In a previous thread I asked if people don't play the New Caprica part of the expansion. A number of people say they don't (it would be interesting to do a poll on this). So I'm wondering, was Pegasus a flawed expansion? I think we all agree that BSG is one of the best games of its type out there. But if you put out a big box expansion, and many people don't play a major component of it, doesn't this really hurt the whole system? It seems that many of us really want to play the entire TV series' major plots and that's what FFG is apparenty working towards. Well an important part of the show is the horrible stuff on New Caprica. Does it need a major rules makeover or do we just ignore it?

BTW I have not yet played Pegasus so I'll admit I'm talking out of ignorance, but this is the impression I'm getting from much of your feedback.

The Old Man said:

My group bought it, and liked very few aspects of it, if any at all. We found the new caprica phase boring, and a bit of a free pass for the humans. The actions available to the cylons are fairly weak, and potentially manipulable. Additionally, a cylon admiral in the new caprica phase can make for trite gameplay, with the humans being forced to execute the admiral in order to verify their loyalty.

Execution was a poorly thought out mechanic. Many groups used it as a loyalty verification machine when dealing with suspicious individuals. The penalties for executing a human are fairly toothless compared to the benefit of having a verifiable human player.

The new Sympathizer mechanic was a great idea, but poorly executed. Agendas often supply trivial or impossibly hard victory conditions, but not much in between.

Treachery cards are interesting, but have a maximum value of 3, leaving them to be pretty toothless. Their abilities for cylons are also somewhat boring, and very situational.

The Reckless mechanic, where a skill check is modified but has a risk of activating a treachery card was interesting, but proves to be ultimately to be quite weak. When faced with a skill check, there are times when you really ought to take a reckless bonus because there is nothing that the treachery cards will actually do to the human players (i.e. during the new caprica phase before Galactica has returned, it's impossible for the treachery card "Broadcast Location" (which places a basestar on the table) to actually do anything, because basestars cannot be placed during that phase under those conditions). Similarly, if the fleet is near the end of the jump track, reckless becomes an easy mechanic to abuse, because most of the treachery card's consequences will be quickly escaped from due to jumping.

Cylon leaders are pretty neat. I certainly like them, but for the problem with the new Sympathizer mechanic; they're intrinsically tied to Agendas, which are for the vast majority of the time either trivial, or impossible.

The Pegasus Ship itself is fairly balanced (barring the Airlock, the initial execution availability); the weapons locations are potent, but have drawbacks, and the engine room is useless (though, I suspect many will disagree with me about this, even though discarding two skill cards to ensure a jump icon is generally worse than simply spending one card to launch a scout and ensure there is a jump track). It's a bit unfortunate for the cylons that the pegasus can act as a 'damage soak' especially during the latter half of the new caprica phase.

The characters themselves are interesting, though Kat's ability is flat out broken. Her ability allows her to substitute a die roll by discarding a skill card, and then adding 2 to it's value. On the face of it, it's a nice pilot ability to help Kat against the tougher cylon foes, like Scar, or Heavy Raiders. On further examination, it lets her abuse all sorts of locations as well, like FTL control (jump at -3? No problem, I'll just toss a 5 and save the humans a few crises in the long run), the Pegasus weapons locations (I'll toss an X, and obliterate that basetar/cloud of raiders/whatever, without any risk to vipers, the pegasus ship, or civilian ships as listed in those locations), or the Armory (this one is less objectionable, tossing a 5 to beat a centurion is acceptable in my book).

Supercrises are... not all that super anymore. Most of the supercrises available to cylons in the pegasus expansion are often underwhelming, and have a fairly negligible effect on the game, and might cause the human players to say "well, that's unfortunate, but life goes on" (unlike most of the ones from the base game, which range from "that might kill us in the end" to "brown trousers moment").

Now, your mileage may vary. I've heard from a lot of people that they really liked the pegasus expansion. My group is aberrant in a lot of ways; our humans tend to win the majority of games (in a 4 player setting) where most people's groups are the opposite. Some of us can count cards very well, and often can reasonably predict which colours are left in the destiny deck, making sabotage by unrevealed cylons difficult. From the above, these were the difficulties we discovered from the expansion; we just didn't find it as much fun as the base game, and that there were some features that were very abusive for the tactically minded. I'm sure some other posters will come on the other side of the fence as me, and I hope you'll read their reviews as well, as mine isn't the only story around. I don't want this to come off as a laundry list of complaints about the expansion, but as we played, we found that we liked some aspects less and less, and began to phase them out. It started with cylon leaders, and the new sympathizer mechanic, and ended when we phased out the new caprica phase and eventually the pegasus board when we realized that the expansion had only provided a bonus for the humans, which were winning most of our games anyway.

I've still got the pegasus expansion on my shelf, I haven't traded it away or anything; I'm hoping the Exodus expansion will breathe new life into the mechanics we did not care much for previously.

It seems, and please feel free to correct me, there are two major elements to Pegasus. One is the new locations, rules, characters etc. which serve to expand and move the base game/TV show along. The other, which I understand can be dropped entirely, is the action on New Caprica. If the majority (?) of players aren't even touching the New Caprica board then there is a problem indeed.

The Old Man said:

Well, nearly everything in the expansion is modular; you can play with one, two, or many aspects of the Pegasus expansion. The New Caprica board is optional. The Pegasus ship is optional. The characters and cylon leaders are as optional as the core game ones (one may choose not to pick them). The Sympathetic Cylon mechanic is optional. Virtually none of their mechanics are dependent on each other, you can play with as many or as few new mechanics as you want.

The New Caprica phase (and board) is simply one of the modules of the expansion. If a majority of players* are not playing with it, it does not necessarily show that the expansion on the whole is a flop. For all we know, a huge number of people find the caprica phase boring, or toothless, or whatever, but absolutely adore every other aspect of the expansion, and play with all of them.

*I have no idea what the majority of players think. Additionally, the forum is not an accurate representation of the demographic as a whole. Most people who play a board game, or anything at all do not post to forums. The percentage is huge, only a very small proportion of people engaging in an activity/hobby post to the related forums. For all we know, there is a silent overwhelming majority that likes/loathes it. We just don't know, and for that, we must rely on reason. As such, I've outlined the aspects of the expansion, and why my group didn't care for them. I encourage others to do the same, especially the 'why' part, so you can see which opinions you might find yourself agreeing with.

Messed up formatting. Re-posting below. (Wish I could delete my own posts ...)

Sinis said:

All six of these points are very accurate and well-stated. I agree whole-heartedly.

Sinis said:

I disagree with the first sentence, but agree with all the elaboration afterward. By my way of thinking, the Pegasus ship is significantly overpowered.

Pegasus' negative impact on the base game

a) Main Batteries removes the need for pilots almost entirely.

In the base game, a pilot with a Maximum Firepower was a strong candidate for an XO. Pegasus’s Main Batteries location provides almost equivalent power, with significant advantages: (1) It does not cost a high-value skill card. (2) It does not require planning or investment, since it’s accessible in one move from anywhere on the board. (3) It removes the opportunity cost of having a player draw the (largely useless) red color. (4) It can fire on any space area, including two different areas in one double-action.

b) Pegasus CIC reduces the tactical value of nukes, and further marginalizes pilots.

In the base game, nukes were a powerful resource that had to be jealously guarded by the fleet. The two nukes were the only realistic ways of destroying basestars, and custody of them was the grave and great duty of the admiral. Pegasus CIC is effectively an unlimited mini-nuke factory. It is not uncommon for someone on CIC to use a double action and a Strategic Planning or two to wipe out two basestars. And since basestars are essentially factories that produce other cylon ships, the presence of an effect that can effectively and inexpensively destroy them reduces the general threat posed by raiders and heavy raiders, thereby further reducing the need for pilots.

c) Pegasus’s damage absorption reduces the threat posed by damage, and devalues repair.

In the base game, every time Galactica was damaged, the following three negative effects were produced: (1) The cylons advanced 1/6 of the way closer to a victory method. (2) There was a serious potential of humans being sent to sickbay. (3) A unique-ability producing location was neutralized.

With Pegasus, each of these negative effects is drastically reduced: (1) Only half of all damage tokens hasten Galactica’s destruction. (2) The expanded number of locations reduces the baseline risk to a human on a threatened location from 1-in-8 to 1-in-12 and the ratio skews further toward human advantage with each damaged location. (3) Pegasus locations provide alternative (usually superior) versions of effects produced by Galactica, so human strategy is only modestly impacted when either ship is damaged.

And I haven't even touched on the location that Sinis identified as (and I concur) the *real* problem, Airlock. In my group, Pegasus has made it so there are really only two classes of import, Political and Military Leaders (in that order). They draw the right colors (red and blue are next to useless), they have the important titles (or will receive them once cylons are revealed), and therefore they are the classes chosen first and second most games. With Pegasus, when a pilot or support character turns cylon, the humans no longer anxiously calculate how they’ll revise their strategy to limp to victory—instead they exhale with relief and say, “Good thing it was just Chief ...”

Sinis said:

I'm really surprised to hear Kat identified as overpowered. My group has her pegged firmly into the #3 pilot slot (topping only Boomer, which says a lot more about Boomer than about Kat). What Sinis says about her is true; she's not properly a pilot, and anyone who puts her in a plane is a complete cylon. And yes, it's awesome when she uses FTL or CIC to great effect, but she has significant drawbacks that seat her firmly in Tier 2.

Kat's Drawbacks

a) Her OPG is horrible.

It's virtually blank. As a cylon reveal it's feeble, and as a human weapon it's absurd for the reasons Sinis stated above: she should never be in a viper.

b) Her drawback is significant.

Only Boomer's is steeper. Not being able to start and end a turn in the same location means if she thinks she wants to use CIC next turn, she mustn't use it this turn (or else she'll end in it). Since she only has three locatitions to exploit, she'll always end in one of the three and it'll be virtually "offline" for her next turn. Furthermore, powerful Movement cards like "Critical Situation" are very unattractive to her.

c) Major opportunity cost.

Using Kat's ability carries the opportunity costs of: (1) a high-value skill card (discarded for the effect), (2) the two next-best actions (the EO you can't use on Kat's turn). The question becomes how often is Kat's action with a guaranteed 7 roll worth a 5-value card and your two next-best actions?
Admittedly, using FTL for a guaranteed jump at the -3 space on the track is powerful. But how often is this going to happen? Only on the rare occasion when Kat's turn coincides with the fleet sitting on the -3 space. If you find yourself in this position and she has a 5 in-hand, and she didn't start her turn in FTL, then congratulations, you'll feel like a champ, but make no mistake: that's pure luck. Same with needing CIC or Armory at the exact time of Kat's turn. By my way of thinking, the hallmark of a *truly* overpowered character (say, Helena Cain) is an ability that is largely independent from as many factors that are out of your own control as possible.

To me, the humans from Pegasus are ranked as follows:

1. H. Cain

(big drop-off)

2. E. Tigh

(big drop-off)

3A. Kat

3B. Dee

Sinis said:

I agree with this analysis, and with Sinis' general conclusions about the Pegasus expansion. It's a deeply flawed expansion to a nearly perfect base game, and like Sinis, I'm hopeful that Exodus may address some of the regrettable elements of Pegasus.

And my buddy tells me our group "meta's" BSG more than anyone else. Ah, if he only read this thread.

In my opinion, Pegasus is a very useful expansion, outside of New Caprica, which changes the way the endgame is played dramatically and is easily cheesed out by EOing the humans to launch the civie ships.

If for no other reason this expansion succeeds because it balances out the win/loss ratio for humans and cylons. Prior to Pegasus, cylons won about 75% of the time, after Pegasus about 50% of the time. And this is based on hundreds (yes, hundreds) of games played at our store. We kept track.

The new characters are interesting, although most of us consider Cain to be the most broken character with her auto-jump.

Treachery cards are weaker in value than the other skill cards, but clever cylons can find ways to make checks reckless and cause more headaches for the humans.

The new Super Crisis cards are situational. Some are better than others. We played a 7-player game with a cylon leader where one of the cylons revealed first turn. On his next turn he played The Farm. The humans failed dramatically, and we lost our OPG abilities. It was brutal. And yet we always joke about how The Farm is the weakest of the SCCs.

The Cylon Agendas, even the "impossible" ones, can be accomplished by the player. The problem is if you play the game often enough, the players can guess which Agenda is held by the way the cylon is acting. Our group has limited Cylon Leaders to 7 player games, and we randomly determine if we are playing with the Sympathizer or the Sympathetic Cylon, and don't reveal which was chosen until sleeper phase.

I don't consider Pegasus to be flawed, because it appears to have accomplished what it intended. But some things sure could be tweaked to be better.

I just want to elucidate one more calculation with regards to Kat. I'll lay out assumptions first:

1. Crises are expected to take 5 skill cards, on average. Some will be more, some will be less. This number is derived from the fact that a crisis will come once during each player's turn, and a player will collect 5 cards once during each turn.

2. In the base game, there are 70 crises, and 40 of those have jump tracks. Because I'm lazy, we'll assume that the Pegasus expansion has an equal proportion, and we'll ignore the Network Computers and Legendary Discovery crises, because they're too hard to factor in (still lazy at the end of this sentence). That means there's a roughly 57% chance of getting a jump track, per crisis.

3. With that in mind, the expected number of crises to get two jump preparation icons is around 4. We'll say 4, instead of 3 and some high decimal point, because I'm lazy (surprise!).

If Kat is sitting with a 5 in her hand on FTL control, and the jump preparation track is at -3, even if the board is clear of cylon ships, it is worth it for her to toss the 5 and jump. Why? That's potentially 2 less jump prep icons to find, and in terms of expected values, that's 4 crises that the human players avoid. If you accept my calculation of 5 cards per crisis, Kat has, with one action, and one skill card with a value of 5, saved (roughly) 20 skill cards before the end of the game. Additionally, that's also fewer cylon actions the players will have to suffer. Since human players will almost always outnumber cylons, it is a favourable trade for a human player's action to nullify a cylon player's action (even without noting the "20 skill cards saved" part).

... and that's why I say her ability is "too efficient." This is the most favourable sort of calculation, but there are others. If you examine how many crises lose population and involve a skill check, and the cards you would need to discard to even prevent one population loss, you'll find that if there are raiders headed towards unprotected civilian ships and tossing a 5 to the Pegasus Main Batteries is the only real option, you'll immediately realize that tossing a 5 is horrendously efficient compared to passing any four skill check crises with one population loss as a failure penalty.

JerusalemJones said:

I agree on these points. Each of the characters is interesting. Cain is broken. Treachery gives some minor strategic options to cylons, none of them too consequential. I would say I've seen each of the new Super Crises matter at some point, but I agree with Sinis that I expect just a little more than conditional utility from a Super Crisis.

On the subject of agendas, I'dd add that guessing an agenda is both pretty easy and pretty inconsequential. I can only think of a few occasions when I found the leader's behavior to be interesting and felt the agenda added intrigue.

Sinis said the Agendas come in two flavors: impossible and cake. I'd add a third: realistic, but generally outside of the player's control. There are quite a few where the cylon leader just has to throw his chips in with his side and hope things work out for the best. For instance, I can play human all game but I feel a little helpless if my Agenda is "Join the Colonials" and the humans have to choose who to imprison late at NC. Ultimately, I'm faced with the choice of pitching such a fit about Detention that I basically communicate to the table my Agenda (doesn't that violate secrecy?) or else I suck it up and lose the game because, frankly, it just makes the most sense to brig a friendly cylon leader who can un-infiltrate at will, can only put 2 cards into checks anyway, and doesn't cost a morale for being left behind.

There are others like this. A pet peeve of mine right now is "Prove Their Worth" (the one about playing human but using a Super Crisis). It's come up a few times recently, and I'd argue it's by far the easiest, most obvious, least interactive, and least interesting agenda. I basically do a little four turn do-si-do (infiltrate, leave, grab a super crisis, go to Caprica to play it) that everyone sees coming and no one can stop. This usually takes pretty much the entire loyalty phase. It's not fun or interesting or interactive for me or anyone else, and absolutely everyone knows what's going on because I'm effectively playing human apart from this strange pirouette I'm performing.

So maybe I'm using the term "flawed" too liberally. I'll be the first to admit that Agendas (and Cylon Leaders, in general) were a great addition and a major upgrade from the Cylon Sympathizer. But I feel that the Agendas, like most things Pegasus, could be improved, and I'd love to see some new ones in the new set that are more interactive, and that increase the intrigue that I think we all love.

@JerusalemJones: We didn't have trouble with our Cylons winning too much. Our humans win too much, because I play with a bunch of like-minded individuals who will usually come to an agreement about the efficiency of any given card play or action. Additionally, we play a pretty strong metagame (like sympathizer manipulation, and execution strategies), and many of us are quite capable of counting cards (for destiny purposes) as well. Many of the flaws that I find with the Pegasus expansion are certainly ones that favour humans (i.e. Reckless is beneficial with a weak situational drawbacks, the Pegasus ship has crazy firepower and damage soak with no advantage for cylon players, some characters are incredibly strong but get blanked if they're cylon, etc.).

So, that said, more generally if a player finds their group has far more cylon victories than human ones, the Pegasus expansion might be a real boon to the group. Our Cylons struggle, so we found these features unattractive, but as always, your mileage may vary.

This is why I posted that I certainly want the other side of the story from other posters in my initial response

Sinis said:

Sinis said:

Can't argue with your calculations. I agree that if she's got the 5 in the hand and the track's at -3 on her turn, it's always worthwhile to jump. Same if there's a centurion crawling up the Armory or a Basestar for her to blast with CIC. I'm just bothered by her utter dependence on luck delivering these circumstances to her on her turn. Even with the fleet at -1, the trade-off of the 5 value and the (lost) double-action from an EO is considerably less attractive. And of course, if the fleet's anywhere else on the track, she does nothing. Compound this with her blank OPG, her drawback (which I consider the 2nd harshest in the game), and her atrocious color set, and I see a Tier 2 pilot. That being said, I'm glad to see she sees play in some quarters, and if you're getting mileage out of her, that's great. But when I'm playing her, I feel like I spend the whole game waiting for the stars to align so I can prove how awesome her ability is, and eventually I start wondering if I'm only trying to prove it to myself.

I give up on Kat.

Holy Outlaw said:

Okay, I'll agree that I'm positing an extremely favourable scenario to showcase Kat's ability. But, it need not be that favourable to be more efficient than should be allowed. Is it worth it to toss a 5 if the jump prep is at -1? That's still 10 skill cards (two crises per jump track on average, again) which will be worth a minimum of 10 but realistically worth more, and has a significant chance of denying a cylon player a turn. What if there are only 3 raiders in a space zone? Is it worth tossing a 5 at those using the Pegasus Main Batteries? Maybe.

What about her use of the Pegasus CIC? That's not particularly dependent on a rare window of opportunity (like the -3 pop jump track scenario); basestars often sit out there for many turns at a time, and that's another particularly favourable example (though, hard to calculate because of the probabilities involving how many times it will launch missles, how many raiders/heavies it will launch, how many civ ships will be placed and what sort of vipers there will be out, how will it be damaged or will it be destroyed by two tokens, how long before we jump, etc. etc. etc.). Sometimes it's easy; the admiral picked cylon ambush as a destination, and you're staring down a basestar and all that it churns out for 10 crises, costing additional actions and skill cards as more raiders/heavies get spawned or locations get damaged, or you've got Kat tearing it down or disabling it right away with one 5 and one action.

Her ability isn't quite as ubiquitous as Helo's, or others, but it's still crazy good. It's not going to come up every turn, but it's going to come up, and it can very easily come up very big. Additionally, you'll find that using her ability is very often worth it, and you can very often see qualitatively if it is (i.e. the scenario with Cylon Ambush).

I'm not arguing that you should use her, I'm more or less justifying my opinion in my original response. As for us getting mileage out of her, she was banned since our Pegasus expansion game 2 (yes, we've played with her exactly twice, and in one of those times was there a 'jackpot' usage, like the -3 jump track scenario). For my group, the benefits were just a little too obvious (and very clearly calculable), and a little too over the top.

Fair enough. She's got home run potential, I'll definitely give you that.

So to summ up, and again as a person who hasn't played Pegasus, the expansion has many valuable additions. Almost everyone will find something to like, but it sure seems like New Caprica is avoided like the plague.

Since we bought New Caprica expansion, we always play with New Caprica board.

1) What you forget is when you go to cobol (and in base game as well) the population resource is pretty useless, and nothing to worry about. Since there is only a few crisis cards that cause lose of population and only time when it is lost is due to destroying a civilian ships.

In base game, we never lost due to 0 population. In pegasus, losing even slight amount of population makes it much more difficult to safely escape from Caprica.

Remember there is already enough population on civilian ship to lose the game when admiral is a cylon and flies away right after Galactica appears on the board. Yes, you can execute admiral to ensure he doesnt do it, but is it OP? I dont think so, the Skill Check is pretty dificult to make, and even if humans "win" they lose morale. So it is much more Pyrrhic victory, they lose cards, morale and hand of cards in admirals hand to ensure he dont kill them all on New Caprica. I think its ok. Especially when leaving caprica make left over players executed and lose morale as well, the 1 morale can be the X factor ...

2) We already completed every agenda for a cylon leaders (as i remember cylon leader lost only once this far). I know some of them are harder than another. And Damage agenda is pretty bad due to possibility of dealing damage to pegasus. I think they should make the damage tokens with common back not to make possible to deal damage to pegasus and save the day.

3) What I dont like is to use airlock to reveal a cylon. I dont know if its OP in this way, but makes the game less fun when figuring out who is cylon. In base game, you can only put suspected player in the brig... but still have no guarantee if he is one until he reveals himself. Now, you can execute a player to make sure ... this is no fun.

4) New Caprica board could have been better, in this I agree. I started to think that FFG doesnt think that through, there are simply no options for humans than to prepare and evacuate ships. So what is done there is one player gets to shipyard and other players give him executive orders even if in the detention, or somewhere else. No killing occupation forces, not using any other locations.

Cylons have no options there either ... although population is more crucial, there is no point in sending more occupation forces to destroy ships, humans always kill them and make your turn be wasted. Attacking with occupation force is very very very situational. I played cylon i dont know how many times, but manage to attack and send player to detention/sickbay only once. And even after that ... humans simply send someone else into docks, and the player in detention starts to play Executive orders ... Only thing to to is to draw crisis card, with no option of selecting like in human fleet... its pretty boring ...

5) Treachery is very weak skill type, i only take one or two with a cylon only to prevent humans from using reckless abilities, but values on them are so so low... Not worth it ... And very situational abilities as well..

6) Peagasus locations are powerful, but remember that most of crisis cards added to the deck are much more a threat than base ones. Executins characters, discarding cards, losing fuel... etc

7) What i dont like is Helena Cains blind jump ability ... so, so, SO overpowered, especially with execution rule. I dont know how many times, the executed human takes her as a new character only to use her OPG ability to make a free jump...

After this much plays ... i think the New Caprica board is not much excitement ... but simply when you play without it, you make the game easier for humans... I say it is much more balanced with it than without ... even if you dont like some rules, you should play with all of them to make the game consistent. It is optional in the rules ... but i suppose FFG make it optional only because you can balance sides when playing with weaker players ...

Rasiel said:

Just a couple of comments - I have to disagree that population is some kind of dump stat in the base game. It is one that tends to move suddenly and a lot if the space side of the game gets out of control which we have had many times. Population has cost the humans the game on plenty of occasions in the groups I play in.

That blind jump is extremely powerful late in the game, even though it cannot come after distance 6, but the balancing fact is that if the player who takes her has already used their once per game before execution then they cannot use the blind jump - so to guarantee that this works you have all the humans not using their once per games to make use of the ability....or risk being called as cylons, or let something equally unpleasant come through. Its like the quorum hand turning over issue in the base game - yes its powerful but it means the group has to agree to focus on that to the exclusion of other events and on top of that cost any group agreement causes massive infighting if one person decides that its far to important to ignore the agreement and avoid any given crisis on table right now - so it is by nature divisive.

@Sinis Do you guys even enjoy playing the game Seriosuly, though, it seems like your group either completely handicaps the cylon player(s) by the way you play, or you guys just can't compete as cylons based on your meta-gaming. Your group and our group(s) have completely different mindsets when it comes to playing the game (not like there is anything wrong with that).

There are a few ways to "fix" some of the issues that Pegasus brings up. We've thrown around two different fixes for Cain when playing without New Caprica. The first is that you can only use her OPG if distance is 5 or less. The other is that if by using her OPG you just to 8 (or more) distance, the humans are considered to be at 7 distance instead (so they need an extra jump, of the luck to draw into Legendary Discovery). Bleached Lizard came up with quite a few game variants that can be found on BoardGameGeek (and his signature) that really affect gameplay. And it will be interesting to see how Exodus affects the game whenit comes out (and although no official web-site announcement, they have let us retailers know that it will be out mid-December, at least in the US).

JerusalemJones said:

For sure, we enjoy the game (though, perhaps we did not enjoy the pegasus expansion). My problems with the pegasus expansion only stem from the fact that they help the winning team (for us); the new caprica phase helps humans while the cylon capabilities are pretty awful, the pegasus ship itself is purely a boon for the humans, and the characters are simply more powerful than their predecessors (Cain is better than Adama, and likely better than Tigh or Helo, we find Kat to be superior to all the previous pilots, and Ellen is at least comparable to Gaius and Zarek, though perhaps not Roslin). If our games had difficulties with the humans winning, the pegasus expansion would have been much more welcome. On the plus side, the plastic basestars are very snazzy.

The people in my group definitely enjoy cooperative decision making. Even with our win ratio, I actually prefer playing a cylon; it's a great deal of fun to try to manipulate how others count destiny cards to conceal sabotage, or choosing which way will most likely beat the human juggernaut (or, to even introduce faulty logic into our decision making process which is very often collective). Additionally, our meta-gaming goes only so far; in a 4 player core game, the admiral will have to at least feint the reduction of fuel before distance 4 to pre-empt the sympathizer. How well that Admiral can feint is part of a well-played game. We are not, however, willing to play a meta-game that breaks the rules, or flirts with breaking the rules (especially secrecy rules): we strictly enforce a "high" or "low" report for skill cards, and we absolutely do not discuss what high or low might mean. We also avoid discussions on what "a person should pick" when faced with destinations (an admiral choosing a destination) or crises (Roslin or Launch scout) when that ability is being used. We might discuss what a good general strategy is (like redlining fuel in a 4 player core game), but once a player picks up two cards and has to choose, we're basically silent.

It's not so much handi-capping as it is repeated decision making. The old example, redlining a resource before the sleeper phase, applies to every game in which a sympathizer is used. At the start of the game, we could say "hey, we should redline a resource, we should do fuel because it's the most reliable and least punishable", and everyone could agree (people who disagree with that logic get brigged). This sort of decision only differs from any other in that it is generalizable for every game that includes a core game sympathizer. Other more local decisions are made with the exact same sort of calculation and logic (and very frequently, made collectively).

While I can't speak for the rest of my group, I mostly enjoy a game well played. If the humans win because they play well, that's fine. If the cylons lose, despite playing a good game (and, our cylons CAN win, make no mistake), that's okay too.

As for house rules, we shy away from those. In any given game, you are more likely to be human than cylon. A house rule that favours cylons might be met with resistance (after all, it lowers your chance of winning before the game starts!). In all seriousness, we just find it a pain in the backside to record and codify house rules, when the base rules are for all to read and refer to. And, we really do enjoy the game, so, no biggie there.

So, there you have it. That's how an unapologetic optimizing group might enjoy a game that is slanted in one side's favour.

Interesting. What is the typical size of players? We rarely play wth less than 5, have played only a handful of 3 player games (literally, I think maybe 4 3 player games, if that) and mostly play either 6 or (after Pegasus, with cylon leaders) 7 players. It also sounds alot like we play the game in similar ways, just that your group might be better at card counting than us, and that you play alot more cooperative. We have quite a few players who hate it when someone else tells them what they should do for their turn; they want to make their own decisions, even if they are wrong.

I agree that Cain is the best Admiral for the game, especailly considering her skill set. But often we find her boring to play, since you know she was picked primarily for her OPG. I actually like to play Bill more than Cain, and if I get to pick early I enjoy playing Helo (his OPG has more than once won the game for the cylons). We don't often execute other players without suspicion of them being a cylon, except for a few players who enjoy using the choices on Crisis Cards to execute someone.

We do use a few House Rules, such as in 4 and 6 player games randomly choosing which of the sympathizer cards is used and not revealing it.And if someone is executed prior to sleeper and is a human, we shuffle they Loyalty Card(s) back into the deck and the new character picks a new Loyalty Card. Prior to Pegasus being released we used to discard all cards face-down to make it harder to card count. And we only use Cylon Leaders in 7 player games.

It's too bad we don't live near each other, It'd be interesting to play games with you guys.

We have had the most experience with 4 player games, and a number of 5 player games. We rarely have 3 or 6 (3 seems heavily stacked in the cylon's favour, as simple things like a person in the brig or a turn in sickbay really lay the human players low. We are definitely more cooperative; it's an extension of 'picking the best move' and if you disagree with a decision everyone else agrees on, you're clearly a cylon

Half our group moved to another city (4 hours away), so we don't get as many games in, but we used to play it fairly religiously (weekly, sometimes more) for a year or more. For the a lot of our games, we had simply removed everything from the pegasus expansion. It's been a long time since we've used the expansion.

hey, I will always stand for my opinion, that pegasus expansion is best balanced with all parts of the game ...

I mean... if you only use some of it with base game, it could give advantage some side (probably humans with skill cards and abilities on pegasus).

You cant say its very hard for cylons to win, when you play with plenty of house rules, use only half of expasion... maybe this is the reason why the game is not balanced.

We play BSG a lot ... and a lot I mean more games than i can count, but there were very few of them which was won clearly for one side. Usually one side won in the last possible second - next crisis, next players turn woud bring victory to the other side. This is almost every time we played (basic game, sympatizer and pegasus)... Maybe you should try plaing with all that staff with no changes to the rules and see what happens. Sympatizer from core game was too a very boring to play, but was a game balancer after all.... we never liked to play with sympatizer, but when we had that number of players in the game ... we played with sympatizer...

myrm: No population is pretty useless, you can even use FTL more often, because when you jump, you also avoid cylon ships destroying civilian ships. We never lose core game due to 0 population ever.,.. even if you roll badly when jumping, even when civil ships were destroyed often.

And Helena Cain: You use your OPG ability only when it is neccessary ... and often, you dont like using it before sleeper phase (what if you receive "you are a cylon"?) so mostly every player saves it until really needed. I thing mostly someone played someone like Saul Tigh (OPG: give president to the admiral) which is mostly good ability for a cylon player, not for a human, its not good to have both titles (crisis instruct admiral/president and current player discard cards to avoid crisis, when on one player, you dont have that much cards as two players would). But when you are cylon, you can avoid being automaticly brigged, etc. Well, when player knows he is not a cylon, he is admiral with useless OPG, he does agree to be executed so other players make sure that admiral is loyal - Helena Cain is also first in LoS so she will be admiral after execution, humans are safe from admiral and also have great OPG instead... Destroying civil ships when blind jump is also good, you cannot rescue all of them anyway ...

Rasiel said:

You lost me about here. While I can't speak for the others, I don't play with any house rules. We just find that there are some abusive mechanics with Pegasus, and the problems with them are independent of whatever mechanics you may or may not be playing with. Execution as a mechanic is crummy, regardless of whether there are cylon leaders, the pegasus ship (insofar as it has the airlock), treachery cards, etc. Cain is similarly overpowered (I think almost everyone can agree), whether you're playing the NC phase, or whatever.

Additionally, what are you going on with about sympathizers? Of course we make our loyalty decks properly. But, in a 4 or 6 player game, the sympathizer is a problematic mechanic. It's not like we house-ruled in that we'd use the sympathizer more or less often. We simply played by the rules. I can't tell what you're getting at here, your motivation for talking about this stuff (and 'house rules') is baffling.

I'm not calling you out for your love of the pegasus expansion; if it works for you, that's cool. However, my group played with it, with zero house rules with all of it, some of it, or whatever for months, and we simply didn't like how it turned out. The pegasus expansion surely advantages humans from a perspective of the core game. However, if you have a group that already has humans winning most of the time, it's not very interesting for the cylons to lose even more.

JerusalemJones said:

I think the average is 180 to 185 pounds, 5'10".

Sorry.

The Old Man said:

Sweet! I just got called an "above average" player! I guess there's a first for everything!