I've played this game a couple of times with my friends and I really like it, but something has been nagging at me about the endgame. I find that once the cylons are revealed, it stops being fun and it's more of a gruelling race to the finish (which the cylons seem to win more often than not because of the cylon locations). I was wondering if you guys had similar concerns? It seems to me that when there are two cylons against four humans, the damage they do outweighs the humans' responses since you basically have to deal with up to 6 crises over four human turns instead of 6 over 6 turns (before cylons are revealed).

I'm also curious about potential solutions to this problem you guys might have. I have a couple I'd like some input on:

What about a crisis card or a group action for the table that let's them attempt to take out the ressurection ship? Maybe a skill check or a combination of dice rolls and a skill check to see if vipers are lost or resources? Then perhaps the cylons would be unable to use it and any unrevealed cylons are out of the game permanently?

Or perhaps after a certain number of jumps, revealed cylons may no longer use the caprica space since the fleet is 'too far' from Caprica? Thinking about the game in story terms, the fleet DOES get far enough away from the 12 colonies that the cylons lose their trail for a while so maybe it's not so far-fetched? Maybe a destination card could let the humans disable the caprica location? I think it would be neat to counter the BSG damage tokens by disabling cylon locations.

Perhaps after ALL cylons have been revealed, the human fleet location can't be activated? (so it's only useful when there's one revealed cylon and one unrevealed cylon, since if all cylons have been revealed, the humans can't be tricked since they know who to look for?)

If the humans destroy two or more basestars before a single jump is completed the cylon fleet location is disabled until a cylon attack crisis card is drawn? (since the basestars closest to galactica were in theory destroyed and it will take the rest of them some time to catch up).

Also, if any of you have house rules that you use to make the game easier or harder I'd really like to hear them to enhance my own gameplay.

*gets out the piano wire to strangle the always recurring house rules*

Readies the flamer, as a support weapon.

iceberg84 said:

There's no problem, so no solution is neccessary. Yes, the humans may have to deal with more crises (assuming that's the action that the Cylons take), but the Cylons' ability to affect the outcome with skill cards is greatly reduced so the humans can be a bit more frugal. Also, the very fact that the Cylons are revealed and the humans can act in harmony makes a big difference.

I think this game is perfectly balanced as it is and any house rules should be avoided at all costs.

x2. Yeah, the game is real balanced as it stands right now. I don't really have a problem with house rules, but doing something as drastic as taking away one of the only ways a revealed cylon can hurt the humans is probably not a great idea. And like Trump said, the humans should be able to do much better on skill checks and work much better together if all the cylons are revealed.

I find that the lower the number of players, the easier it is to tell who the cylons are. Not everyone always participates in skill checks, and before long, it becomes obvious who participates when something goes wrong. Furthermore, it's not 6 crises per four turns, they draw two and discard one (using the other one). Secondly, the Sympathizer is a really weak Cylon, you'll never have Centurion force marches causing the humans to lose, like you would in a 5 player game. Thirdly, you never had their support anyway, it was always four crisis per four players, with two people not participating or anti-participating.

I too think the game is pretty balanced, it just takes a few runs through to get the feel for how the humans need to play. If house rules make the game more fun for you then go for it, but the game doesn't need it imo.

I do like the idea of working together to take out the resurrection ship though. I've heard rumblings of a Pegasus expansion, and that's when it happened in the show, so such a thing may be on the way.

I think your fixes are only going to make it worse. The problem I see in the endgame is that there's fairly little choice for a revealed cylon player. If you start limiting his actions even more it's going to become very boring for a revealed cylon player.

I agree that Cylons have too few options as it is. In my experience, the Cylons pretty much have to, at some point, exert all their effort on one thing, or lose. It might be searching for crises that reduce a resource to zero, force marching centurions to the finish line, or trying to eke out the last couple of damage tokens against a set of humans without an engineer, and disabling any of those options will result in a de facto win for the humans. This would be okay considering the prevalance of Cylon victories on these boards, but a victory because the Cylons are prevented from using the location that helps them win is weak.

Perhaps I should explain myself. I tend to write my thoughts unedited so the ideas I came up with at the end of the topic heading were written on the fly because I'm a creative person. While I DO think those concepts are interesting, I understand why people dislike house rules that aren't 'official' because (I assume) to them it's like cheating or something. I don't think I would ever put those rules into play in any of my games (although I DO stand by my ressurection ship mission idea because -come on- how much fun would it be to pull that off as a human?) but I do think the end game could use a tweak of SOME kind.

I'm sure I haven't played enough games with the same people to notice a change in pattern, but I love board games and I enjoy strategizing, so I think I can foresee trends that develop in this game with some insight. I take issue with the cylon ability to play a crisis of his/her choice as a turn because of the freedom they have in selecting the destruction they wish to rain down upon humanity.

My thought process here could be messy, so if I lose you, I apologize.

So let's say the Cylon activates the Caprica location and picks up two crisis cards and can choose the most damaging option between the two cards.

The two cards could contain a skill check, cylon attack or simply a choice (in the latter case, they'd probably pick a dice roll where 1-4 forces the humans to drop one resource)

If the cylon picks a skill check, he'll clearly pick the hardest check or the one with the least common skill cards involved. Then the humans will have to drop a bunch of cards to prevent the resource loss.

Since the cylon can choose between two cards, you'll always get something that's even worse than a random crisis on a human turn (since you don't get to move the jump marker and if it's a 'choice' card they'll choose whichever is less desirable). Furthermore, at least on a human turn, the player can spend an action trying to do something useful, as opposed to a cylon turn which is devoted entirely to hurting the human cause.

This is in addition to the crisis cards drawn on human turns which makes the Caprica location the most dangerous cylon space (in my opinion - excluding a situation where centurions are on-board galactica and each turn the cylon player moves them one step closer to the end track).

This is why it seems almost like an unforeseen mistake to me.

The human fleet location is quaint, but I haven't seen it used by cylon players in 4 games so far, nor have I seen anyone activate the ressurection ship location. The only locations I've seen cylons(myself included when I've been a cylon) use are the caprica location and the cylon fleet location.

The above reasons are why I suggest implementing rules to prevent the use of cylon locations, not out of a childish desire to make the game easier, but more to encourage variety in game play and try out various strategies because it seems to me that as a cylon, the fastest way to win is to make the humans discard skill cards so they simply fail the most difficult skill checks, thus forcing them to lose resources.

Chances are Galactica will never be destroyed as long as there's an engineer on board (which there has been in every game we've played) and thanks to tactics cards, I haven't seen centurions vent the crew into space yet.

Also, just in case I didn't clarify above and to respond to a couple of posts that seemed to misterpret what I said before, when I said 6 crises on 4 human turns, I meant a 6-player game with 2 revealed cylons, so there's one crisis per human turn plus the 2 cylons each play a crisis during their turns, which was the basis for this discussion as it could potentially generate 6 skill checks in a row with only four humans collecting skill cards with which to prevent the crises from taking effect.

And, once again, my ideas at the top were suggestions and only that. I'm by no means married to those ideas, I'm simply trying to come up with a way to convince the cylons at my games not to solely use the caprica location to hammer the humans with crises.

In response to the statements about how skill checks should be easier with revealed cylons: I'm not so sure. I find that our group actually discarded MORE cards in anticipation of negative skill cards thrown in by cylons. At least when cylons were unrevealed, they didn't always attempt to disrupt the vote so as to avoid suspicion (since if there's only one player who draws a certain type of card it helps the group identify cylons).

I ALSO think the game is balanced UNTIL the end game when all the cylons are revealed and spend their time just trying to take out the resources or galactica. I don't enjoy myself (as a cylon OR a human) at that point nearly as much as I do when nobody knows who the cylons are. I think there should be a more dramatic final battle rather than a race to Kobol or to see which resource runs out first because of overplayed crisis cards.

Maybe your cylons have been too nice with skill checks before revealing, but here's a list of reasons why it should be easier to pass skill checks after the cylons reveal:

1) You know who the cylons are, so when people say how much you can help, you know they're telling the truth.

2) Because the order cards are played in, most of the time you know how many cards the cylons put in.

3) Cylons can only put one card each per skill check.

4) Cylons together only draw 4 cards per round. That's less than one per skill check if one is happening on every turn.

5) You can safely Executive Order each other around to draw more cards.

iceberg84 said:

Nobody can tell you what to do. I'm certainly not going to come over to your house to prevent you using House Rules. In this instance, I am against the house rules because they seem to be trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist.

iceberg84 said:

So you don't like the fact that they can choose to play the Crisis card that the next player was going to play anyway? Really, the important thing isn't the ability to play something evil but rather it's the ability to skip something helpful.

iceberg84 said:

DON'T play Shadows Over Camelot! If you think the traitor options are narrow with BSG, it's far more pronounced with SoC.

iceberg84 said:

If Galactica isn't already heavily damaged and there aren't any Cylon forces to move around, then I agree. But why does that matter?

iceberg84 said:

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it's not happening. I've played a game that was a real nail-biter fending off boarding parties. I haven't played a game yet with Galactica lost due to damage, but I can imagine it, especially if the Chief is a cylon. If others have to fix the ship, they can, but at what cost? Two Cylons trashing locations (and maybe getting lkucky enough to send a human to sickbay) while the humans run around fixing as fast as they can doesn't leave the humans much time to do a lot else.

iceberg84 said:

Yeah, I was one of those who DID follow what you were saying. If you're playing 6 players, you have 6 skill checks. You harp on having only 4 people to make them succeed... but that's true for the entire game. The difference is that the unrevealed Cylons can cause more failures than the revealed ones can.

iceberg84 said:

Your arguments seem to say you don't like this because it's so hard on the humans... which it's not. Are you saying that you just think there aren't enough entertaining options for a revealed Cylon? To that I'd say Hooray! Being a revealed Cylon shouldn't be a total bore, but it shouldn't be as fun as being a hidden Cylon. After all, why stay hidden in the first placet hen?

iceberg84 said:

Sometimes there is a dramatic final battle while the humans desperately wait for the FTL to spool up. Other times it's a matter of attrition.

This is a co-op game so it is susceptible to groupthink. If your group somehow gets locked into one mindset, then maybe you need to adjust your rules to compensate. Me, I'd prefer to find the answer to the riddle rather than simply changing the riddle being asked. Slowly, but surely, that's happening around here. Cylon domination is giving way to more and more wily humans. Maybe you're uncomfortable with the win/loss ratio of the game, but I like it where it is. Getting a perfect balance is pretty difficult. If the balance is tipped towards the Cylons in the long run, then so be it. That's far FAR thematic and makes for an even more satisfying experience when the humans come out on top. If the Cylons were utterly destroying the humans every time, that'd get old, but it just about always feels SO close at the end.

Trump said:

You and I are basically saying the same thing here. The cylon has the opportunity to effectively block two jumps AND choose the most damaging crisis (the loss of cylon unit activation is minimal compared to the loss of two jump movements).

Trump said:

It matters because it makes the caprica location the most commonly used location for the cylons. The point of my thread is that I think there should be more for cylons to do than just activate units to run on a pre-determined course of action or play crisis cards on the other players. It feels very anti-climactic to me.

Trump said:

That’s true, if the chief is a cylon, things would be dire for the humans. With less players it would be moreso because there are fewer people with engineering cards. Even so though, I haven’t encountered TOO many basestar attack crisis cards with two basestars on the board that both happened to roll hits. It has happened, but not with the kind of frequency that leads to the destruction of the good ole ship BSG.

Trump said:

So far in our games, the unrevealed cylons tried to be coy during skill checks and didn’t throw everything they had into the mix to mess up the votes. They thought it was better to wait for the right chances to strike rather than sabotage every vote that came up (which draws a lot of suspicion and can lead to a trip to the brig in my opinion). That’s not to say there was no sabotage at all, but sometimes the unrevealed cylons would actually HELP the votes to avoid suspicion being cast on them, moreover, at least during the unrevealed cylons’ crisis cards, the humans have the benefit of the jump and a random card as opposed to no jump and the worst of two crises.

Trump said:

It’s not SO hard but once the cylons are revealed, I find the game loses its main appeal which is dealing with traitors and saboteurs while attempting to safeguard the fleet’s voyage. The nature of the game changes into something it’s not: some sort of war/strategy game except that there’s no way for the humans to thwart the revealed cylons, they can simply endure the constant barrage of forces. It’s cool to the extent that it mimics the show, but as far as a GAME is concerned, it seems kind of one-sided (while it’s fun to take out raiders in the first few turns, once you’re on the last few jumps, you realize how futile it is since they’re virtually limitless). I think it would be more interesting if there were some sort of sense of peril for the revealed cylons (rather than hoping the humans don’t make it to Kobol).

Trump said:

I agree with that statement. It was always close, the humans did make it to jump 8 but they were never able to get to Kobol. That said though, I still have a problem with the game mechanics not being able to deliver a more satisfying finale. It’s always disappointing to win because of something like a card being flipped over that causes a resource dial to drop to 0, or a centurion to move to the end marker. I just don’t like games where the end result is determined by something you can’t control like a card getting flipped over and it not having the result you expected. I still plan on playing this one a few more times though and I did enjoy myself for most of it, but the end leaves something to be desired.

I appreciate your concise remarks and they’ve given me something to think about.

Thanks,

J

omg, what happend to this thread? Is this appearing all weird for other people too, or just me? It's like the posts started blending in with the bottom of the page or something.

Also, this isn't the first time the boards have messed up that I've seen. They also load really really slow sometimes. Is this just me or everyone? I even visit this site from two different computers, both with ridiculous internet connections, and this is the only site that gives me trouble. Is it just a temporary thing since this site is new? Maybe this thread jank up will help point to the problem?

iceberg84 said:

Hmmm. I can't argue about how you feel, but I don't have that feeling at all. The nature of the game does change once all of the Cylons are revealed, but I don't have a problem with that. I've played this game with at least 30 different people now and while they certainly don't represent every gamer in existence, everyone's been on the edge of their seat trying to make it to Kobol.

It's late and I had already a pitcher beer, so I won't draw out the reasons for my suggestion: learn to play better as humans. Don't fix the game, fix your playing style.

Also, you almost always have at least some choice at what crisis cards come up. If you're a revealed Cylon or Roslin then you get to pick between two. Everyone else can scout ahead to look at the top card of the crisis deck.

In terms of Cylons getting more crises out while the humans are drawing fewer skill cards, this much is true, but I'm not sure it's an issue. Many skill crises don't use skill cards, and there are actions on the board to get even more, so it's not that big a deal.

Secondly, Humans get far more actions than their chrome-plated counterparts if they play cleverly. Executive Order has been noted to be a plague against Cylon efforts, effectively doubling actions during combat, or netting as many as three skill cards more than expended (using it on someone at the Press Room). Executive Order has (in my experience) tipped the scales in favour of the humans, it's only limiting quality being the possibility of ordering an unrevealed Cylon who then does not use the actions as you intended.

Between locations on the board, and Executive Order, I think the humans can easily make up for the 'extra' two crises per cycle.