There are situations where a player has to make a choice on NON REVEALED CARDS.

For example,

- the Admiral has to choose which one between two DESTINATION CARDS to play (the other one is discarded)

- a revealed Cylon has to choose which one between two CRISIS CARDS to play (the other one is discarded)

In these situations: the player, after the vision of cards and before to choose the card to play,

- can discuss with other players before in order to collaborate for the decision?? (obviously without naming specific cards information!!)

For example,

- a revealed Cylon can ask to anoother revealed Cylon what resource he would like to exaust? and then choose (hence, without revealing card information!) the card that make the best against that resource?

Thanks

I think it's okay. According to the faq, one should only ever identify such a card as "bad" or "good," but, yeah, there are questions one could ask that don't actually give any information away. As in your second example, the cylon doesn't even need to have seen the card to ask his teammate which resources (in general) they should be targeting. Likewise, the admiral could probably ask questions like "should I choose the farthest distance card, and if not, what would be the overriding considerations?" but saying anything along the lines of "should I choose the farthest distance, or one that might give us fuel?" would be too specific.

In general it's better to have these discussions before one draws the cards, but new players usually aren't able to anticipate the choices they might have to make.

cauvin said:

Well, firstly, you often put the unchosen card on the bottom of the deck. So, there's no hindsight in the matter.

I think you can certainly ask open-ended questions about what resources you're going to try and downgrade, but you cannot ask "If you had to pick between morale and food, which would it be?"

Using your example, the Cylon player could say "what is your order of preference for losing each of the four resources?" but he would not be able to say "what do you want to lose - food or fuel?"

For our group, even asking 'what order of resources' is too much as it does reveal that somewhat specifically reveal that one of the cards is a resource loser, if a non-resource loser comes out then information is given and more of an issue it skews it to information useful to those who know the card set better and so can play off that better than other players which we feel is unfair.

We generally simply ask people to offer up what they want most or least out of a given card. Then they say 'we can't lose food' or 'we must go distance over any other feature' or whatever. Then no information comes forward about the cards that are hidden and the discussion information comes from the players who are not looking at cards. The decider can pretty much stay quiet

myrm said:

This is closest to how our group plays. Any questions that the Admiral wishes to ask have to be asked prior to looking. After that point, other players can make requests or offer reminders, but the only words that can leave the Admiral's mouth while he's looking at the cards are "good" in reference to the card chosen, and "bad" in reference to the one rejected. My group generally tries to adhere to the letter of the secrecy rules, and most of the hypothetical comments from above violate those rules, in that they communicate--either directly, or in code--too much about the two cards.

(e.g., "Should I choose the farthest distance?" communicates that the two cards have two different distances. Upon receiving feedback and choosing a card, the admiral has often implicitly communicated to the other players the exact distance of the unchosen card. "What is your order of preference for losing the four resources?" communicates that two different resources are lost by the cards. By the phrasing, it's highly likely that the same amount of two different resources is at stake. As with the first example, once one is revealed, you've implicitly communicated that the other location costed a comparable amount of a resource that the fleet identified as lower priority--sometimes this will have implicitly communicated the exact resource and amount lost by the unchosen card.)

Generally, my group is pretty wary of the slippery slope of selectively ignoring different secrecy rules at different times. To me, the question becomes, what can the Admiral say after looking at the cards that he couldn't have said before? Once we start allowing comments while players are looking at cards that they are ostensibly prohibited from revealing information about, how will we prevent the accidental leaking of coded information?

thank you to all for your feedback

your answers are fine and they give me a clear idea of the sake of your play

anyway, i would like to understand if you agree with this summary of the discussion:

1. all that the game rules foresee and state, in the examined situations, is only "NOT GIVE SPECIFIC DETAILS OF TEH CARDS"
2. given tha above rule, and RESPECTING IT, each group MAY develop house-rules in order to play "better" in these situations; where "better" is a matter of group taste

So, the rule "NOT GIVE <<SPECIFIC DETAILS>> OF THE CARDS" leaves INTENTIONALLY OPEN a wide range of possibilities, to the group-play, for the interpratation of the terms: "specific details". And this interpratation is ACTUALLY a matter of group taste.

these possibilities (reading the feedback) are ranging:

• from "SAY NOTHING", which is the more strict, clear and simple (eliminating the problem of decide the boundary of the fuzzy area of "specific details") but partially eliminate collaboration and discussion (only in these particular situations) to the players
• to "MAKE SOME QUESTIONS" like "should I choose the farthesy distance card, and if not, what would be the overriding considerations?" or ask any open-ended questions about what resources you're going to try and downgrade

is this the summary and the reasonable conclusion of this discussion?