Our group has been trying out a new variant for BSG that (at present) only works in 4 or 6 player games where there would normally be a sympathetic cylon card. We don't have a name for it yet, but the idea is that it makes the game a toss-up of what will happen after sleeper phase.

First, when creating the loyalty deck, build the deck as normal and shuffle out the first batch of loyalty cards.

Next, instead of of adding the sympathizer card, instead make a mini deck of the following cards:

• You are a Sympathizer
• You are a Sympathetic Cylon
• 1 "You are not a Cylon" card
• 1 random "You are a Cylon" card from the remaining "You are a cylon" cards

Shuffle these four cards, then pick one at random and add to the loyalty deck.

Now, when the sleeper phase comes around, there will be a question as to which of the above four cards will be in the deck. Perhaps you are playing a game with 4 humans and 2 cylons, or 3 of each. It adds another level of mystery to the game, and can keep the players guessing far longer into the game. In fact, we came up with the idea from reading a review comparing Shadows over Camelot and BSG, where the reviewer was disappointed that there was no real mystery as to how many of the players were actually cylons once the sleeper phase hit.

We had already been randomly choosing between the sympathizer and sympathetic cylon cards in these games since shortly after Pegasus came out, but this format adds an even greater level of mystery. We are also finding that it also enhances the game greatly. So far, we've played 5 different games using this method, and even in games with only 2 cylons they cylons have won every game.

We are trying to figure out a way to use it in 5 player games (I don't think it could work for a 3 player game, but we never have that small of a group for BSG anyway). Possible options have been to choose the second cylon card by adding both the sympathetic cylon and the sympathizer into the deck, and if a player is dealt one of the other cards they are treated as a "cylon lite" character who a) doesn't have to reveal immediately and b) doesn't have a reveal ability (but gets a super Crisis card if they are a cylon). A "sympathizer" player would find out their loyalty based on resources immediately after the sleeper phase (that is, if everything is in the blue, they are human even if a resource drops into the red before they reveal). And if they are human, we haven't decided if they should get a reveal bonus, or have to stay hidden the rest of the game.

It seems like there's already a lot of mystery in the Sympathetic Cylon agenda deck. A sympathetic cylon could have the "join the colonists" agenda, in which case they're pretty much just another human player. Or they could have the "illusion of hope" agenda, in which case they're pretty much a cylon player (except in the somewhat rare event that the cylons are poised to win halfway through the game). More often, the sympathetic cylon wants the humans to win, but also wants to hurt the humans in some way. To it seems like the sympathetic cylon mechanic is good at keeping the game suspenseful. You don't know if a bad card came from an unrevealed cylon or a sympathetic cylon

That is true, but this adds even more suspense. The sympathetic cylon isn't a bad mechanic (the original sympathizer allowed for meta-gaming to a resource to half to have more "humans"), but the problem with both is that at the start of sleeper phase, the loyalty of a character was known immediately. As I mentioned, we started to play with a random choice between the two sympathizer cards so that we did not know which would come up (which allowed for a sympathizer cylon to occur), and with the agendas there was always a 66% chance the sympathetic cylon wanted the humans to win. But, when the sleeper phase occurs and no-one reveals as a sympathizer...nobody knows who to trust.

One other thing you need to keep in mind about our group we play at a store, and anywhere from 3-5 times per week. So we've easily played 200-300 games of BSG. It's not that we're looking for ways to keep the game interesteing, as it is hands down one of our favorite games, but we like to try new things and see how they turn out.

Oh, and we also don't play with New Caprica, as we find the end of the game very anti-climatic (make sure your admiral is human, and Eo the hell out of the humans to launch the civy ships).