Keithustus said:

While that's true, in a group that plays a lot of Launch Scouts and Executive Orders anyway, which is most of the more experienced groups I've played with, this isn't something to sell short. Assuming she's not in the brig, she gets an automatically successful Launch Scout which doesn't require an action every turn. And in a group that plays a lot of XOs anyway, any character is unlikely to be doing something other than playing XO anyway. All of which means that she's effectively got an extra action and free Strategic Planning every turn. That's pretty good in my book. I agree that she's not a great president, but that's true of plenty of other characters as well (albeit none so highly-placed to start as president!).

As with everything else in this game, mileage varies greatly. But in my experience, Roslin is one of the two most powerful characters, at least in the base game. But like Boomer, the other most powerful character, she's difficult to play. I'm not surprised to see that difficulty parsed as boringness by a lot of people.

I am surprised Kushiel....on one of the other posts you had written that the quaram deck was super important. I think the gist of your quote was, "if you aren't going to use the quaram deck, why have a president at all?" That is pretty sound advice to me, which is why I am bewildered you think Roslin is a power character. She is a president that almost by design cannot use the quaram deck nearly at all and certainly efficently. The ability to look and choose between two crisis once out of say, 5 or 6 turns is not as important or hot as the invaluable abilites the quaram deck holds.

Napoleon

I think his argument is that everyone should pretty much always use XO, and that when you're XOed, you should probably use Launch Scout as one of the actions. Seems like a good rule of thumb. The part that Roslin plays in that is that on her turn, no one would need to launch scout, hence freeing up someone to do another action. Free launch scout = power play. The quorum deck seems irrelevant to him, I assume.

She has a super powerful always-on ability, but she's pretty bad as Presidents go, since she can't effectively use the President's Office. She's also basically dead weight on New Caprica, when you could really use those activations of the Shipyards.

I personally prefer Baltar as president, although there's that pesky "more likely to be a Cylon" problem.

Keithustus said:

No, as I mentioned elsewhere, I think the quorum cards are very powerful. But you and napoleonWilson are both assuming that Roslin will remain president. Usually when I play her, my first action of the game is to XO whomever I think will make a better president to head to Admin and oversee the transfer of power.

I never said she's a good president. I specifically said she's not a great president, actually. But since transferring the president title is so easy, that doesn't make her a bad character.

antherem said:

Unless there's only one other character in the Shipyards, which is possible but unlikely since there aren't many other useful places to be, that won't actually be a problem. And even if there is only one other character in the Shipyards, that's only a problem on that character's turn.

OK, Roslin is usually relegated to the box in my groups.

However - we usually play 5-7 players games. The other day we tried Roslin with 3 player Pegasus games. She was human and was kicking BUTT. Her ability is better than scout, because you pick between two. Lets say you scout away a card with no jump track, but next card is a bad fleet action. With Roslin, she could take the "no jump track" card no problem. In play, Roslin has killed off many fleet actions over time with our games. When the cylon revealed, and every other Crisis she uses her power... dang!

And same could go for a 5 player. Once cylons reveal, when times are toughest, every 3 crisis she uses her OPG.

On new Caprica, we almost always have to send someone to the Brig, so we let it be her! She XO's whoever is on the space, and can also play quorum cards without "fear" of detention. And she gets full set of cards. Not bad.

Another things is letting her spend that cards during an XO and do president office twice. Heck, the president is discarding cards all the time from Crisis checks... so what if her hand is empty? Keep one good card ( a 5 yellow or support the people) and the the rest go! haha.

Along those lines, I have been wondering if some Roslin/Tory combo might be a strong. Tory XO Roslin, Roslin does two draw plays dumping 4, Tory gets 4 (maybe 4 more helpful colors)... ?

But yes, Roslins weakness severe, and I think it is disproportionate to her powers and to other players weaknesses.

wow....in our games we NEVER have the time to waste on a re-election. The game is WAY to brutal towards the humans to waste resources, skill cards, time in other actions to blow on electing ANOTHER president. That seems like a major waste, we would rather just have a good president rather than have to go through a whole song and dance to elect another for a character that just gets a free scout...once a FULL round, or one out of 5-6 turns....ugh...but at least I see if someone is deadset on playing her that yes it could go to a good character and then the poor guy stuck with Roslin can flounder about.

In my experience it has been worth it to let Roslin blow a couple of skill cards every now and then to grab 2 Quorum cards. 2 skill cards for 2 Quorum cards?? Totally worth it in my opinion, given that Roslin's other abilities are way better than the other political characters' (at least in Base Game). Of course, farming Quorum (ie - XO'ing Roslin to let her use Pres. Office twice in a row) is not really that great since she'll have no skill cards left at all if she does that. But on the balance I think she's still a great character, and I like playing as her.

I agree with Napoleon that it's costly to spend the action and cards to appoint a new president. Then you've got a second player sitting in the office while Roslin runs around being not terribly good at anything. Meanwhile, who's piloting the ships and using the Galactica locations? My group generally allows Roslin to stay president, and accepts that they'll be working with the shallow end of the quorum deck. More or less giving up on the quorum deck frees up actions for other purposes. I'm not saying it's perfect, but we find it an acceptable trade.

That said, I have to concede that Roslin's stock has plummeted more than I expected with Exodus. It's harder to justify having a second yellow now that all four classes are critical. And the absence of maps means that the only real difference between one skill card and the next is usually the presence or absence of a jump icon. Not to mention Tory's broken. All told, I've moved her from Tier 1 to Tier 2, which is to say I consider her to be the character most damaged by Exodus.

napoleonWilson said:

The answer to "if you aren't going to use the quoram deck, why have a president at all?" is simple. The rules require that someone be president. You cannot choose for there to be no president.

Given that rule, the best choice the players can actually make is to have a president who never chooses to draw quorum cards. Laura is the closest to that "ideal". Though, a couple of players in our group really like Cally's abilty to to shoot the president.

... More or less giving up on the quorum deck frees up actions for other purposes. I'm not saying it's perfect, but we find it an acceptable trade.

I agree Laura's not the perfect president, just the best character available for it.

Now if a character existed which had the ability:- "Declare martial law: Remove the president card & all quorum cards from the game."

That would be the prefect way (for the human side) to run the presidency of the fleet.

Yeah...we get that....the statement was a figure of speach...we get we there needs to be "presidential" person in the game. What he was saying was that the importance of the presidents duties are so great that if a character won't (or can't in Roslin's case) carry out those duties then you have a "useless" character, who might as well not be there at all,...like why did that player pick the president and not let someone else play it,...or why did the player just sit out and watch if they weren't going to try. That's what he meant,...and I agree.

Napoleon

Forgot to say,..yes cally's ability is awesome...if someone picks Roslin you can instantly blow her head off and get a real president.. Or have the presidency go to ANYONE else....and pick someone useful. LOL...

napoleonWilson said:

I don't!

As a human, I believe (and game results support me) that it's beneficial to prevent anyone who wants to play an active president from doing so. On a scale of 1-10 in favour of the humans I rate drawing quorum cards as about minus-5 (i.e. pro-cylon) The basic misstake I think most players make in this game is assuming that quorum cards are pro-human. Because of the action cost in drawing them they are infact strongly pro-cylon.

Consider the simplest case, a 5-player game with 2 cylons & 3 humans: The human "advantage" is just one character. So if one human player does nothing. The human advantage over the cylons is gone. If I'm human, I certainly don't want that to happen. By playing Laura I can block that before it starts and Laura an otherwise strong character.

XAos said:

Yikes! Your game results must be vastly different from mine. I've seen a trusted President pull the humans' butts out of the fire with a full quorum deck on several occasions. Just when the cylons think they've got a morale victory, the Pres gets XOd for 2 speeches to give them breathing room. As the centurions pile up on the boarding party track, a Brutal Force or 2 saves the day.

Of course you have to be careful of letting the President be TOO active before loyalties are known since those Arrest Orders can cause trouble, but the Quorum is too valuable a resource (in my humble experience) not to use. In fact, a valid strategy for a cylon President might be to avoid drawing quorum so that when he does reveal, he doesn't give the humans any cards they can use.

napoleonWilson said:

*shrug*

Humans win about half the time in the games I play, so I don't think that spending an action to get a new president is a big deal. Particularly at the beginning of the game, when there's not really anything going on unless you draw an early attack crisis, there's plenty of time. But if your humans are losing a lot, I can see why that would be less than optimal.

XAos said:

While your reasoning is totally sound, it's not applicable in this case, because quorum cards have a much stronger effect than "nothing." Auto-scouting the destination deck (uber-auto-scouting the destination deck, really, since you see all the options at once rather than one at a time), auto-destroying a centurion, gaining food and morale, looking at loyalty cards, auto-brigging cylons, auto-freeing humans from the brig, getting an action-less Press Room card draw - those are all effects as or more powerful than analogous effects generated by skillcards and locations, so it's nonsensical to say that they have no positive value for humans unless you don't take skillcard or location actions either. I suppose if the presidents in your group only ever played Arbitrator or Vice President that you might get the impression that the quorum cards are weak (though even those cards are better than Press Room, which is a pretty good action to take), but that's a case of bad play rather than weakness on the part of the cards.

Mind you, I'm all for your group's hilarious playstyle and I think it's great that the game supports it in your experience, but the reasoning you're offering here for it doesn't make any sense.

ninjamatic3000 said:

That's exactly my point.

With the president not wasting actions drawing quorum cards. The game is vastly different.

The game balence shifts significantly towards the humans. The humans don't need a lucky quorum card to "get their butt's out of the fire" Because it's never in the fire.