Is it possible to play with New Caprica AND Ionian nebula? Can we use NPC without the crossroads ending? Can we continue the game AFTER new caprica to the crossroads? (I imagine we would need to dial up the resources a bit for that. 150% maybe?)

Then, one day when we get the Earth expansion, we can play through NC, Crossroads to Earth, in a massive 6 hours game!

I think you could put the two together, but I would play the new stuff by itself first and then see what complications that you might run into combining the two. I would say you would activate the crossroads phase when Galactica gets back to New Caprica. That would make the New Caprica phase really difficult.

I think you're right, going from New Caprica to Crossroads would be a huge strain on the resources. Would you plan on redistributing loyalty cards (or even drawing entirely new characters) after each final destination? Keeping them would lead to a semi-pursuit as the cylon players continue to attack Galactica. I think personally though, I'd want to draw new ones. The group I play with loves the subterfuge aspect, and loyalty will probably be figured out at New Caprica.

It'd be a loooong game though.

Objective Card: The Journey for Earth

Resolve when the following distance is travelled:

3: Add the Pegasus board to play.

5: Sleeper Phase

6: New Caprica Phase (+2 to each resource* and remove half the remaining civilian ships before placing on the New Caprica board. When the fleet jumps, play continues as normal, and Colonial One is accessable again.)

9: Ionian Nebula, next jump wins.

*Since the colonials were on New Cap for a while before the cylons showed up, there was time to train crew, stock supplies, refine fuel and... be happy...er. Anyway, this keeps the resources from being too easily depleted in the longer game.

rowanalpha said:

Yeah I thought of something else like that too, only I think +2 is definitely not enough, this adds 2 more distance and 1 extra jump to the original NC (after the jumpaway, there is 2 from 7 to 9, and one more jump after the trial), so at least fuel should go up by 3, and we all know that morale goes faster

but if you draw a 3 on 6, do you go to ionian nebula right after the jumpaway from NC? or is it capped at 7, and then you need 2 more?

An "easier" game was always suggested by adding two resources for the humans. I would think one of each resource would be good per 1 distance. I had thought of something like this before the expansions came, but when we all knew they would happen.

4: Sleeper agent phase

6: Kobol (no game importance, or you could add some resources here)

8:New Caprica ( Play out the Caprica phase then start jumping again)

10: Crossroads phase.

12: Earth (or whatever will show up as our final location.

This setup, per my guesses would require +4 of each resource. There could be a second sleeper agent phase where everyone gets a third card, just add an extra "you are not a cylon" card to the deck for each player. This would also reduce the chance of all the cylons being out early. To be thematic, the second sleeper phase could be the crossroads phase, but I would move it back to 9 or 8 if that was the case instead of 10. Just my ideas.

Periculum said:

Pegasus arrives after Kobol?

There shouldn't be new sleeper cylons after NC, thematically, since the final five are humans in the game.

What about the agendas? I imagine the longer game messes up some of the agendas! (and a little game balance is always welcomed there, as some of them are way to easy, and some are just plain impossible)

Perhaps the cylon leaders would be required to reveal their agenda during the crossroads. Ignore the "cylons win/Humans win" until the end of the game. All the OTHER requirements must be met at that point or you can no longer attempt to complete your objective by making the cylons or humans win. Or this could be another way for the cylons to get boxed during the crossroads phase.

I had been considering this idea as well, but acknowledge full well that balance would be a real chore. Maybe scrap some of the secrecy half way through and have one player essentially become a GM? In my mind, the right way to do this would be a real marathon. Something like this (a VERY rough draft):

Distance 4: Sleeper Agent Phase

Distance 8: Kobol (+resources?)

Distance 9: Add Pegasus board (+resources? Maybe add the Viper VIIs here, since Pegasus has the manufacturing. Maybe allow some kind of character swapping?)

Distance 16: New Caprica

Distance 17: Player's gain new agendas and Trauma tokens, Add Cylon Fleet (Colonial locations no longer available)

Distance 24: Ionian Nebula

Distance 32: Battle of the Colony?

Distance 33: Earth

Zorajit said:

I'm pretty sure, that any game longer than 12 would be unplayably long. I would most likely do something like mentioned earlier:

Start fuel from 10.

4: Kobol, sleepers (+1 population, +1 morale), maybe pegasus arrives here (+1 population, +1 morale, viper mk7s)

7: NC (+2 food on arrival)

After galactica returns admiral can jump anytime (and lose remaining ships and people), draws new destination, but starts counting from 8 (so if humans got to NC with 8-9 (instead of 7) they continue counting from 8). (+1 morale on jumping away)

12: Crossroads phase.

If and when they release Earth as a final goal, I would try something to compress that into 12 too...

If I was going to do an extended-length game incorporating all the objective cards (and I am), I would incorporate multiple sleeper phases. You'd need a bunch of extra "you are not a cylon" cards (though Exodus might help with this - I'm not sure how many it includes). You'd have extra loyalty cards for each sleeper phase equal to the number of players (Boomer would only get the one extra loyalty card, I guess). You might need to have 1 "you are a cylon" card per two players, to account for the likely late emergence of the cylons, too.

I am totally going to do this, once we have an "Earth" objective.

As long as people are throwing out their plan for this (apparently a lot of us independently came up with this idea. . . ):

2: Kobol, +2 to all resources

4: Sleeper/Pegasus arrives

6: NC phase, +1 to all resources

8: Crossroads

10: Earth, jump to win

This is only slightly longer than a normal game, has +1 for each added distance, and an additional +1 for the added ending condition. I think I may steal the idea that only 1/2 of the civvies (1/2 remaining or original number?) are available to lose on NC is a good idea, but I think that this may need some more tweaking (after all, additional pop doesn't really change much once you're past 12. . . )

kargie said:

And what about fuel? For 10 jumps, you'll need at least 10...

Also, if milestones are closer to each other than 3, it's very probable that there'll be one on nearly every jump. Isn't that too fast? (I know, there is no such thing as too fast in this game...)

Btw... Can we send an email to the game designer asking if he has an idea about playing with NC + Crossroads?

Daver said:

The + to resources at 2 and 6 in my plan gives 11 fuel for 10 distance. A little extra, but given that there are separate win conditions (NC, Crossroads and extra jump to win) I think there is plenty of time for that to balance out. As for every two, you could space it to every 3(with an additional 5 resources of each type or so, maybe less) but you're really talking marathon gameand I was hoping to create a variant that didn't lengthen it TOO much. The multiple milestones happening at once may be a problem, though I think a limited one that wont happen more than once per gamebut that's what playtesting and other people's ideas are for!

I think the increase in resource will need to vary depending on the resource type. Without doing the maths, fuel is related to the number of jumps, 1 per additional jump step required; population starts highest and I suspect that's because it has more potential to go down through attacks on colonial ships (especially if you use Pegasus); morale is in the middle; food is lowest. If you took the starting levels as indicative, you'd need to add something like 2 fuel, 2 food, 2.5 morale (round up) and 3 population per 2 additional jump steps. Maybe you could get away with a bit less because things like cylons revealing themselves won't happen any more frequently in an extended game.

On a point of detail - AFAIR there's no actual increase in population at Kobol, New Caprica, or the Ionian Nebula in the series storyline, so I'd say start with full population, with the other resources increasing at set points.

Cardinalsin said:

Both story and game-wise I think you have a fair point on pop. The primary way for pop to go down is ships, and there are 12 pop icons on the ships (and you start with 12). So without adding ships, perhaps pop should stay where it is no matter the game length (few crises hit pop anyway, and aside from NC, losing on pop in my experience is rare in any eventand if you only expose a max of 6 ships to NC in a game where it continues after you may have a good balance. So a little extra morale or food may be more balanced.

kargie said:

In an average game we lose no more than 1-2 population excluding losing ships and new caprica. But there is a bigger chance of those few population losses to add up, so I'd say adding 2 total (not per jumps) to population should be ok, since story wise if you lose everyone on NC, you still have the population of Galactica and a few remaining ships.

But adding population on kobol is ok storywise too, since between S1 finale and the settlement on NC, the caprican survivors get back, and pegasus show up. And if you add the pegasus board at kobol it makes even more sense. So, combine these to: start with the original 12 population, and at Kobol add the pegasus board, and 2 to everything (since pegasus brings fuel too).

After the rescue from NC fuel and population doesnt go up though, but food (they grew it on NC) and morale (think the adama scene at the end of Exodus 2) does go up. So I say +1 food and morale.

We really need to try this. Do we change the loyalty deck? Do we complicate things? (Can cylons and/or FF cylons change side during the long haul?)

Daver said:

I think I buy Kargie's line of thought. If you mainly lose population from ships, and there's no more ships to lose, then you shouldn't increase population. The Caprican survivors plotline is represented by a crisis card anyway IIRC; I guess you could argue for 1 population from Pegasus, though the Pegasus rules don't include an increase in population, and game balance-wise it seems better to leave it at 12.

As for the extra fuel - I think Pegasus is using that!