So Virtually everyone i've talked with who has played the game has seen a huge disparity between human and cylon victory count favoring the cylons. Here on these boards checking out the victory tallies it seems to be following the same pattern.

The game itself is a huge amount of fun. I'd just like to see the humans be able to win more often. While the game is still fresh and fun now, i'd hate to see it fall by the wayside of my gaming group as everyone just assumes the cylons will win and it's not worth playing.

Anyone seen any suggestions for houserules that don't throw anything off but allow the humans to eek out a win with a little more frequencey? Perhaps changing the starting resources?

somewhere in the rules there are different starting totals for all resources if the humans are having a hard time winning the game. I think it is +2 to all of them but I could be wrong.

I mentioned in another thread that 3 of the 4 cylon victories I have seen were due to centurions. Once they are on Galactica, it only takes 4 cylon turns minimum to win. Plus the crisis cards that move them. I think that those 3 games were due to bad luck though. In 2 the armory got destroyed and the only engineers went cylon and the last was from almost 20 straight misses. If it keeps up I will make one of 2 house rules 1) Players get +1 to hit the centurions for each other player in the armory and/or 2) the Cylon Fleet action can only move one boarding party per turm. If resources are your problem, then just raise them all by 1 at the start until it feels more balanced.

The other issue that I noticed is that in small games, there just aren't enough people to do what needs to be done on the ship. We were talking aobut some sort of rules for marines and damage control teams, like the unmanned vipers, but that is more than just a small tweak.

I think that balancing a game like this is pretty difficult, considering much of the difficulty for the humans are because of the humans. In groups where players are naturally suspicious, people don't tend to use Executive Order as much and are more likely to use (and tolerate usage of) the Admiral's Quarters.

In short, it has to do with how well the players react to one another. The trend on the boards is for Cylons to win (I think a lot of people here tolerate brig action).

We've played our last 2 games with +2 resource to each dial, with a victory to each side. So we're sticking with this for now.

I've played about a dozen games now and not once have the Humans lost to Centurion boarding actions. The 'Heavy Raider' symbol just doesn't turn up that often we've found.

Remember that once a player is revealed as a Cylon at least one "heavy raider" action can occur every round, as they can trigger the centurions from the Cylon Fleet location,

I suspect until you have a revealed Cylon heavy raiders are going to be pretty weak,

gareth_lazelle said:

Great time to reveal, when they board or the Heavy Raiders are one step away from boarding.

Good point. Although I don't really need any tips on Cylon strategy! They seem to win all the time anyway, the frakkin' toasters.

Of course, after we've played the game another gazillion times we'll be saying, "Remember the time when the Cylons always used to win, and now we have to set all the dials to 1 just to give them an outside chance at victory!? Ahh, happy days..."

Well the Cylons can have a fairly easy time of it sometimes. Human victory is dependant largly on strong perception and decent leadership, cooperation, and decision making.

My first thought about too many human losses is that the sleeper agent phase may be hurting you too much. I find it can be well worth it, especially in some of the smaller games where it is present, to allow a resource (preferably morale, maybe fuel) to go into the red to ensure the sympathizer stays on the human side.

My second thought is too watch out for those sneaky cylons. I won a game last night as a cylon by being admiral and cursing our "aweful luck" everytime I drew destination cards and still not getting a Tylium ship so that we could get more fuel. A friend of mine beat the humans soundly with a simalir tactic: As boomer, he continuously scouted the crisis deck and we were all so disgusted with the number of Cylon attack cards that were coming up that we never realised what was hapening.

Don't be afraid to change up the Admiral and President with some regularity. A cylon in either position is dangerous, and the only way to ensure they are not is to rotate the leadership. Don't ever let one player have both titles, if you can help it. Likewise, don't be afraid to use the brig, if a cylon is afraid of drawing enough attention to merit time in the brig, they may underplay thier position and allow the humans some respite.

Long story short, I would consider a change of strategy before rewriting the rules, I think things are pretty balanced, and the suggestions in the book certainly help tailor them to particular groups.

I hope that helps!

The game definitely favors the Cylons. Not only are they up to half of the players in the game, but they also have the entire crisis deck on their side. Victory for the humans depends on good coordination and teamwork (I assume), as well as a bit of luck. That's the beauty of the game thoguh. Even if the humans lose some players still win.

Darwins_Dog said:

And Executive Orders. The humans can breeze through the game by using Executive Orders.

I have been playing since GenCon Indy ( August ). When we first started playing toasters won all the time , until

we changed the way we humans play the game. The best peice of addvicie for the human players is not to

try to win all the crisis skill checks. Instead do not play skill cards , on skill checks that you are sure that you don't think

you have a reasonal ability to win, or not a very "bad" outcome. Save your skill cards for the really bad skill checks.

In short good skill card management, watch which players draw what color cards and if they have any cards.

this change has balance the game to slightly favor the humans in our games.

I've played 7 or 8 games and have never seen a boarding party even get on the ship, the one exclusion being a failed crisis card that put one there but which was destroyed on the first roll. So i'm not seeing that as the problem with my group.

But after reading some of the comments here i'm begining to think that it'll balance itself out once the humans get a little more savy at spotting the toasters in their midst.

Out of 10+ games, I think we have only had Centurions get on Galactica once, and they got Brutal Forced right back off. Similarly, Galactica damage has never been an issue, I think the worst we had was our first game, we had the "two damage tokens" Cylon reveal, putting the damage to 3. Otherwise, don't think there has ever been more than one damage token on Galactica.

Cylons won the first 6 or so games, but the humans are starting to figure it out, winning 3 of the last 4. I think part of it is that the humans stopped holding back on skill checks...you shouldn't save cards for "some later crisis that might be worse." If you CAN pass this check, you SHOULD pass this check. If the choice is "players discard cards, or lose a resource" ALWAYS discard the cards. And if the group agrees that they CAN'T pass a check, then NO ONE should put any cards in.

The game doesn't need to change. The players do. Cylons used to win all of the time with us. Then the humans pulled off three wins in a row!

Many good ideas have already been pointed out. Don't waste energy on crisis checks that don't matter much or that you have a pitifully small chance of success. Use Executive Orders effectively (the other poster who stated that the humans can win easily with this makes me think that he's playing the game wrong though). Use the brig sparingly. It's crippling to throw humans in there on a whim. DON'T accept bad luck excuses. If the Admiral whines about bad luck and makes crappy jumps, get rid of him. He's either lying or he's telling the truth and the bad luck is going to sink you anyway so what have you got to lose? I don't see how Boomer or scouting is causing so much grief. If the card is left on top and it's bad... they're a Cylon. If they put the card they peeked at on the bottom, they don't know what's coming up next so you can't blame anyone for that.

Do you understand the odds on the skill sets? Political cards are most frequently useful for skill checks. Looking at the board, they go down in usefulness from there. That's not to say that you don't want a varied set amongst the players, but when in doubt, draw the most leftmost skill cards if you wish to do better at skill checks. Cylons might do just the opposite...

Finally, try to play 5 player games. These are the most favorable for human victory.

These posts pretty much confirm that my group has been really REALLY unlucky with the centurions. The main thing was the armory getting damaged and revealed cylons then doing nothing but moving centurions. It always seemed that resources should be the main way for humans to lose, with centurions and galactica damage just creating other things to respond to.

I think victory is irrelevant in this game.

Let's say the humans are totally dominating the game well past the sleeper phase:

You could be kicking ass as a human the whole the time, only to be made a cylon by someone using "The Ressurection Ship" thus snatching your "victory" from your grasp.

Ultimately whoever wins is totally besides the point, the experience of finger pointing, barely escaping death, and general ******-baggery is what makes playing the game so worth while.

Something that players should look out for though: the more experienced your players become, the more "table talky" the game gets. And when that happens less strong personalities at the table can get pushed around as some players tell everyone "what the most optimum human plan is" which takes away the fun of an individuals choice.

My group has very near a 50-50 record for cylons vs. humans.

Though, to be honest, a huge part of the game balance is player driven. I was accused of being a cylon for a suboptimal play by my wife (I spent a turn repairing vipers, when I could have shot at raiders). Had my wife not been so keen, I would have gotten away with doing even less good on the Galactica whilst unrevealed.

Darwins_Dog said:

Right. Loss of resources should be the primary way of Cylons winning. Cylon boarding parties can be dangerous, especially with two revealed Cylons rushing them along, but I don't see them getting onboard that often in the first place.

My group's played three full games now, and cylons have won every time. But, as some other posters said, it's not about "winning" the game, necessarily, but more about the accusations and finger-pointing going on the whole time. It's those things that add another layer to the game, rather than just a game where "Oh, cylons win. Oh, humans win again. Wow, we're tied." Blah blah blah, boring.

But, with that said, the humans really need to rat out the cylons ASAP, then work together to save Galactica if they want to even have a chance at winning...this game really takes some smart people to play it, that's for sure!

Trump said:

This is actually not true (and yet I see it tossed about on boards with some regularity). Go sort through your Crisis deck. Purple (Tactics) comes up most frequently on skill checks, followed closely by Yellow and Green (politics and leadership). Red (Piloting) and Blue (Engineering) are both way behind the other three. If you want to pass more skill checks, choosing a character that is high in purple, yellow, and green is not a bad idea. However...do you know for sure that you're going to want to pass skill checks? If you are a Cylon, you will have a very hard time sabotaging skill checks if you are Admiral Adama or Tigh, because on most checks your Green and Purple cards are going to help, not hurt.

It may not be about the human victory, but I still want it to happen. I guess I'm just biased. Why aren't you more concerned hmmm?

We finally played a game where the humans won. It was very close. It does seem balanced, it just takes the humans working well together and knowing which skill checks to try for and which to just to let go by (as others have said). You have the game mechanics and one to three players working against you. The great part of the game is that no matter what there are some players winning every game.

Fry said:

This gets tossed about a lot because the rulebook says it's so. I've never tried to go through the Crisis deck to confirm it.

Blue's not exactly as useless as Red since there are Blue cards that make them useful. You might even consider Blue to be most useful since you can always tack it on to a skill check if you have the right card.

My group has only played one game so far and the Cylons won, though it was very close. It was the human players' paranoia that cost them the game ultimately.

I report another Cylon victory, it was extremely close. If the humans had agreed that Starbuck veto a certain crisis (attack) card, or had the civie ships turned up a bit different than they did, then we might've been able to jump away to kobol (if the civie ships turned up better than we likely would've had 50% chance after looking through the crisis deck).