I've played BSG's base set to about 6 complete games and 4 games where we had to stop things early out of time considerations.

Of the times played to completion, the Cylons have won 5 of the 6. The Cylons would have won the sixth time almost certainly, but we didn't know that the humans were supposed to jump one additional time after getting to 8.

Things have looked very much in favor of the Cylons in the incomplete games as well.

As much as I've enjoyed BSG till now, it seems like it's really unbalanced.

It may be that I and my playgroups don't know enough about how to play, so we're making tactical errors.

I know the base rulebook suggests having the humans start off with two more of each resource. But other than that, any suggestions on how to give the humans more of a fighting chance? (But not too much of one?)

The base game is definitely skewed toward a cylon victory. However, I think the numbers you mentioned are abnormal as well. If every game you have played has two cylons before the sleeper phase, that would explain the skewed results. The humans have it much easier if there is only one cylon from teh beginning and I find that they usually can win if there are zero cylons in the first half.

Before Pegasus came out, I had 52 plays of the base game (I'm not proud, but it was a frakkin' blast), so my sample is still small-ish.

Here are some tips:

1. As a human player always make sure that at least one resource is "in the red." This will ensure that the sympathizer is on your side.

2. Optimal character selection is essential. If possible, try to have at least two characters in the game who have the ability to draw blue and two that can draw red. If this is not a possibility, be prepared to have your political leaders consolidate power when things are quiet.

3.Ex-O as much as possible in the first half. This will enable you to maximize your actions. Most likely, there is only one cylon in the game at this time. Make sure that you never Ex-O the player who goes immediately after you (unless you are 100% sure that they are human). The optimal target is the player who went just before your turn. That way if they do anything that clearly shows they are a cylon, you have a long time to brig them.

4.Quorm cards can really save the day. If there isn't a better action, Ex-O the president (but don't break the rules above!) and have them load up their hand with quorum cards. EDIT: try to Ex-o The president in the president's office so they can activate that location twice. This of course only really works if Roslin isn't your president, because 4 cards is too expensive. Roslin should usually just use the title twice.

On a side note, Pegasus seems to even out the game. We have a very experienced group (most of us have over a hundred plays with Pegasus) and the games are very even when we don't play with New Caprica. The cylons margin of error is much smaller with this expansion, but ecperienced cylons always have a chance at offing those pesky humans.

Those are my tips, if you already knew about them, my apologies. Happy Hunting!

In my experience, the game shifts balance over time. As players get better and understand the mechanics better, and get to know how the other players play better (this is keyand why in pickup games even with experienced players the cylons get a slight edge) the humans will do stronger.

I think the cylons won all of the first 5 games with only the base game in my group. Then it shifted to 75%, then 50%, and by the time pegasus came out humans were winning upwards of 75% of the time (especially 4 and 6 player games). Pegasus shifted it again: cylons won the first 10, then humans started winning 50%. That expansion settled at around 60% humans win the way we played.

With exodus, its too soon to tell, but we're actually finding that it seems to balance well so far. We're running at cylons winning 3/5 so far, but I also don't feel that it confused the humans like New Caprica did, and therefore that ratio is likely going to hold up.

In summary, stay in there. If you're getting discouraged you can give the humans a boost, but I'd also encourage just trying to strategize more. Yes much of the fun of the game is trying to find the hidden cylons. But paying too much attention to that at the expense of the ultimate goal (winning) gives the cylons a huge edge, and is a mistake made frequently by people new to the game.

I would also like to second every single strategy point made by Brenzie. And additionally add one other--never brig someone you arent sure of. Losing crises (and therefore jump stars) is almost always worse than a cylons reveal power. Yes, if you're positive they're cylon throw them in there to keep them from screwing with skill checks, but in general the more players in the brig (even an unrevealed cylon), the harder the game is for humans.

I agree with the points made above... especially about the brig, don't use it excessively b/c you won't get jumps and getting a jump on every turn possible is very important. Don't let two people rot in the brig, it's a recipe for Cylone victory. The only point that I disagree with is that yellow and green cards are more important than blue and red when it comes to passing skill checks.
Play Launch Scout a lot (preferably someone other than the Admiral so at least two people have seen destination deck) - make sure your destination is good, bury all the 1-distance destinations you find and any that cost too much... i.e. 2 distance at the cost of 2 fuel and a morale is a BAD destination.
Don't waste your pilot's actions fighting raiders if you can do something more effective like XOing someone who is on communications. And don't be afraid to use FTL, even at the -3 pop spot; if you are surrounded by Cylons you might lose that pop before auto-jump anyway.
And finally, a President who doesn't play Quorum cards effectively is probably a Cylon. Yes, it is possible to get a bad draw and have 5+ useless Quorum cards in hand, but it's just as likely that Pres Cylon Baltar is sitting on a hand full of Food Rationing and Speeches he isn't playing.

I think that your cylon domination sounds out-of-the-norm.

We really enjoy BSG and as other have said, we find the power shifts as player experince grows.

It's hard to tell what you are doing "wrong" if anything, but if you could throw out a few scenarios that have happened you could get some good feedback.

I would suggest you take half and hour of quiet time, now that you played several games, and read the rule book again. You may be surprised how much more "sense" it makes now, and you might discover you have been doing things wrong. I remember someone's post who dealt ALL the cylon cards out at the start of the game.. "But the sympathizer is ALWAYS a cylon!"... haha.

It would not surprise me if you were making some simple overlooked game mechanism that was giving the cylons to much power (like if you let them XO each other, which they can not do).

Third idea is make an big effort to find one local group or nearby gamestore or convention and play a game with them. You may discover rules or tactics that could change the game.

Thanks for the feedback.

To give you some more idea about what has happened in some of those games (in roughly this order):

1. The one human "win": In a six-player game, no one was a Cylon before the sleeper phase. I and another player turned into Cylons afterward. The humans managed to jump their 8th unit just after we revealed ourselves by getting a 3 jump destination card. We didn't realize they were supposed to manage one more jump, and so neither of us Cylons did our Super Crisis cards. Nevertheless, the humans were in pretty bad shape. I'm pretty confident that they would have lost if they had to make it one more jump.

2. In a six-person game, we didn't realize the importance of having at least one resource in the red before the sleeper phase. So we ended up having three Cylon players in a row and with that the humans had no chance. I think they ultimately lost on resources.

3. The most recent game, we started off with two Cylons. It was apparent that there was at least one Cylon, when one skill check had three negatives of the same color. It became even more apparent that a particular player, doing Baltar, was a Cylon when he refused to help pass a skill check under an Investigative Committee even though he clearly could have helped pass it. He ended up brigging another player who was with Bill Adama. We ended up brigging Baltar. Adama revealed he was a Cylon. That led the player being Roslin to think that Baltar wasn't a Cylon and to free him using the Pardon card from the Quorum deck. Unfortunately, he was a Cylon and that meant that he could put one of the human players in sick bay. After normal crisises and a Super Crisis, pretty much every Cylon ship was on the board. We died from Galactica getting blown up, although we could easily have died from 2-3 of the resources running out. The humans only got 2 units of distance before being destroyed.

After that brutal beating it made me a little shell-shocked. One of the Cylons was playing his first game and openly said he really didn't know what he was doing. At one point we had BOTH of them in the brig. And still the humans lost and lost badly. Now obviously the humans could have played better. But it seems like even if we had been able to make optimal plays we would not have been able to win.

Basically, in only two of the games were the humans even close to being in contention. Even if we did the fix that the rulebook suggested of giving the humans an extra 2 in each categories, that only would have changed the outcome of one game in which population got down to 1 and we had a jump to the 8th unit where both destinations required us to lose that final population.

I think we generally have had one Cylon before the Sleeper phase, and this most recent game was the only time when we had two Cylons from the get-go.

In addition to the game only seeming winnable as Cylons, it seems like the game is much more fun playing as Cylons. I at least find myself hoping that I'm a Cylon and I've heard other people say the same thing.

Ruleswise, I don't think at this point we are making any huge, obvious mistakes. We definitely aren't letting out Cylons use abilities on cards or anything like that at this point.

I was almost thinking of having every crisis result in advancing the jump prep as a possible fix, regardless of whether there is that icon. Or maybe everyone except for the crisises where there are a bunch of Cylons added to the board.

Part of the problem may be that the person who ends up being president quite frequently a) picks Roslin despite the obvious ways in which Roslin sucks and b) doesn't seem to be understanding how to use Quorum cards, as the previous example of freeing the obviously shady Baltar from the brig.

I do have the Pegasus expansion, but haven't yet introduced any of its elements to our playing.

Maybe we will just add the fireppower/characters of Pegasus and forget about New Caprica because the boards don't seem very positive about that.

Honestly, Redshirt, it's my suspicion that your human fleet's experiencing a death of a million papercuts. In other words, I suspect that humans are making suboptimal plays at various points in your game. This is undoubtedly an unsatisfying answer, because it means there's no one quick fix that'll turn it around. It'd be really hard for us to even identify where these papercuts occurred without a transcript or recording of the game, but I really suspect that they're there. I agree with Mephisto666's advice above. It's possible that some misunderstanding of basic rules of the game is partially to blame. I'll readily admit that games with 2 cylons at Loyalty are harder than other games, but the level of cylon domination you've described sounds highly unusual. And the one unifying theory of BSG that transcends all sets and expansions is the formula:

BAD PLAY = cylon advantage

GOOD PLAY = human advantage

Are players choosing characters well? Are they taking advantageous gambles when they're present? Are they taking unnecessary risks? Every human turn, the fleet gains a bounty of valuable resources: 1 movement action, 5 drawn cards, and 2 actions (I'm already factoring in the Executive Order). Groups that appreciate these resources and invest them wisely have generally found that it's enough to win about half the time.

Sample Turn:

Movement: Preventative Policy, or move to a location where I expect the fleet might want to EO me later

Action: Executive Order a known human who takes two meaningful actions (a Launch Scout and Consolidate Power, say)

Crisis: (already scouted to avoid map and increase chance of jump symbol)

The above is an example of a good human turn. Do most human turns in your group look like this? If not, then we're probably looking at the papercut scenario. On the other hand, if this is a typical human turn for your fleet, then it's possible that some cataclysmic mistake is occurring elsewhere. Whatever the case, the above is a baseline example of human play that should be enough for the fleet to win its share. Hope this helps!

Redshirt said:

Don't underestimate how valuable looking at two skill cards can be if Roslin is human. She can save the game. However, keep the administration location in mind. It's a difficulty of 5 to pass the check. You can always pass the presidency!.

Another point that may be affecting the human's ability to handle thingshow are you guys managing destiny? Are you factoring it in when playing cards so that you very rarely ever massively overpass a skill check? Are you keeping track of likely destiny cards as you go? One of the biggest newbie mistakes is to assume that overpassing means you did goodit actually means you probably just failed a future skill check that will matter even more. And as for your cylon playersgood managing of destiny and tracking who draws what means that playing negatives into skill checks is a very fast way to being found out, so with a good group of humans they should only be doing that in very vital checks (and overpassing on a worthless one to avoid being helpful on a good one is a much better cylon strategy in general).

kargie said:

Yes. Destiny is easier to count at the beginning when everyone only has 3 cards and you can probably accurately guess which cards came out of Destiny on the first 3 turns, leaving you with a reasonable guess of what's left before you build a new deck. Like he said, overplaying cards is a classic way to lose; if you are winning most of your 6-9 strength skill checks by 12+ then you are probably putting in too many cards and weakening your hands for later. Figure that the avg skill card is about 2 str and factor the chances of Destiny helping you or hurting you, and add to skill checks based on how much power previous players have put in. Don't worry too much about Cylons spiking a skill check - if they do and everyone has only put 1-2 cards in, it may be very easy to figure out who put in negative cards based on what colors each player draws. And keep in mind that you don't have to pass every Crisis; if the penalty for failure isn't bad or hits a resource that is really high (food) think about just not adding any cards at all, failing it on purpose and saving cards for harsher skill checks on future Crisis cards. Failing will also let you count Destiny much better on future skill checks since everyone will see the two cards that come out.


What characters do you guys usually play? Maybe your character selection is very poor as a group...

Holy Outlaw said:

After reading this, I think it is mostly a lack of understanding of the strategy of being "good" human players. We haven't used executive order as efficiently as suggested here. Usually it just comes up when there is a crisis. We've also had a bunch of major overpassing of skill checks.

Redshirt, you may want to once try putting together a Loyalty deck that doesn't include Cylons (don't tell them until afterward), just to see whether your players can perform effectively and work together, and improve their techniques at skill checks and turn/action efficiency.

I would go ape if you didnt have cylons and I didnt know! It's breaking the rules without telling everyone, to me that is like cheating.

Maybe you play a co-operative version of the game (the no-cylon varient) and see what happens?

You do clear the board after you jump? I don't see how you had so many ships out at the start of the game. Getting that many fleet actions and no jump tracks is possible, but not likely.

how did 2 cylons in the brig hurt you? They play on card to a skill check, they get no crisis... it's way better than a revealed one. Did they get out?

(If they dont use Pegasus, they don't have preventative policy!).

Are you scouting to get jumps and avoid fleets?

Roslin looks at two Crisis and picks one, should have jump and or ditch a fleet action. She is powerful in a 3 player game, even 4.

I want to come play with you group... haha... I am still betting there is something you are missing in the rules.

Skowza said:

Most of that I agree with. however our play group has a better strategy for the President. A President who uses actions to draw quorum cards is considerd to have demonstrated they are a Cyclon. Using that strategy, the humans virtually never loose with Pegasus in the game (exception, in one game a cylon revealed @New Caprica, giving his 2nd I am a cylon card to the Admiral) & only rarely without Pegasus. One of the advantages of not tolerating a president who draws quorum cards is that it prevents them using those cards against the Humans if they are Cylon.

XAos said:

Huh. That's the exact opposite of every group I've played with. If the president isn't using the Quorum deck, why have a president at all?

If you mean "uses actions to only draw Quorum cards" then I guess so, otherwise I am with Kushiel.

As a Cylon president, I want to either draw a bunch of cards looking for Brig and Execute, but not play any helpful cards

OR

I would find other things to do - and not draw any Quorum cards.

The bad part of the first option is that when you are finally revealed, you give the new president a big hand of likely good cards to use. So you often see out cylons doing the second... lame XOs, overspending on votes then consolidating power "to replenish their hands", that sort of thing. Often, no one will XO Baltar to get cards afraid he is a Cylon (from the two card start).

You want a (human) President to be drawing and playing cards to regain resources or eliminate enemies. If they have 7 cards and "nothing to play" they are a fraking cylon, a bad president, or sucky at drawing cards - haha.

XAos said:

Going a little off topic, but since its here, per the official FAQ/Errata:

Handing Off Excess Loyalty Cards:
Cylons may only hand off excess loyalty cards if Galactica has
traveled six or less distance.

This prevents a Cylon with the second Cylon card from doing just that.

We had an unrevealed cylon in the first half at 3 distance. We jumped to two on a normal jump to 5 distance. Next player is Cain. She says, screw it, blind jump... we go two more, 7 - we are on new Caprica. Cylon ended up being alone (not that we knew at the time!). It was an odd scenario to come up. In our case, humans one. We were way ahead and the Cylon revealed and showed both cards (improperly), so we did not even have infighting, otherwise the preventitive executions would have started. (Admiral, we need to see you in the airlock, come unarmed, purely routine matter. Ellen, last call at the bar.)

Kushiel said:

Mephisto666 said:

Yea, I'm not sure what you mean by that either Xaos... if a human player is President and is sitting on Colonial One with the option to draw a Quorum card and also play a Quorum card each turn, he or she should be using that option as much as possible. The Quorum cards are just too useful to not be taking full advantage of them, and one XO can net the President 4 Quorum cards on a single turn, which ought to give them something to play. What really gives away a Cylon President in our games is not drawing Quorum cards at all, not using them when he/she has a hand full of them, or excessive fear of losing the President title. Obviously no one ever wants to lose the President title, but its a dead giveaway that your Pres is a Cylon if the title moves to another player and the Quorum hand is full of cards that should have been played.

1. Play investigative committees whenever possible. They are the best skill card in the game. They will save you from failing skill checks and from wasting cards on passing skill checksboth of which are big problems.

2. Play Executive Orders almost whenever possible. I'm not going to add any stipulations like the other posters have. XOs gain you extra actions.

3. Launch Scout is not as bad as you think it is. In fact, it's awesome. If there aren't many Cylon ships attacking Galactica, people who draw purple should be playing these every chance they get. Play them until you get a good card on top of the destination deck, then play them on the crisis deck to avoid bad crises.

4. Jump early every time. Every time. Not only does jumping at -1 population save you the extra crisis card draws on the current jump cycle, it means the next jump icon you draw will actually count for the next whole jump cycle. It's like gaining two jump icons, which is like drawing 3 fewer crisis cards every jump cycle. This strategy will save you somewhere between 7-12 crisis cards over the course of the game. You should even strongly consider jumping at -3 population once or twice per game.

Drinkdrawers said:

Probably the best improvement to the base game that Pegasus introduced was to fix Investigative Committee. Make sure to pick up Pegasus just for that, or at least modify your old ECs to be fixed. The fix made was to make destiny cards NOT play face-up, so that only players' cards are played face up. That way, you can still tell who is playing what and ferret/pressure the Cylon players, but without making the crisis pointlessly mathematical. You still need to determine whether your group will gamble on the Destiny cards or not.

Kushiel said:

1) The rules require someone to be president.

2) Some of the political characters (e.g. Laura) draw 3 green cards per turn. Which gives high odds to draw "Executive orders". The president is much more effective playing action cards than wasting actions drawing quorum cards.

And Yes! I know it's the exact opposite of "conventional sense" on the game strategy. Which is exactly why I'm pointing out that this is one of the cases where "common sense" has it wrong.

Hmm, ok I can't say with 100% certainty that ignoring the Quorum Deck is a bad idea since we've never done it. I'll bring it up next time we play and see how my group feels about it. I'll miss those Speeches though, they definitely fall into the "makes life easier for the humans" category.
I would agree with you if it wasn't for the fact that the Pres can get 2 Quorum cards per turn from the office; I will say that in games where we fail Bomb on Colonial One (rarely happens) the Quorum Deck is not used much since we can't get the "free" draw on top of the Quorum action. I also feel like it would depend on if you are using the core game or using Pegasus. I think the game was kind of stacked against the humans too much in the core to not be taking advantage of the Quorum, but maybe with Pegasus the humans do have enough options to ignore it. We generally seem to draw enough XOs from the military leaders that we can let the President play with the Quorum Deck... it would certainly relieve some of the tension that comes from seeing a Pres with 6+ Quorum cards and wondering if they are a Cylon and how soon they will be brigging someone. Typical "go-to" actions for us include launching a scout and XOing the Pres to draw, I'll see what happens when we switch that to launching scouts and drawing more cards instead since cycling the skill decks is useful too...

"How quickly can we get back to that Preventative Policy?" "I don't know, everyone draw yellow!" (have I mentioned I love Ellen Tigh?)

Oh, and btw, staying on topic...
Not that you have any control over it being drawn at the beginning, but a first turn "Support the People" really helps the humans.

Skowza said:

It's an easy strategy to prove. One game with Laura Roslin as president for the entire game is usually enough to show it's advantage to the humans.

You don't even need the agreement of the other players. Take Laura as your character & move off Colonial-1.

The reverse (that quorum cards are net "good") is much harder to prove or disprove. Since with lucky card draw the quorum cards will sometimes be good. And players tend to dismiss the opposite as either "bad luck" or a Cylon president being deliberatly anti-human.

I suspect most play groups think quorum cards are good: "Because why else would they be included in the game.???"

XAos said:

I'm apparently a member of those other groups, then, since the reason that I think quorum cards are good is because I've seen the humans win a significant number of games due to strong quorum card use. Mileage varies, obviously.