I'm above average on one, below on the other. Which I guess is NOT a good sign.

I think the ONLY thing I like about the Pegasus expansion is the treachery cards (and even those could use some work). Everything else ranges from "meh" (Pegasus board) to boring (New Caprica board) to "ugh" (Cylon leaders).

Treachery cards were a much needed method for Cylons to be sneakier, but they have some problems. The whole reckless/treahcery was a good idea for a risk/reward mechanic, but it doesn't quite pan out because reckless cards are almost never worth playing. Their special abilities already have a benefit neutral value due to the risk of a treachery being played, but you're also giving up a high number on top of that. Maybe if you could get the special reckless ability AND the number they'd be worth playing.

The pegasus board is just overpowered. The weapons make vipers (and by extension, most pilot characters) obsolete, and there's little incentive to do anything but park on the engine room guarateeing jump preps every turn (2 cards is more than worth it). It also completely nullies any threat from ship damage.

The new characters are also overpowered. Kat can be ridiculous. Kane's blind jump is so overpowered you'd foolish not to take her every game. Ellen Tigh is much more dangerous as a cylon than she is helpful as a human (her prescence with New Caprica means you must execute her AND the admiral if they're both not confirmed humans).

New Caprica is just boring. Replaces the fun space combat with boring occupation forces, and there's only one clear cut option for both sides every turn. The mandatory airlocking of unconfirmed admirals is also lame.

The cylon leaders are just pointless. It's like the person controlling them is playing a totally different game that just happens to use the same pieces. Neither of you can really affect the other in any major way so you just end up ignoring each other to do your thing.

I'd say there are definately flaws to pegasus, the main ones being that the risks on the pegasus board are fairly toothless vs their rewards and that reckless doesn't play out well. Execution had its problems, but it looks like exodus is helping that.

My solutions to the former two were that, in addition to reckless skill cards, a skill check is reckless if:

1. The result of the skill check was less than 1. (makes voluntarily tanking crisis checks more risky... more reckless even)

2. A player activated a Pegasus location that turn.

Minor Quibbles

-Engine room is pretty useless

-Cylon leaders a really sucky in 4 player games

-Not enough variety in Agendas

rowanalpha said:

I have a quick and interesting thought about the cylon leader.

Cylon leaders have an interesting quirk in four or six player games. Someone on these boards once posted that getting the Sympathetic Cylon (the sympathizer variant) during the sleeper phase was a sort of punishment for not choosing a Cylon Leader.

The reasoning is, given that the Cylon Leader is going to get the same kind of agenda as a sympathetic cylon, and how difficult it is to complete those agendas, it makes some amount of sense for at least one player to choose the cylon leader during the setup part of the game, rather than to be 'surprised' with an agenda halfway through the game.

As a kind of variant to eliminate the sympathizer mechanic, Cylon Leaders are quite reasonable choices in a 4 or 6 player game; you're guaranteeing that you'll be the 'sympathizer', but at least you have the whole game to work on your agenda.

Of course this eliminates some of the whole fun of playing BSG by removing some of the loyalty mechanics. When you know (roughly) where someone stands at the start of the game, it becomes less fun in terms of suspicion and more a game about pitting actions against actions.

Me and a few other people made agendas that were: You win if X and humans win or if Y and Cylons win.

Something like (I need to tweak this one BTW):

Seeds of the Future (Sympathetic)
You Win the Game if:
Population is not 0.
and
If humans won, you have not been executed.
and
If cylons won, fuel is 2 or less.

This way, a cylon leader might work towards one goal, but have to change focus if they screw up somehow. This also makes the sympathetic/aggressive piles less predictable.

I'm working on some alternative Agenda cards right at this moment. The basic principle is that Agenda cards are there to "de-claw" one player, balancing the sides. I think what the original Agenda cards do is just force the player into a really weird strategy which means winning is hard for them and they spend most of the game faffing around, trying to complete that.

I'll post them in a separate thread when done.

My group had a similar approach to the cylon leaders as Cinis'. In 4 or 6 player games we allow them since its basically the same as the sympathetic (if there is no leader, we randomly choose sympathetic cylon or sympathizer so we don't know which is coming). In a 5 (or 7) player game, we do not allow leaders to be chosen from the startwe found them far too unbalancing (a friendly leader means cylons will NOT win, hostile also tips balance on secrecy and dealing a bit too far). Instead we allow a cylon, when they reveal, to become a leader if they wish (and no one else has yet) and draw an agenda then. Overall it seems to work rather well and opens up options without letting the entire game turn on what agenda the leader pulled.

As for Cain, we were a bit heavy handed with herduring pegasus we switcher her skill set to 2 leadership, 2 tactics and 1 treachery. It made her balanced in our opinion and less of a "take her or you're stupid" choice. But with exodus and the higher power level of characters in general we're gonna un-nerf her. We may institute that with blind jump she draws the second card from the top (to prevent scouting the blind move, but preserving all other scouting) if she seems to powerful even after the changed mechanics and new characters (and, due to new mechanics, a boost in the power level of old ones like apollo), but we'll see.

Sinis said:

Your right, a lot of players would disagree. The engine room is the best ship location on Pegasus. The other feature of Pegasus which distorts game balence is the 4 extra hits it can absorbs before Galtica explodes.

Launching a raptor has all sorts of liabilities:

1) As a Psilon I commonly launch raptors to (a) kill a raptor, (b) discard a jump-icon, retaining the non-jump on top.

2) Only about half the players have the right types of cards to use raptors, everyone except Laura has enough cards to use the engine room.

3) The engine room 100% spins-up the jumpdrive, raptors arn't 100% reliable.

4) A Psilon pretending to be human can be "persuaded" to use the Pegasus engine room. If they refuse that's a strong clue they are Psilon. If they agree that helps the humans. The same is certainly not true of using a raptor.

Holy Outlaw said:

I agree with your conclusion, but for an compleatly different cause. The pagasus engine room seriously decreases the time Galatica takes for each jump. It's virtually impossible for a psilon fleet to actually do significant damage, before the next jump. Hence Pilots become irrelevant.

Holy Outlaw said:

It's not Kat's ability used in a viper that's strong (Vipers are irrelevant witrh pegasus)

Kat's ability predictablly kills psilon boarding parties, fires the pegasus main guns & allows a safe jump with the drive not fully spun-up.

XAos said:

Re: Engine room: Well, so far it's just you and Rasiel who think it's good among the people who posted in this thread. Why do I find it bad? Because it's expensive to use. It says discard 2 skill cards, but unless you're constantly destroying 40% of your resources to use the Engine room, or otherwise wasting time on Pegasus when there aren't any cylon ships around, you'd have to toss another card to move between ships. So, between 2 and 3 cards per use. Seems wasteful in theory, and from my experience, it's pretty awful. Additionally, Laura would never use the engine room anyway: she draws 2 crises and picks one, remember? No reason to use the engine room when you've got that kind of an ability.

Re: Launch Scout:

1a) You commonly launch raptors to kill them? Well, you've got 25% odds, and it's pretty hard to eliminate all of them. Even once you eliminate all of them, what's the point? So people can't launch more scouts? For the Tylium Planet that needs use maybe every fourth game? Do you manage to destroy the raptors with your blind rolls before that happens? Ever?

1b) Retaining a non-jump icon is a great way to get yourself locked up. I hope that's not common practice for you. I mean, you could launch a scout, and then leave some crap crisis on the top, and then... flip it over, because it's still your turn? And when the players say "Ugh, why'd you leave THAT there, when you KNEW we wanted a jump track?!", do they honestly not say to each other "let's lock that chump up?" I think your position here is rather poorly thought out.

2) Only about half the players is dead wrong. In the base game, the only characters who cannot naturally draw tactics during their receive skills step are Roslin, Baltar and Tyrol. That means there are 7 (count 'em, SEVEN, characters who do). That's not "most" as you claim. Furthermore, Roslin has little need to launch a scout: she draws to crises and picks one. That's good enough on it's own. Baltar can pick up tactics from his once-per-turn ability. Tyrol has no unique way of picking up tactics, but it's worth mentioning that each of these three characters can draws consolidate power naturally, and can play it to pick up two tactics for later turns. In the expansion, only Ellen is incapable of drawing tactics naturally, but she can consolidate power also. That means, out of the 14 human characters available, 10 draw tactics naturally, 1 does not need it because of religious visions, 1 can pick them up as a matter of course and use them the next turn, and the remaining 2 must resort to Consolidate Power for tactics (which is already a good move, because it trades a yellow 1-2 for two random purples, and purples are the most common colour in crisis skill checks).

3) Raptors are not 100%. But, they're very good. IN the base game, there are 70 crises, and 40 of them have jump tracks. Some of the ones without jump tracks are worth keeping (Legendary Discovery, for example), but we'll ignore that for now. That means, each crisis has a ~57% chance of having a jump track. If you do the math correctly, you'll find that the top two crises NOT having jump tracks is about 18.5%. That means that a launch scout, if the die is successful has a 81.5% of ensuring a jump track. Additionally, there is a mere 10.75% chance that there will be a crisis without a jump track on the top of the deck at the same time a die roll comes up a 1 or a 2, causing the scout to fail. So, you can pitch 2 cards for 100% (but really, it might be closer to 3 cards, see Re: Engine Room paragraph), or you can use one card, from anywhere (even the brig!) for a ~71% of comparable results* (in this case, failing to ensure a jump track). I don't think the extra card or two is worth it. Most people I've talked with agree with me. The engine room is not worth the card toss to get to, and then not worth two more cards to use. I hope you're not Lee who has to pitch randomly to that scrap heap, in addition.

*Re: "Comparable Results" in 3): I'm kidding, a Launch Scout's results are not comparable to the engine room's usage. Launch Scout's benefits are far and away superior. Engine room merely adds a jump prep icon to the incoming crisis, whether it needs one or not (and you have no way of knowing whether you should bother, barring bizarre singular destinations like the one that lets you reorder the top few crises that appeared in the pegasus expansion). Launch scout lets you avoid attack crises, or particular crises that your group is ill equipped to deal with (i.e. a shortage of a particular skill colour), or to avoid a particular kind of cylon ship activation (like avoiding heavy raiders when there's a few heavies getting close to, or are at, the viper ports, or to avoid basestars from firing if Galactica or Pegasus is heavily damaged, etc.). Launch Scout is a precise tool; you have many criteria for choosing to leave a crisis on top, or banishing it to the bottom. The Engine Room, by comparison is a fat hammer. It's good for one thing, and one thing only, and it's going to cost you to use it. It's just a weak way to spend two skill cards when the most of the characters have a better alternative delivered to them at the beginning of each of their turns.

Yeah, I can't help thinking Engine Room should be better than it is. I haven't done any calculations on it and I don't have any data to contribute to the discussion, but I can say that there have been several games I've played in where the fleet tried relying on Engine Room (generally because the raptors got busted early) and it's just seemed awful every time we tried it. Maybe it has something to do with what Sinis said about tossing 40% of your cards and all of your actions and still pulling maps and undesirable skill checks (that you're now less able to pass). One way or another, I definitely cast my one vote against the Engine Room.

For my gaming group, Pegasus was a must for the longest time. We do not, however, use the New Caprica alternate end condition.

I wholeheartedly agree that the Pegasus expansion shifted the balance in the human's favor. For us, however, this was needed because of the size of our gaming group. We have a group that meets once or twice a week at a local game store and can ussually expect 10-20 people to attend. We end up splitting into smaller groups and play multiple different games and BSG is one of those that gets played fairly often. My experience with the base game was that it relied on having experienced human players in order to be balanced. Since we commonly had one or two newbies in a lot of our games, it was not uncommon for the experienced players turning cylon and resulting in an easy cylon win. In mind, the base game was balanced only if all players had a moderate experience level

As for the individual modules/compoents in the expansion:

Pegasus board - Main batteries/Pegasis CIC tend be much better method of dealing with enemy ships and downplay the usefulness of pilots. Airlock can be useful, but only does not get used in most of our games. Moral almost always falls to at least 2 or 3 in our games and is the reason for human loss fairly often. So, execution tends to get saved untill we're sure the target is a cylon or if the humans need a character change in order to win. Engine room is just ok, but can be quite good in the final couple of rounds. Early on, players are better scouting and/or saving their cards for skill checks. In the final round, it's often close enough for us that the humans must jump before a cylons next turn or risk losing the game. As a damage soak, Pegasis is huge. Overall, this board is a huge enabler for the humans.

New Caprica - Just "OK" in my mind. I personally do not the way it disrupts the game flow for the final rounds. Totally agree with the others that you really don't have a choice for actions. It definately does make population far more important and this changes the game, but thats fine as you just play the early game differently to offset this. It also makes the admiral title more important, and I don't see that as an enhancement. For us, this alternate end game does not make the game any more fun (the opposite actually) and the slight balancing it can sometimes bring is not worth it for us.

Cylon leaders/Sympathetic Cylon - For many players, recieving the sympathiser card in the base game was downright dreaded. You either become a toothless cyclon or you're stuck in the brig. The sympathetic cylon card helps somewhat for this. For us, it's a good trade to gain more power while giving up personal victory chances. We only allow cyclon leaders in four, six, and seven players games. In those cases, it's actually encouraged. If someone is going to have to complete some special goal in order to win, better to work at the goal for the whole game. I don't see these options as having a huge impact on the balance, but we have fun with them.

Treachery cards/reckless actions - The main reason I like treachery cards is that this is one of the few elements of the expansion that is in favor of cylon players. As they are negative cards in every skill check (other than the airlock), the make crisis at tad more difficult overall. We tend not to take many reckless actions in our games, but only because there aren't a great deal of them. Early on, it's totaly worth it to let players draw cards or recuce the difficultly of a skill check. If there is a cylon leader or revealed cylons, there is a tad less incentive to play them and they tend to just get contributed towards skill checks. For me, it's a somewhat interesting element and the balalnce efffect is marginally in favor of cylon players.

New cylon actions - For us, this is a very good enhancement. The ability for a cylon player to draw multiple super crisis cards is a calculated investment. An early revealed cylon can easily spend their first few turns building nice hand of these babies without jeopardizing their game while late reveals have to really think whether they need to start hurting the humans now or build up for devestation. Keeping jump icons instead of fleet activations through caprica is huge balance shifting toward the humans, but in a good way. Cylons can still ussually pick a card that does not contain a jump icon, but can occassionly regret their choice to take this action. In the base game, this was by far the most powerful cyclon space unless cylon forces were positioned just perfectly enough that cylon fleet was worth while.

Other general components - New planets are interesting. In the base game, you almost always needed to stop at a tylium planet for the humans to win and with the expansion there are more options. The crisis are interesting and fun. The quoram cards are decent, though there is a larger deck to dig through for the metagamers out there that know there is a particular card that can save their butts. Erratted investigative committee is very good as it leaves just enough mystery to make the player wonder if they'd have been better off just putting the card into the skill check instead. The other new, nonreckless skill cards are good as well. Movement actions are very nice in general. The new super crisis cards have less bite than the originals, but this is offset by the ability for a cyclon player to potentially play more than one over the course of the game.

I am really looking forward to Exodus by the way.

From the previews, it looks to be big balance shifter in favor of the cylons. So my plan, as the game owner, is to mix and match modules depending on our players. If we have a veteral crew, we'll probably use components from both expansions to offer a lot of choices and maintaining balance. If I'm running a teaching game, I'd likely cut back on Exodus compents for the reasons I previously mentioned.

What I am really looking foward to is the new cylon ships appear mechanic. For our teaching games, we almost always recommended that new players play as pilots and reveal early if they become a cylon. This made playing for them easier and gave them time to pick up on the hand management aspects as pilots are not the skill check lynchpins that polical and military leaders are. Suddenly skilled pilots will become a must in the expansion. You can longer just jump away from cylon ships, the CAGs abilitly to determine civilian ship placement looks to be big, and there will be need for pilots to go out and space to clear out the civies.

We find that Engine Room gets more use in 4 and 7 player games. Its not a bad location if you aren't concerned about keeping cards in your hand. Launch Scout is much more useful, but they can be used together very effectively.
A lot of 4 player games that seem to be going badly for 2 humans trying to win against 2 cylons with multiple SC cards can be won by just spamming XOs back and forth with one player sitting on the Engine Room and one player sitting on the Press Room, moving as needed to FTL control. Player A launches a scout and checks the Crisis for a jump icon; if it has one and we won't be losing 2 resources for failing the Crisis it stays on top, otherwise it goes to the bottom and Engine Room gets activated. Player B draws Politics cards and/or plays Consolidate Power, keeps cards in hand for passing the really important skill checks and we just fail the rest. We jump as soon as we hit the -3 spot. Either player can scout the destination deck with a spare action and bury the 1 distance jumps, and the player on Press Room can go activate Communications twice on a turn if massive civies are going to die before we can jump (usually only happens if that awful attack SC gets played).
You can really speed up the end of the game and just ignore everything else. We do usually have really low resources, several damaged locations and a centurion or two on board at the end of the game. It would probably work better in a 5 player game, the extra human can repair and kill things, but we haven't played much 5 player recently.

you shouldnt use engine room every round. its enough if you use him when you really need the last jump prep to get away from two basestars and whatnot when the revealed cylons have their turn after yours

Well, I have only played with the Pegasus expansion maybe 5 or 6 times, but I think it's a good expansion. Is it flawed? Sure there are some flaws, but no more so than any game is flawed (every game has quirks and/or overlooked rules that need addressing).

Treachery cards: I like the treachery cards. True, having a maximum value of 3 makes them a little weak when it comes to how much they hurt a skill check, but nothing (save Airlock) benefits from treachery, so the fact that they always hurt is nice. Also, I do agree that their abilities can be very situational, but the game is already slanted towards cylons anyway, and nothing about the treachery cards HELP the humans, so I'm fine with them being just "ok".

Pegasus: I do agree that Main Batteries is awesome and so is the CIC, but they do have the chance of doing more harm than good. Somebody said that these are better than using a pilot and his piloting cards. I think it is fine because 1) you have to use cards anyway if you want to avoid damaging friendly ships with Main Batteries; the same goes for the CIC, where even with a Strategic Planning, you can damage the Pegasus by mistake, with a 25% chance of blowing yourself up hehe (higher chance if the Pegasus is already damaged). As for the Airlock, we have yet to use it that much, so I can't really comment. The Engine Room we have found to be very useful. Some people say it is a waste, but it goes with the theme of the ship: high risk, high reward. Sure you are tossing 2 cards away, but it sure is nice when you force that Cylon attack card to have a jump symbol on it Also, it is much more useful in 5-6 player games; in the bigger games it is a little bit easier to part with 2 cards if you know more people can pick up the slack.

Super Crises: True, not all of them are "holy crap!" like the originals, but with the revised Cylon locations, cylon players can draw more than 1. That to me is pretty nice.

New Caprica: Only had a chance to play it once, so I can't say much.

Cylon Leaders: Somebody mentioned that in their games they tank a resource on purpose at the beginning of the game to ensure that the sympathizer is human. Why not just play with a Cylon leader instead? I've played the cylon leader most of the times I played with Pegasus, and I don't think the agendas are as impossible as people make them out to be, they just require a much different strategy and lot more conning the other players hehe.

Cain: Awesome. Overpowered? Not sure. Her regular ability is pretty lame, and her OPG, as cool as it is, doesn't let you choose a destination, which can hose you (which it has before).

Kat: Awesome. Her regular ability is great, and somebody said her OPG was weak, but I think it's fine. She can destroy a bunch of ships if she really needs to, and it has a little bonus if you're a hidden cylon (just Critical Situation, Sacrifice, reveal). Her downside is pretty annoying, but it's workable and understandable considering her downside. In our plays with her, she's been great, though not overpowered (giving up a 5 card is fair to avoid a roll).

Dualla: Great, but not as good as the other two. Her skill draw is very nice. Communications is very very situational, and it will probably be better with Exodus. As it stands now though, it may only be used once or twice a game, if that. Her OPG is nice, it can be handy to overcome a rough crisis where you can't normally access those cards, or to supplement your hand if you have to spend alot of cards. It is also fun to use as a hidden cylon to screw up a skill check (draw 3 helpful cards, then dump in bad ones). Her flaw isn't as bad as it seems to be.

Overall? It does not have enough flaws to say it is a bad purchase. Some of the stuff like treachery and super crises seem a little weak, but they aren't useless. The new characters are cool. If nothing else, you get a bunch of new crises, some new loyalty and skill cards. Both the Pegasus and New Caprica are completely optional, which in my opinion is a plus. They included a bunch of stuff, some of it appeals to people, other parts don't, and you get to pick and choose what you want to play with. I have had fun with it, so that's enough for me.