leaders. Interesting idea, poor execution.

We haven't retired it, but we're not too crazy about the Pegasus ship. The guns are a little too good at shooting down raiders and pretty much make manning vipers obsolete. It's rare that you can't shoot down raiders before they reach civilians, the civilians are cornered, and you're not ready to jump yet. Plus using the Pegasus as a damage spongue makes ship damage a non-threat in general. We're thinking there has to be a house rule that either ship damage is randomized (humans don't get to choose), or the cylon player gets to choose which ship is damage (before making any rolls).

GrooveChamp said:

Two easy rules:

1) All non-combat damage is applied to Galactica only.

2) When basestars activate, roll twice - once for Galactica, once for Pegasus.

We've found this works well.

Before Pegasus the Cylons dominated our games winning close to 80-90% of the time. Since Pegasus (5 games or so) the humans have yet to lose! However, after our last game we checked the new FAQ and found that Executive Orders are limited to one a turn. We had previously stated that the EO bounce is what was winning it for the humans by preping/evacuating 4+ ships a turn on New Caprica. Next time we play and we properly only allow 1 EO a turn we are fairly confident the Cylon dominance will make a return.

Not sure if this is the problem with any other groups.

All we've retired has been the New Caprica board and it related pieces we still use all the other components from Pegasus. Cain is the character everyone loves to hate for her once per game, but it doesn't stop us from choosing her. Still, I think my favorite character is Helo. Maybe in the next expansion we'll get Anders! (And Athena and Gaeta and Cally and the lawyer whose name I forget...****, too many cool characters)

We've started to randomly choose the Sympathizer/Sympathetic Cylon card in 4 and 6 player games without a cylon leader. It helps prevent the meta-gaming of the humans trying to have one resource in the red come sleeper phase; there is no guarantee that the sympathizer will be human and brigged anymore.

Also, we draw our damage tokens for Galactica/Pegaus randomly. We shuffle them into three rows of 4 and then roll a 12 sider to pick a random token. Otherwise, Pegasus often becomes a "damage sink," which we're not to crazy about though lately we've been spending more time on Pegasus.

We're also played the 7 player varient several times now, and the cylon leader works very well in that format.

One think we are looking at trying is that when we hit the sleeper phase, we immediately start the New Caprica phase at the same time. Pla New Caprica as written, but when the Admiral jumps the fleet, we would draw destinations like a normal jump, and play until we reach Kobol (8 distance +1). We haven't tried it yet, but looks like we will give it a shot soon.

Our group is largely in the same boat. We're finding that a lot of the Pegasus expansion strongly favours humans in a group that already has a fairly even ratio, with humans edging out cylons. The Pegasus ship itself favours the humans and radically changes the structure of how cylons are dealt with, the New Caprica phase seems like a free pass for humans (see certain threads on these boards), the new skill cards are a boon, and the dilution of good supercrises with mediocre ones damages the strength of that ability.

All in all, we've certainly retired the new caprica phase, but I suspect the pegasus ship and some other features are close to follow.

We do like the new sympathizer mechanic though, though we wish they were less swingy ("man, this one is eeeeasy!" vs. "destroy 5 vipers/raptors? WTF!") and more 'doable'.

The expansion hasn't really changed our win/loss ratio yet. We're in the habit of not using New Caprica now though. It seemed exciting to get the civvies up to orbit at first, but the cons are just too much (Final fight is a joke; cylon armiral just ends the game). If someone really wants to use it, then fine, but I'm not going to campaign for it. For those of you who do enjoy New Caprica but aren't happy with some of its problems, here's a house rule for you. When the fleet reaches a distance of 7, the President chooses to go for the New Caprica or Kobol endgame. That's totally thematic and I think it makes things a little more interesting.

I'd be up for the idea of just sticking all of the battlestar tokens into a cup and drawing randomly. I'll have to run it by my group.

Cylon leaders attracted attention at first, but I've already lost interest in playing one ever again. I suspect they'll fade away just because nobody will choose them. Their two part agendas have just seemed more of a burden than an interesting challenge.

Lawyer's name's Romo Lampkins.

For us, NC is a bit a disappointment, too. Human players just EO each other at the Shipyard, any other action on NC is pretty stupid, and the Cylon player tries to send in Occupation Forces.

Ok so I played BSG before watching the series. I've started, but I only now have made it into season 2, ok so actually I'm about half done with season 2.

SPOILER ALERT. You should skip the rest of this post if you don't want spoilers.

Ok, so seriously. Cain's only in like 3 episodes. She deserves her own character? Over say, Kali? Or how about Crashdown? Geta?

She was a major character, not like Crashdown or Hot Dog or all the others who make a constant but slim appearence. If you introduce Pegasus, you have to introduce her. And Gaeta, Anders, Tory and Hoshi are part of the recommandable "Razor" expansion.

Give it time. One more expansion will give us practically every character there was. but as Stefan said, you can't have Pegasus without Cain.

Stefan said:

Of course, if he's only half way through the second season, he doesn't know who Tory is, and he only knows who Hoshi is if he's been paying really close attention to names.