So, I haven't actually played the game yet, but a problem has occurred to me, which goes something like this.

Adam, Bob, Carl and Dave are playing BSG. They draw their loyalty cards.

Adam, Bob and Carl read "you are not a cylon", sigh with relief and put their cards down.

Dave reads "you are a cylon". He is about to put his card down when he notices a short paragraph of text explaining his special abilities. He pauses to read it.

While Dave is reading his card, Adam, Bob and Carl wait patiently. They all politely neglect to note that, as the only one who is reading his card, he *must* be a cylon.

Does this actually happen in real games? I was thinking of requiring that everyone take their cards into a separate room and stay for at least 2 mins even if they have a "you are not a cylon" card, to ensure there is no accidental giveaway. Does anyone have a better way though, this seems a bit laborious to me.

You do make a valid point, here.

I, myself, do no own the game by now (but I have ordered it and it will be delivered to me next week), but I think that there should be a (house) rule like the one you've come up with. Everybody leaves the room so no one knows who's the Cylon.

Yes, it can be a problem. Two ways to alleviate it-

1) Show everyone all the "You are a Cylon" cards and explain the text before you distribute them. Then each player can just look for the title and picture.

2) Make everyone look at their card for 30 seconds so Cylons have enough time to read their card without getting busted out.

ColtsFan76 said:

works perfectly fine for us

The way my group does it, it's just a 10 second look. Nobody is allowed to look away from their cards. 10 seconds is enough to skim the card. (and as if nobody knows what that Cylon pointing a gun at someone is gonna do...)

We usually do the 10-second rule. If we forget, I just glance at the card. "You are a cylon" plus the subtitle is enough to tell you that you're an evil bastard, and what effect you can have when you reveal.

All that.

Also, take into account that the subtitle on the "You Are A Cylon"-loyalty card sums up the text beneath. It is not necessary to read through all the text on the card to know your special ability - it's written right there in bold letters.

Our house rule is we all look at the cards, at the same time, and must keep are eyes on the card, while someone counts slowly "1-2-3-4-5". If we have new players, we may go 10.

We also play that if a player has more than one loyalty card, and someone gets to look at one, then the player in question MUST look at their remaining card(s) while the "checking" player looks at the selected card. If somoene has a Cylon and not a cylon card, they need to know which card was looked at by the inquiring player. Before this rule someone was "caught" checking to see if the other player had seen their cylon card or not... haha.

In addition, we have a two page sheet with various cards, character powers etc (boardgamegeek) that we pass around when "new" players are around so you COULD be looking at your cylon power or you COULD be looking at what the President does, and no one would know.

We also do the spend a few seconds looking at the cards - works every time for us.

Mephisto666 said:

We typically do a 10-second countoff as well, but the above idea sounds pretty cool too.

It's easier if all the players watched the tv series because before start the game We explain all the cylons powers saying that Caprica sell someone to jail, Sharon to the hospital (shoot Adama), Leobe speak and speak and speak and then de moral goes down and the last, de cylon withou charisma is a cylon bomb.

In game, we only need to see the picture in a second. If we play with beginners we repit the cylon powers after draw a card.

Greetings, and sorry for my english

See, my issue with "Everyone pausing to read" is that people will notice other people. And an observant person can notice bored looks from not actually reading, or someone intently reading. A better idea is to just have people read them when they reveal themselves. Or like one other person suggested, have everyone know what the possibilities are and what they do off the bat. That way there is no chance of anyone noticing the lag of someone reading their card.

niarBaD said:

That's only if everybody are bad actors

The problem with reading only when people reveal is that it sometimes depends on what ability a Cylon has when he reveals whether it's a good idea to reveal in a given situation or not. I prefer the 10 seconds rule myself.

what we usually do is, once the loyalty cards are delt out we get up from the table and go to different parts of the house and read them in private and come back to table after a min or so. No chance of reading through a poker face then or catching a subtle quick glance at others as they read their cards.

Napoleon

niarBaD said:

True, the "10 second" method requires that you be able to trust your group. If that's not possible, having everyone go to separate rooms or step outside is probably better.

napoleonWilson said:

This is what we do as well, as I'm always afraid that someone will craftily try to glance up at others even when we say not to. So yeah, now we just get up & go to separate corners of the room facing away from each other to read our Loyalty cards. It's also provides an outlet to get up & stretch our legs about halfway through the game when we hit the Sleeper phase.

With new players, we explain the cylon cards, and evertbody has to look at their card for about half a minute. I've always trusted the other players not to resort to watching the other player's eyes, but it wouldn't work on me because I will always read the card, even though I know what they say. By tis time, us experienced players already know what each card is based on the picture, which is all I look at.

Of course, one game while playing Baltar I got dealt both cylon cards at the start of the game, but only realized one of them was a cylon card, so I spent 2/3 of the game trying to figure out who my partner was. At least I got EO'd shortly before my turn to use Arrest Orders and Execute Prisoner to hose the group.

Just got the game and ran into the problem that we didn't want anyone to know we were cylons so we didn't read the text. That caused some bad timing on the reveal. We have come up with the house rule that after all the loyalty cards are dealt we all turn our backs to the board and after a reasonable amount of time we all ask each other if we are ready to turn around and start playing.