So me and my group played a 5 player game with the Pegasus expansion the other night, and we made it to New Caprica awful fast. Our team was Admiral Cain (Admiral), Gaius Baltar (President, but was a Cylon before the sleeper agent phase), Dee, Sharon Valeri, and Cavil as the Cylon Leader. Most of our resources were low-ish, except morale, which was around 6 or so. Every other resource being on the first red on the dial, I believe. Maybe fuel was at 2.

However, it becomes extremely hard to win on New Caprica if turn one on New Caprica throws a human in Detention. In fact, it becomes almost impossible. In general, we've found in our games, if a human gets thrown in jail or the Brig, it just causes an avalanche of problems. Especially if the President is a Cylon. So, what do you suggest we do once we're all on New Caprica? I figured just make a break for the Civ ships. I actually don't even understand the purpose of the space to execute a Cylon or a Human. In fact, what's the point of executing a cylon? Do you get anything for it? If they're just going to grab a new character sheet, does it matter? They're still a Cylon, and can't use OPG, or OPT abilities. Plus it wastes the humans skill cards that could be spent dealing with skill challenges. Anyways, we just decided that it'd be best to use Breeders Canyon to stimulate the heck out of that jump track. But since one human was in detention, and we had one Cylon and one hostile agenda'd Cylon Leader, it was a world of impossible difficulty.

Any suggestions for these BSG woes?

CountingGardens said:

Well, you don't get a whole lot unless the cylon player has a bunch of cards in their hand. Executing them will cause them to discard their entire hand and land them in the Med Center, or the Resurrection Ship if Galactica has returned to orbit, which limits them to drawing only one card on their next turn. That's not often terribly useful, but it sometimes can be, situationally. (I'm assuming you're talking about executing a revealed cylon player; the benefits of executing an unrevealed but known cylon player or cylon leader should be obvious.)

The point of executing a human is to guarantee that an unrevealed cylon admiral doesn't end the game in one action.

If you execute a Cylon leader three times, are they totally eliminated from the game? Assuming you're playing with just Pegasus and BSG: Vanilla. Since they can't get any more character cards?

CountingGardens said:

There are many copies. And they have a Plan.

(In other words: Cylon leaders do not discard their character sheets when executed.)

CountingGardens said:

Yeah, as stated above, Cylons don't actually have to pick a new character when they're executed. They just have to discard down and go to med center / res ship. Which can still be bad for them and at least prevents them from putting cards into skill checks too liberally.

So any suggestions for my initial post? Brig/Detention is a real downer.

I'm surprised to hear the humans had such a tough time of it. A human in the brig can still play 2 cards into skill checks, can still XO, and still draws crises. I generally find that it doesn't crimp my style too much to be in Detention on NC.

As for proper human strategy on NC, I'd say the default is for everyone to go to the shipyard and XO each other every turn to prepare two ships while waiting for Galactica to come back. If you're getting insanely bad luck with jump symbols, launch an occasional scout. Fortunately, Cavil's OPT is useless at NC, there are no more maps, and the cylons can't play super crises. The worst they usually do is Breeder's Canyon, which really isn't too scary. Once Galactica's back, you want to evacuate just enough to clear population (assume 1 pop per ship) and then call "jump". XO the admiral to fire off all remaining nukes the turn Galactica comes back, obviously.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Not sure if it helps. Conventional wisdom is that NC is significantly easier than Kobol for humans (a belief I share), so I'm struggling a little to think of what pitfalls might have occurred with your game. Any specific problems you can remember other than the one character in Detention? Can you remember why having a single character in Detention became such a problem?

You probably won't like my suggestions, but here they are anyway...
First, don't use New Caprical, just play with all the Pegasus components and use the core endgame instead. New Caprica screws up the game by changing the way resource loss is emphasized, by allowing the Admiral or Ellen to end the game any time, and is just kind of lame (Its my turn? Which of the 2 reasonable actions should I do? Its my turn again? Which of the 2 reasonable actions should I do, etc).
Second, don't use Cylon Leaders in a 5 player game. If they get a human-friendly agenda it is nigh on impossible for the lone Cylon player to win much of the time. If they get a Cylon-friendly agenda it can be really unbalanced the other way instead... we only allow them in 6 and 7 player games now.

If you are going to continue using New Caprica, Holy Outlaw is correct, just spend all your actions readying civies and XOing people to ready civies. And try to get some more population en route, any Crisis that allows you to increase pop is worth it, even at the expense of other resources (except perhaps morale, but even -1 morale for +1 pop is usually worth it). You can use Preventative Policy to protect pop, and a reasonable strategy is to play Preventative Policy, send a civilian ship with 1 pop into an area with a Raider on the same turn and just let it die. You won't lose any pop but you will have 1 less civilian ship to worry about at endgame.

Well I think the problem lied with the fact that the President was a Cylon from the beginning. And honestly, I feel like this ALWAYS happens in my groups games. Though, it always irks me when someone uses Gaius Baltar or Sharon in the game, just because it adds unneeded difficult for the humans. But, this problem could be because we had a new player playing for the first time as well, and someone else was a 2nd time player. I feel like a big problem we also have will be a turn one crisis that sets up Cylon ships. Pilots are too slow to get out there, especially during some of those set ups. So by turn two, raiders get activated and we're already gimped a bit of resource. On a side note, I don't know why I keep forgetting that you can double action of XO. Still need to abuse that card a lot more. However, I disagree with New Caprica being easier than Kobol. We hit New Caprica (Probably quite luckily) by jump 3. 3 distance, 3 distance, and 1 distance. If we were playing with Kobol, we would have definitely beaten the game. However, it would have changed things if we didn't have a Cylon Leader, and instead, a flat Cylon player.

Here is my main problem with Detention though. Especially at the end of the game. If your resources are cut short, especially morale, it makes it difficult to end the game without losing on morale if people are in Detention. Detention is a pain, because people want to get out as quick as possible, so they waste their cards on the Detention check rather than saving the Humans from potentially losing resources.

CountingGardens said:

How so?

On a side note, I don't know why I keep forgetting that you can double action of XO. Still need to abuse that card a lot more.

This seems like a huge reason why the game seems harder. XO is far and away the most powerful tool the humans have. If you're not playing it at every reasonable opportunity, you're saddling the humans with unneeded weight.

Here is my main problem with Detention though. Especially at the end of the game. If your resources are cut short, especially morale, it makes it difficult to end the game without losing on morale if people are in Detention. Detention is a pain, because people want to get out as quick as possible, so they waste their cards on the Detention check rather than saving the Humans from potentially losing resources.

Again, XO is the answer here. Someone in Detention should be XOing people rather than trying to get out. The only time they should be trying to get out is if leaving them behind will lose you the game.

I actually don't even understand the purpose of the space to execute a Cylon or a Human.
...
Well I think the problem lied with the fact that the President was a Cylon from the beginning. And honestly, I feel like this ALWAYS happens in my groups games.

Your first statement answers your second. If the president is a cylon and it's causing you a lot of trouble, execute them. It's very easy to execute someone on New Caprica. Once they're dead the title passes to someone else (hopefully human) and you can start doing more presidential stuff like ordering people out of Detention (though you'll risk being put there yourself if you're still planetside).

It's entirely possible that just having a cylon president screwed you guys over. We've lost 1 out of 7 games so far because a cylon president did a great job of withholding nice quorum cards and killing checks. It's part of the danger. You need everybody, but you can't have everybody because some of them are bad. You have to try root out any cylon, and particularly cylon presidents and admirals, or you're going to have trouble and probably die.

CountingGardens said:

Gaius is actually my favorite character to play. His 5th skill draw is amazing, and regardless of affiliation, his OPG is pretty nice as well. And I actually love the fact that I'm more than likely a Cylon. Because of who Gaius is, I have to play a little more human if I'm human to prove myself.

As for your OP, we had the same issue with New Cap the first time we got there. We ended up with 2 humans in Detention within the first 2 turns (1 was a poor choice on my part to tank a skill check). Even so, we almost managed to win; we just came up 1 or 2 population short. I agree that most of your issues with New Caprica are probably related to not vetting the power positions. In my experience it's harder to vet the President than the Admiral (Scout + Boomer's OPT if she's in the game) because we haven't typically used Quorum cards too terribly much. You could try and call a "lame duck" President a Cylon, but if you haven't been in too many situations where Quorums would be useful then... not really. If he's not playing Investigative Committees as much as possible to reduce # of skill cards thrown into a check... well, you could do that too. Like I said, a bit more difficult from my experience.

Playing with pegaus board:

Use the pegaus engine room to reduce time between jumps. less turns means less time to harm the humans, either by direct damage to galatica or by causing the loss of resources.

Playing with New Caprica:

Personally I don't like the effect of new caprica on the game:

a) When the humans are running short of resources, and the standard game is just getting it's most interesting You reach New Caprica. It feels like playing 3hrs of BSG just to stop (and play an entirely different game called "new Caprica") before BSG is properly resolved

b) A game with a much simpler set of options. The only things that are important is to prep & launch civilian ships. While making 100% sure the admiral is not a cylon.

Yeah that is very true. I still feel like there's a ton of rule-shuffling and what not as well when it comes to New Caprica. Mostly, everyone is confused, I have to keep looking back on specifics. But I guess that's because I'm new at this expansion. I'm kind of open to playing with the Pegasus components but eliminating the New Caprica phase and keeping the Kobol objective. However, I think having an extra big mean Battleship makes it way too easy for the humans. Especially when you factor in characters like Helena Cain from the expansion. I mean, when we played New Caprica, we made it to 7 distance QUICK. Granted, we drew two 3's so we lucked out. On the other hand, maybe the humans *need* Pegasus to balance the game. Almost always in our playgroup the humans are losing. It could balance the game and make it more enjoyable for everyone.