Hello all,...this is my first posting.

I am curioius, I have been reading alot of posts saying claiming that in their gaming groups the humans win almost all the time. I find this unbelievable. My gaming group has played over thrity games. To date, the humans have won only twice. Once where the cylons did not realize what to do and actually played as humans through whole game, and the other when a cylon leader helped the humans and the game basically turned into a four on one match where the cylon got their cylon card at the sleeper agent phase. In both circumstances it was still very close game. I get the, xo being critical to victory and we use them often, however we (the humans) cant even get close. Can anyone give some tactics for us, (or rather me so I can look like the hero who came up with the first legitimate human win tatic;)

Also we had a specific question.

we came across a crisis card that the cylon on caprica pulled. it was an either or decision for the admiral that one of the parameters said, "the admrial and current player must discard 3 cards". As a cylon, it is not possible to force them to dump cards. The arguement then became, if the conditions on the card could not be met, then the Admrial could not choose that outcome and was FORCED to choose the other, since the current player was a cylon and could not be forced to dump cards. That seems logical to me, but there were others that disagreed. We play with the understanding that if presented a choice but one of the options cannot be done, for instance, current player discards 3 cards and the current player has 2 or less,...they cannot select that option.

Any help would be appreciated and thank you in advance for the attention to this post...

The humans can definitely win. Is there a common loss scenario that occurs (raiders taking out civvies, food getting dropped to 0, etc.)?

It doesn't matter if a cylon can't be forced to discard card, if the admiral has any cards to discard, or any other condition seemingly can't be met. If the card doesn't specify that you can't do it, you can. This might go a long way towards explaining why your humans lose a lot. If they are rarely allowed to take the discard option, their resources are going to plummet rapidly.

Honestly, it seems almost random which method kills the humans. Last few games it has been the population, primarily because of NC. But we have lost through all different resources and the galactica being "blown up". Morale gets low every time. Food is usally manageable but not immune. I think the only resource we havent lost by is the Fuel...which is odd since it is used on nearly every destination card.

We have the "must be able to complete the requirements for the option" because without it, its really cheesy. The crisis's are meant to be hard, but to just be able to say,...oh,..x bad things happens or I have to discard a bunch of cards which I don't have, thusly there is no hard choice...seemed really lame, and since there was no written rule that we could find we instituded it. Maybe we aught to rethink that, but it doesn't come up enough to create the MASSIVLY dispariging differences between win/loss ratio.

Does your president hang out in the President's Office making sure that the quorum hand is overflowing and constantly being put to work saving food, protecting morale, finding traitors, and blowing up enemy ships?

What do you do when attacked by overwhelming forces?

Who are your group's favorite characters to pick?

Do you try to win every single skill check?

How hard do you try to win, and how good are people at getting a rough estimate of the Destiny Deck to make it easier to guesstimate?

How often do Investigative Commitee and Declare Emergency get used for their special abilities?

How good are the players at spotting when a cylon in unrevealed and causing the skill checks to bomb?

I'd definitely suggest playing by the rules rather than making crisises harder by disallowing the option to discard cards. That alone should help out tremendously, as it frees you up to make better decisions about which resources can and at what times. With more resources being lost because these choices aren't allowed, you'll see more trouble in every danger zone, meaning more crisis checks and firefights become life-or-death situations.

I'm guessing your group doesn't jump fast enough. My group basically rushes for distance. We pick 3's almost every time they come up, regardless of consequences so long as it won't immidiately kill us (barring of course, if there would be a reason to choose less distance, for example being at 6 distance already or something). We scout the destination deck and try to go through it so that the 3's will come up more often, and when scouting we bury pretty much any card that has less than 3 distance. We also try to jump as quickly as possible, generally jumping when on the -3 or -1 prep track. We seem to be astoundingly good at protecting the civillians, so some pop loss through jumping is acceptable. But we don't play with Pegasus.

on a sidenote: a cylon player CAN discard cards after a skillcheck

Humans can definitely win, but the game strongly favors the Cylon player.

Concentrating on getting jumps is a good way to win with humans. Use Raptor Scout cards, Madame President's Premonition, and Sharon's Scout abilities to rig the crisis deck with jump cards!

President and quoram cards: Yeah...no matter which president is chosen, they sit on the president ship and play quoram cards. Most of the time the XO's go to the pres. to hunt out the needed stuff. We get VERY unlucky on the rolls like with the speeches even with the +2 cards. The fates just don't like the human players. We also get unlucky with the pres turning into a traitor.

Usually when attacked by overwhelming forces we jump on the Peggi and blow stuff away. the Peggi almost makes piloted vipers obsolete. we usually manage to clear the skies in the space of one round of turns or less even of the most brutal of raids and ambushes. We almost always protect the civy ships really well, so well that when we reach NC only 2 have ever been lost. Of course after that is a different matter.

My two personal favorites are Kat and Chief. Kat is who usually shoots down all the crap when we are attacked and never touchs vipers. Chief is, in my opinion, simply critical in keeping the ship running. So one of those two is in nearly every game. If I am chief the pilot is a toss up between boomer or starbuck. Baltar is the most picked, "pres" kinda guy. His one time game ablitily is the only way of actually finding a cylon. The other cards are all, look at one random card, and when people have 2-3-4 loyalty cards its almost a waste of a turn to use em. The admiral is a toss up between Helo or Adama. Cain is rarely picked, neither is Tigh.

Skill checks: Yes... we do try to win every skill check, every time. I think partly due to fear of cylon accusations flying if someone suggests the fail and loose an , "x" whatever. But even so, we do try for every skill check. It seems the game is random in what it picks to go after resource wise. ONe game we loose moral, the next, pop, the next fuel. so we are paranoid to let any fall.

How hard do we try to win? well,...real hard. but at a certain point there is only so much we can do. the destiny deck is nearly impossible to guestimate. We are under the impression it is not allowed for people to say what they put into a skill check either before or after the tally. and even if it is, no gaurantee they are telling truth. Alot of times our cylons who start out at game beginning just play human till half way point so all resources in blue and then gets a cylon and a sympathizer, which makes either even or worse odds for humans and then its just a massacre.

investigative commitees dont get used very often. typically they have such good high numbers we dont want to waste em. The declare emergencies get used alot however.

We are horrible at detecting cylons. The group I play withare remarkable liars;)...as i said alot of times they dont act cylon at all till mid game. There is no reliable way of finding out who is a cylon. Only one mugshots, and only a couple crisis's that allow to look at one card. Baltar is a once per game and usually waits till mid game after seeding to look. So cylon goes undetected for along while.

can you tell me if there is a specific place in the rules that says, "even if a player has less than the required cards to discard, they may still choose this option". I have looked both new/old/errata and I can't seem to find it. I think it would help to have it in Black and white to get my group to go along with it.

Thanks for your time in answering my questions, i really appreciate it. I really like the game but my game group is getting REALLY annoyed at the seeming "mission impossible" game, and need to come up with some tactics that can give the humans a fighting chance.

napoleonWilson said:

You are not allowed to say what you put into a skill check, but you can say things like, "I am helping alot. I am not helping at all. I am helping a little." This can really aid in hand management.

Are you using skill cards to good effect? Skill cards aren't just for skill checks. Cards like the green Executive Orders (not sure if thats the exact name), that gives two actions to another player or a move and an action, are great! When used on a pilot in space, you can clear an entire zone of cylons.

The yellow card, Investigative Committee is great to ensure that your skill check will pass when it counts.

The purple card that adds to your dice roll is another great card.

The red card Maximum Firepower that allows you to shoot four times is also very powerful.

I notice you play with the expansion. The Sabateur cards (brown) can be used to good effect and are not always negative. Remember there are cards that alter what cards can become positive. There is a blue card that turns blue into positive for skill checks and a brown card that turns brown to positive as well.

Skill checks: Yes... we do try to win every skill check, every time. I think partly due to fear of cylon accusations flying if someone suggests the fail and loose an , "x" whatever. But even so, we do try for every skill check. It seems the game is random in what it picks to go after resource wise. ONe game we loose moral, the next, pop, the next fuel. so we are paranoid to let any fall.

This is definitely a problem. You can't win every skill check. It's just not possible. You have to pick and choose which ones are worth failing. Winning BSG as a human is all about loss mitigation, not loss prevention.

How hard do we try to win? well,...real hard. but at a certain point there is only so much we can do. the destiny deck is nearly impossible to guestimate. We are under the impression it is not allowed for people to say what they put into a skill check either before or after the tally. and even if it is, no gaurantee they are telling truth. Alot of times our cylons who start out at game beginning just play human till half way point so all resources in blue and then gets a cylon and a sympathizer, which makes either even or worse odds for humans and then its just a massacre.

Yet another reason not to try and win every check. Having a resource in the red when a sympathizer is in the deck is a good thing. If it's morale or food, it can be brought back up pretty easily.

investigative commitees dont get used very often. typically they have such good high numbers we dont want to waste em. The declare emergencies get used alot however.

I'd seriously debate using either of them for their abilities, as their point values are always 3+. Green skill checks are very common, and yellows happen fairly frequently as well. Definitely never use a Declare emergency on a green check. If you think you'll need it (because you fear cylon sabotage), the 3+ value is going to be better than the 2 it gives you after the fact and will also help with checks that have a partial success.

We are horrible at detecting cylons. The group I play withare remarkable liars;)...as i said alot of times they dont act cylon at all till mid game. There is no reliable way of finding out who is a cylon. Only one mugshots, and only a couple crisis's that allow to look at one card. Baltar is a once per game and usually waits till mid game after seeding to look. So cylon goes undetected for along while.

Ignore their words. Trust nobody. Instead, count negative votes in skill checks. If there are ever 3 negatives, you know someone bombed the check and you know what the possible colors they used are. If there have been 3 of one negative color and the destiny deck hasn't cycled, you know there's a cylon and they have to have access to that color (assuming there's been no Destiny manipulation of course, Loeben destroys this strategy).

Once you suspect someone is a cylon, get your hands on a Preventative Policy or otherwise raise Morale, and then call for an execution. You'll know for sure if they're a cylon or not shortly, and the loss of morale either won't occur or will have been preemptively negated.

can you tell me if there is a specific place in the rules that says, "even if a player has less than the required cards to discard, they may still choose this option". I have looked both new/old/errata and I can't seem to find it. I think it would help to have it in Black and white to get my group to go along with it.

Rulebook, page 30: "Choice Crises: When a player makes a choice on a Crisis Card, he can always choose the top or bottom section of the card, regardless of whether he will be able to fulfill the game text listed (unless the card specifically restricts this)."

napoleonWilson said:

Nothing really specific - a lot of the game is reacting to the changing board state (and the changing player state!) Some general tips are:

- Don't put all your hopes on one player. ("We can't lose, we've got Helo! Wait, he's a Cylon? Noooooo")

- Skill cards are a renewable resource. Don't be afraid to spend them to avoid losing more permanent resources, such as fuel/food/morale/Vipers.

napoleonWilson said:

A Cylon player is absolutely a legal target for a "Discard cards" effect of a crisis. There's no rule that says a Cylon can't discard. However, a Cylon player may choose to ignore any effects of a crisis (strictly speaking, any "negative effects", but they get to decide what a "negative effect" is.) So the Admiral could pick that option, but the Cylon player could ignore the compulsion to discard cards, and then only the Admiral loses the cards.

Effects that can't target Cylon players are those that explicitly cannot affect Cylons - for instance, there's a Quorum card that names a player Vice President, but since a rule says Cylon players can never be President you can't target them with that card.

Thanks all, especially James,..

Some good suggestions in there we can try. I will have to bring up the idea of actually loosing some crisis's before we deal out the loyalty cards. to my group the idea of loosing a crisis is blashpemous. In regards to the skill checks, yeah we ALWAYS keep our eyes out for more than 2 negative cards in skill check, but as I said alot of times the cylons are acting totally human anyways, however if we start picking and choosing which to fail and pass that cylon tactic may not work as well from now on.

Thanks especially for finding that rule on discards,...got it and highlighted it and will bring it up at next session.

Thanks again to all and please feel free to any neat tricks you have developed off here, our humans need all the help they can get...

Napoleon

This thread was very helpful. My group's experience was that the humans always won until we figured out what cylons were supposed to do. Since then, it's been a massacre for the humans every game. However, we too were playing with the stipulation that the humans had to be able to fulfill the requirements of any choice they were going to make. The clarification above should help out.

Ok....so my group played our first games since we got this list of advice. First game the humans made it to NC and lost almost immediatly after arriving. Morale got us, but we were down to 2 fuel because of going max distance every jump and 3 food, our population was ok at 7. But morale was zeroed after second crisis. The second games the humans didn't get 4 distance before they were just crushed, everything was in the red, it was ugly. We have started playing with the players being able to discard even if they don't have the cards but never came up enough to make a difference, never does really.

SO,...realizing that luck has alot to do with the game, the degree to which the humans lost again still has me in a crisis of faith regarding the humans ability to pull this off. We were being really judicous regarding skill checks, letting various resources dwindle as we saw fit and still got creamed. Both games cylons revealed relativly quickly and left the humans even able to use lots of XO....and still didn't come close. We need more guidance/help/hints. I mean, after really trying to get there and not even really getting closer than normal is really frustrating.

whats a human to do???

Your group seems to be in a big pickle. You may want to start rethinking some of the strategies that your group follows when playing. In our group before Pegasus came out the cylon to human win ratio was about 4-1, after Pegasus its about 50-50. So the humans have about as much chance as the cylons now to win the game. A few things to consider:

Investigative Committee is a great card to prevent unrevealed cylons from sabotaging critical skill checks or to root them out. It is almost always worth it when trying to gain a resource the humans are currently low on.

Don't always go for the greatest distance in jumps. Any destination cards that can give you back resources might be preferable (it all depends on the circumstances).

Morale is the resources most likely to increase from cards the players can play (Inspirational Speech, Eulogy, Major VIctory). Population increases about the least, and there is enough pop on the civilian ships to make the humans lose. Fuel mostly increases from destination cards. Food can go up as well, but only from a few Quorum cards and some crisis cards.

Choose your characters wisely. Our group of local players is varied, as we play at out store, so we don't always play with the same people. But knowing how the others in your group play can help influence your choices of characters. Helo and Boomer have great once per game abilities, whether they are human or cylon. If the humans have diffculty brigging known cylons, consider playing Saul Tigh. Both Roslyn and Boomer can look at and avoid crisis cards that can hurt the humans and don't consider Roslyn's weakness. The president often doesn't have a hand of cards, so she is better using the Quorum cards and her per turn ability.

Figure out how the cylons are winning your games, and chance the way you play to counter it. Perhaps someone in your group pre-sleeper phase always plays in the anticipation that they might receive a Cylon card, and wants to set back the fleet this is annoying, but it does happen. If that is the case, threaten to brig that character/player. You should always play for your side, because the odds are not n favor of a non-cylon becoming a cylon later in the game.

This is some of the best advice I can give not being a part of your group and giving specialized advice. Hope that your humans figure out a way to win, because it definitely can be done.

I find that this game is a lot like pandemic, that if we give players too much autonomy they might be making poor decisions. The hard part is that in group dialogues it's challenging to flush out the best answer since their is a dirty frakkin Cylon typically lurking.

I agree with the above posts, that it's really a combination of making the best decisions in order to attain victory. Keep playing though it's still a fun experience.

Ohh its fun...but at this point its like watching a baseball game on tevo after you already heard what the score is. It really is that decisive for our group.

Holy crap....

After 48 games....FINALLY, with no help from confused cylons and with a bit to spare.....the humans, FINALLY won tonight. We felt like we ran a marathon afterward.

Thanks for the advice all,...alot of it came in handy.

Napoleon

I've played 11 games, only once have the humans won, and I've never had the chance to play as a cylon.

I'm getting tired of losing. None of the human players seem to want to help with detecting the cylons (by executing as many people as possible.)

So I think I need to stop trying the "detect asap and execute" the likely cylons. If I do this, how do I win as a human? It seems so trivial for the cylon players to win.

At this point if I'm not a cylon, it is rather boring since I know the likelyhood of my side (the humans) winning is so low.

no wonder when some gun maniac is running around and shooting everyone in sight just because they might be a cylon..

The gun maniac "method" produced a win, and was a strategy I began after losing a lot of games.

It is poorly received and pretty much everyone (cylon and human) is fighting the executions, so I need a new strategy. Not only that, the last game had a non-cylon look at the loyalty cards of another non-cylon and report the non-cylon was a cylon. Why? Because he felt that was safer.

I just don't have a clue as to what the strategy should be. I can't think of a way to improve the human winning odds right now. So every game I play at this point I hope I pull a cylon loyalty card so I can win.

Our cylons don't typically hurt in skill challenges. They tend to throw in big during unimportant challenges and then "can't" help much during important challenges (which is hard to detect.) Basically they never throw in a negative card (so seeing 3 negative which shows there is a cylon so we all think it is just humans playing.) They only revel temselves in some horrible way, like going to communications, looking at two ships, then moving them into a sector with 6 raiders (which pretty much kills us on the next "activate raider" step.)

am i the only one wondering.. your cylons play really well but the humans just slaughter and accuse each other? with how much people do you play? seems like 6+

We have played from 4 to 7 player games. Let me restate, the "kill em all" came late in the games (only the last 3 games) and was a response to "the humans lose for sure if the cylon is not revealed."

Do you have any advice? I can't continue the "kill em all" plan. The people (the players) don't like it. So I'm left with no way to win that I can imagine. I can't think of a winning strategy as a human now.

My best shot is wait until the cylon stealth reveals themself (like by moving civ ships into a pack of raiders) and hope we can end up with at least 1 pop after the 2 civ ships are killed.

I just noticed we had the game set up incorrectly for the last 3 games also.

We integrated Pegasus and removed ALL Investigate Committies (not just the new ones) because I didn't notice they introduced new ones. I read "remove investigate" and just pitched all of them without noticing.

If the humans refuse to do what it takes to find unrevealed cylons and actively accuse each other when they know they're not cylon then there's nothing you can do. It takes more than one human to save the race.

I recommend picking up game that's not so poitical. Arkham Horror is a good one where everyone cooperates. Or if you prefer competition, Descent is a lot of fun and you know which player is the bad guy from the start.