Hey all, quick question regarding sympathetic cylons. It hasn't come up in our games yet, but we've recently got the expansion so it won't be long till we're having a peaceful vacation on New Caprica. I've checked the FAQ and done a quick search and can't seem to find if this question has already been answered.

If one of the players has become a sympathetic cylon due to the sleeper phase. And has a human friendly agenda, for example, "join the colonists". When they get to New Caprica. The actions are split into Human actions and Cylon actions, the Symp Cylon obviously doesn't want to usually do any negative cylon stuff. So what can they do? Should they only be able to use skill card abilities or just miss their go, only helping in skill checks of course? Until Galactica jumps back into orbit of course.

I might be being blind, but I can't seem to find the answer in the rulebook, so just thought I'd ask here. Cheers mateys

Dogmeat said:

As you've surmised, they can't do much. Cylon Leaders are similarly stuck if they haven't infiltrated before reaching New Caprica. So, make sure you infiltrate before you get to New Caprica!

I guess Symp Cylons are natural candidates for supporting the evacuation from orbit then.

Ok, that clears that up for when it shows up in our games, cheers!

I've played a few games of the "vanilla" Battlestar Galactica (i.e. without expansion). When I recently bought this game and we were playing our first game, I noticed that the rules I've been taught in the previous group I played with were, hmm, wrong, for the lack of a better word.

In our first game the cylon player revealed herself after being locked inside the brig. Now, in the sleeper agent phase we were dealt new cards and our revealed Cylon player became a Symphatizer. Now, she was the only cylon since we were only four players, so what does that make her? A cylon who symphatizes with humans but has to try and defeat us? There was nothing in the rules saying that a Cylon + Symphatizer wins if humans win, so we assumed she'd still have the same victory conditions as a normal Cylon.

Since her Cylon card had been revealed, she was not able to give that card to anybody else, so she was stuck in her role. She tried to defeat us but in the end we prevailed and escaped the Cylon threat (for now).

What do you think - did we read the rules right?

Whitmire said:

In vanilla BSG, when a revealed cylon is dealt the sympathizer card, they hand it to a player of their choice who resolves it instead (top left of page 19, base rule book).

Once the fleet has traveled at least four distance, each
player (including revealed Cylon players) is dealt one card
from the top of the Loyalty deck. If a player receives a “You
are a Sympathizer” card, then he must immediately reveal
and resolve it. If he is a revealed Cylon player, then he may
first give the card to any other player (who then immediately
resolves it).

Uh, **** FFG rules. They're spread around like seeds on a field in the spring.

I read the part where it said "the Cylon player can give any unrevealed loyalty card to another player..." (or something to that effect - not a direct quote) but I missed the part where it says that s/he can give the Symphatizer card (which is revealed immediately) to another player. They did mention the chance that a Cylon could symphatize with humans (but didn't provide any rules for it), so we assumed that our scenario was correct.

Oh well, another game down the drain thanks to a misinterpretation of the rules. It seems there are as many versions of this game being played as there are player groups.

In the other group I was playing in, they had revealed Cylons playing as many cards as they wanted from their hand and resupplying their hand from the deck according to their character sheet. Also, Raiders didn't fire at Galactica, ever, even when there weren't any ships around. And Centurions didn't advance - they were stacked on the track, and the fourth Centurion to appear destroyed Galactica.

Is there something about FFG rules? It seems that every game I play, there are different "interpretations" depending on the gaming group.

Whitmire said:

No - there's something about people.

So, do you think FFG's rules are well organized and there's little or nothing to improve in them? Without any reasoning, you just appear haughty. To be frank, Bleached Lizard, your post was about as informative as "lol, noob" - and taken at the same value.

From my experience of FFG's games, the rule books are generally quite poorly constructed and sometimes you'd basically need to read the entire rulebook to solve one dilemma. FFG is still one of the best games companies out there, but their rule books could use some improving and restructuring. An index would be handy for starters, but even that is not a cure-all as can be seen from the Arkham Horror games, for example.

Actually, I do think FFG's rulebooks as very well written, and I've never had a problem interpreting how one of their games is meant to be played. Certainly nothing on the scale of what is described above, with people playing as many cards from their hand as they like when they're a Cylon, or raiders not firing on Galactica. It really does amaze me how people manage to make such glaringly obvious errors in their games, and I can only attribute it to people blanking out at random times while reading the rulebook.

From time to time there may be small rules issues that are not covered clearly by the rulebook, such as timing conflicts, but I always find everything else to be very well explained.

Arkham Horror's rulebook is a possible exception, though I would attribute that more to the game itself having a strange and convoluted structure; the rulebook is just the best attempt to interpret that structure into writing.

I'm going to land somewhere in between both of you and say that it is probably mostly people, but that the rulebooks could be better written. Case and point regarding rulebooks is the War of the Ring rulebook. That rulebook is just plain inadequately organized for such a complex game.

The BSG rulebook is quite a bit better than WotR, but still leaves some things to be desired. For example, the third bullet point in the card clarifications section really should just be part of the crisis rules (the rule that you can choose an option, even if you cannot fulfill that option, i.e. choosing the discard option for water shortage, and not having anything to toss). Instead, we've had probably a half-dozen people come to these forums and ask "Can you do this?" when it clearly says you can, but it only does so 12 pages after all the other stuff regarding crises and skill checks. I'm sure many of those who asked the question combed over the stuff between pages 15 and 18 looking for an answer, but never really took a peek at page 30 (and rightly so!).

I'm sure there are other examples of misplaced rules, and it's easy to see how some folks could be confused about the stuff. Of course, that doesn't explain away the 'interpretation' of revealed cylon players drawing from their previous life's skill set, and playing as many as they want per turn. Some people simply don't read the rules, and that's just one of those cases.

Well, of course sometimes an unclear situation appear in each game, but FFG usually publics FAQ and Errata even before the game is in store. You should think about that too.

For the structure, i think its their style - first, they write core game rules, and second, they describe there rules in detail. So when checking some rule, you know you have to find it on two places in rulebook. Usually the problem is described in both.

Before we play new game, two players read the entire rulebook (to avoid one player forget something usually special situations etc) and after first(or second) game we read the rules again to notice what we forget or played badly. Try that too .