What, exactly, does the Legendary Discovery crisis do?

There is a fairly in-depth discussion of it on the forums with regards to its effects on New Caprica (that it does, in fact, activate Sleeper phases and can bring the ship to New Caprica), including responses that are supposedly from the rules folks.

However, I can't find much discussion on what it did in the original game. The reason I ask is that we had a game where the humans were, to all appearances, hosed. They had traveled 8 distance, but they barely any of any resource (only 1 pop). When I played the Super Crisis card that resets the jump track and puts a bunch of ships on the board, it was even more grim. Now they had to go all the way through a jump track without losing resources (since they couldn't jump early).

Then a human player pulls the Legendary Discovery crisis.

There was a lot of discussion about it, but in the end it was decided that the distance from the Legendary Discovery crisis counted as enough of a "jump" to win the game for the humans. What does everyone think? It isn't a "jump" so from a strict rules-lawyer perspective, I don't think that flies. But on the other hand, it is (as far as I can tell) the ONLY way in the entire game to travel distance without jumping.

So back to the initial question: what, exactly, is this card supposed to do?

It adds 1 to your current distance, no more no less. It can activate anything that depends on distance including changing the current phase or preventing Cain from Blind Jumping, but is not a jump.

From that, I'm guessing it should not have ended the game. Though, in the expansion, it could cause arrival at New Caprica. Is that correct?

It can start the new Caprica phase, but can't make Galactica reappear.

Ah, nice catch. That's what I meant, but it isn't quite what I said. Of course, the Legendary Discovery card shouldn't be pulled while ON New Caprica, but still, thank you for clarifying. My post definitely could have misled someone.

Regarding the original game, however, it sounds like the game should NOT have been won by the card. I'm not bitter about it or about to go lording the ruling over the group, I'm just wanting a final answer for future reference.

kikanaide said:

You are correct in that the game should have not been declared a human victory.

kikanaide said:

Only way you're going to get a "definitive" final answer is with the "Rules Questions" link at the very bottom of the page. But yeah, it's not a jump so it can't win the game for the humans. All it does is increase distance traveled by 1.

Thematically, the ragtag fugitive fleet finds a point of reference which they use to figure out which way they should be going. But they still have to jump to get there.

The rules are quite clear - you must make a final jump once you travel 8+ distance. Legendary distance is NOT a jump and merely adds distance. Being at 8 distance and passing Legendary Discovery to get you to 9 distance is no differnt than being at 7 distance and jumping 2 distance to get to 9. Once you reach 8+ you MUST still physically jump the ship.

Now, if you are working towards a jump and at 7 distance and then LD comes up and you pass it. You would be at 8 distance and once you make that jump, humans win.

I am certain this has been clarified by Corey already but I don't know where to find it as I don't think it made it in the last revision of the FAQ.

imo, Legendary Discovery is almost a game breaker for humans. The ability to get a free distance by simply passing a skill check can be way OPed... we played a game recently in which it was pretty clear humans were screwed. 5 player game, we had gone 7 distance and the jump track was on the -3 spot, it was my (human) turn and then 1 more human player before both cyclon players who were each about to hit us with a Super Crisis. We were totally surrounded by basestars and raiders too.
We had about 5 population and so we were hesitant about jumping early, if we lost 3 pop on the jump then we had another whole jump cycle for Cyclons to hit population and cause loss. I launched a scout, hoping to ensure the upcoming crisis had a jump icon so the human player after me could jump us from the -1 spot on his turn and at least get us away from the cylon fleet... the crisis I pulled was Legendary Discovery.
We easily passed it due to the fact that Tyrol was human and used his OPG to make blue cards count positive, AND the fact that we had the Pegasus Quorum card in play (discard this card to make politics cards count positive) as well, making only purple/treachery cards count negatively. This gave the 8th distance and then the human player after me jumped at -3 pop to win the game for humans. We actually decided to keep playing instead, as all players, both cylon and human, thought this was a really anticlimactic victory; we just removed the LD card and i scouted a new crisis instead.
Though this was very circumstanstial and unlikely to happen again, it seems like the LD card almost always comes out at a really important/lucky spot in the game for us, like right after Cain has blind jumped (which essentially gives humans 2 free distance), or causing Sleeper phase and sending Boomer to brig when she was about to declare on her next turn, etc, etc. Our new house rule may be that LD gets discarded if drawn after fleet has gone 6 distance.

Skowza said:

That kind of sudden swing is pretty in keeping with the tone of the television series, though. And I'd love to see a sudden win pulled out of nowhere, as opposed to the often-anticlimactic endings of many games.

Skowza said:

Chief's OPG is to make all cards of the chosen color count as 0 Strength, not count for or against the check. Did you mean he used Scientific Research?

You are right there are times when LD can make the difference in the game. We had it come up when we were at 7 distance, one jump track away from auto-jumping and surrounded by cylons. We had used the Engine Room to guarnatee a jump icon, as the cyclons were all going to act next. All we had to do was pass the check and the humans won. But we had minimal cards, threw everything we could at the check, and failed. And then the cylons used their back-to-back turns to hose us and win the game.

Be thankful you got the win, and don't handicap yourself any more than you need to.