This hasn't come up yet for me, but I was thinking one of the most annoying things that could happen in a BSG game is to start with as a cylon but then be dealt a sympathizer card and forced to become the neutered revealed cylon. What if you add the option, if this were going to happen, to be able to instead 'reveal' as a cylon, and pass the sympathizer card to another player as if you were revealed. This way you can still activate the cylon fleet and get a supercrisis card, but you don't get to do your neat reveal action. This would stay an option, as the cylon could still become the sympathizer and pass on the cylon card to someone else to use later.

Thoughts?

If you become a cylon via sympathizer you can use the resurection ship to hand your unrevealed loyalty card to someone else.

If you got a free reveal that is essentially giving you a free action which is a big deal for the cylons who always want to reveal themselves out of turn if possible

To be clear, if you 'reveal' in this fashion, you don't get to follow the text on your You are a Cylon card. So you don't get a free action, unless you mean revealing being an action, which would only be really useful if you're already in the brig. Maybe also require that you aren't in the brig.

Or maybe you then lose your next turn to make sure you can't gain anything?

I DID miss the part about the power not going off, so that was my mistake.

However even without the power out of turn revealing is powerful mojo because when it comes back to your turn you can instantly do evil robot-y things without wasting a turn to declare.

If this house rule is just about not getting stuck with no super crisis or the ability to activate the Cylon fleet there's some irony here: because while if you use this variant you will indeed get your desired super crisis, you're screwing some other player out of theirs. (and also losing the chance to sow decent + get your activate power to actually go off)

Melonball said:

Yes, you do screw some other player by making them a sympathizer, but he was human! You've known that you'll be a Cylon and have been planning for it, but now you had the opportunity ripped from your hands.

This comes from when I was a Cylon at the beginning, had seen how lame it was to be the sympathizer, and was very tempted to reveal just to make sure I didn't end up being the sympathizer. My goal with this was to remove this temptation.

I would also leave this as an option for the player, in case they want someone else to use their Cylon reveal ability.

This game is about making difficult choices with limited information. Why should a cylon get off scott free from that theme?

IMO, if you're a cylon from the start, that's part of the tension: do I reveal, do I stay hidden, do I risk getting tagged with the sympathiser card? Do I push hard and risk getting thrown in the brig, do I play a deeper game?

All part of the fun and challenge.

James