Hi,

We're not gamers, but we've loved dipping into the complexity of this wonderful game. You'll be amused to hear that our games are running well over five hours, as we consult the instructions, it seems, repeatedly on each turn.

We have stumbled onto what is probably a stupid issue that I haven't seen addressed on these boards. After the jump, are the Basestar and Civilian Ships set up once again. We learn to clear "all ships" after a jump, but we see no way for these "ships" to return to the board. We've been assuming that after each jump, these are replaced on the game board, as they are before the inital setup. Is that assumption correct? Any idea where this is stated in the rules?

Thanks much! Terrific experience and impressively close in logic to the series.

Randy

AnthonyComstock said:

When the Galactica (and the fleet) jumps, the other ships are removed from the board. They do not return until the Cylons attack. Conceptually, the location and number of civilian ships are irrelevant until they are put into danger by attacking raiders.

When you draw a crisis indicating a Cylon attack, the ships that are placed on the board are conceptually the ones that are nearest to the Galactica and in danger from the raiders.

In short, don't worry about placing ships until a card tells you to do so. Happy hunting

Thanks for the response. You have nailed on the head what we want to do, but there don't seem to be cards that actually tell you to "Launch Basestar"--am I wrong? Can you specifically tell me the cards you are referring to that would replace the civilian ships or the Cylon Basestar?

Randy

On p10 of the rules under the heading "Cylon Attack Crisis" there's a description and sample card that would result in a bunch of cylon ships (including basestar(s) and civilian ship(s) being deployed onto the board),

Cards like "Ambush" for example - any crisis card with an image of the Galactica and the nearby spacezones.

In the case of Ambush being drawn by a player a basestar and four raptors appear behind the Galactica, four raptors appear in front of the Galactica and a couple of vipers and three civilian ships are placed onto the board.

If you where then to jump these counters and figures would all be removed until the next Cylon attack crisis is drawn (there are a couple of other ways for fleets to arrive, but crisis seem to cover 95% of them),

Thanks!

To clarify then, after we jump and the basestar is removed from the board (because it is classified as a "ship"), the following would occur:

1. NO activate Raiders Icon on a crisis card would come into play because no raiders would exist.

2. NO Launch Raiders icon would come into play because the rules specifically state that "If there are no basestars in play, then nothing happens" (page 22).

I guess because we didn't have many Cylon Crisis cards come into play, it seemed that there was very little cylon ship action for some time.

Randy

Sounds about right,

In my experience the ships are pretty weak until a cylon player is revealed,

Their actions are too random and infrequent to be truly nasty otherwise. So they just end up being some extra "minor pressure" to keep you chivvying along while everything else fails or falls to bits...

AnthonyComstock said:

Look through the Crisis deck - out of the 70 cards you'll find that 10 of them are Cylon Attack cards. Just make sure that the deck is thoroughly suffled and that the cards are not clumped together (as when you get the game new, all 10 Cylon Attack cards are next to each other in the deck).

Some jumps you won't get any Cylons attacking, other jumps you'll get 2 Cylon attack cards come up (which can be particularly brutal).

I think we did have some questionable shuffling in our first outing. That's probably behind our question.

Thanks again everyone! Funny to think that the infrequency of the ship attacks ALSO matches the series pacing.

I didn't quite understand the answer to my other question about the civilian ships. After a jump, are they just put where they were at setup? Is the logic that they would jump with you and you should know that. I read my instructions very literally, so I was wondering what put them back on the board, and I haven't seen anything.

Randy

AnthonyComstock said:

They don't go back on the board. EVERYTHING is removed when the fleet jumps and nothing is replaced. Again, it is only the Cylon Attack cards that cause new civilian ships to be placed.

Note that Cylon Attack cards sometimes also place Vipers.

Go find a Cylon Attack card and have a look at it carefully. Then you should see how they work in relation to the game.

AnthonyComstock said:

If this game is enough to get you into more games, then I would say that many games that use cards have the cards arrive in a very non-random order - usually to do with the manufacturing layout. As such any new game should get a LOT of shuffling done before first play. This can afect the play of the first game if its not done.